# uglyHD

> uglyHD is a live price index for enterprise and homelab storage. It ranks SAS and SATA hard drives, NVMe U.2 and SATA SSDs, NAS-rated drives and server RAM by total delivered cost per terabyte (item price plus shipping), across new, refurbished and used listings from marketplaces and retailers. It is operated by Ugly Pumpkins LLC.

Data status: live. Last successful price ingest: 2026-10-14T02:12Z. This file was generated 2026-10-14T02:12Z.

## Cheapest cost per TB right now

Each figure is the lowest cost per TB among in-stock, real (non-sample) offers, with the drive, its condition and the date the price was last seen. Verify before buying; prices are observations, not quotes.

- [Cheapest overall](https://uglyhd.com/cheapest-per-tb): $7.50/TB: Hitachi Ultrastar 7K6000 2TB SAS, used, $14.99 delivered, from eBay, seen 14 October 2026. Lowest for in-stock SAS and SATA hard drives. Drive page: https://uglyhd.com/drives/hitachi-2tb-ultrastar-7k6000-sas
- [SAS HDD](https://uglyhd.com/sas-hdd): $7.50/TB: Hitachi Ultrastar 7K6000 2TB SAS, used, $14.99 delivered, from eBay, seen 14 October 2026. Lowest for SAS hard drives (114 models tracked). Drive page: https://uglyhd.com/drives/hitachi-2tb-ultrastar-7k6000-sas
- [SATA HDD](https://uglyhd.com/sata-hdd): $12.50/TB: Toshiba MG04 2TB SATA, used, $25.00 delivered, from eBay, seen 14 October 2026. Lowest for SATA hard drives (140 models tracked). Drive page: https://uglyhd.com/drives/toshiba-2tb-mg04-sata
- [NVMe U.2](https://uglyhd.com/nvme-u2): $103.13/TB: Samsung PM983 960GB NVMe U.2, used, $99.00 delivered, from eBay, seen 14 October 2026. Lowest for NVMe U.2 SSDs (41 models tracked). Drive page: https://uglyhd.com/drives/samsung-960gb-pm983-nvme
- [SATA SSD](https://uglyhd.com/sata-ssd): $91.14/TB: Samsung PM883 3.84TB SATA, refurbished, $349.99 delivered, from eBay, seen 14 October 2026. Lowest for enterprise SATA SSDs (21 models tracked). Drive page: https://uglyhd.com/drives/samsung-3-84tb-pm883-sata
- [NAS](https://uglyhd.com/nas): $15.99/TB: Seagate IronWolf 10TB SATA, used, $159.90 delivered, from eBay, seen 14 October 2026. Lowest for NAS-rated hard drives (43 models tracked). Drive page: https://uglyhd.com/drives/seagate-10tb-ironwolf-sata
- [Server RAM](https://uglyhd.com/server-ram): $4,374/TB: Micron DDR4 RDIMM 16GB, used, $69.99 delivered, from eBay, seen 14 October 2026. Lowest for server RAM (registered ECC) (77 models tracked). Drive page: https://uglyhd.com/drives/micron-16gb-ddr4-2666-rdimm

## How the ranking works

1. Cost per TB is (item price + shipping) divided by capacity in decimal terabytes. Sales tax is excluded. Multi-drive lots are reduced to a per-drive price first.
2. Each product is priced by its lowest-total in-stock offer. Conditions are normalised to new, renewed (shown as refurbished) and used, and applied before the cheapest offer is chosen.
3. A listing must pass a product matcher (accessories, empty boxes, wrong models and misleading lots are refused) and price-plausibility checks: fixed $/TB floors and ceilings per drive type, and rejection of any offer under 40% of the median of at least 4 comparable same-condition offers.
4. Offers expire (eBay after 12 hours, Newegg and Best Buy after 24) and are then hidden, never shown at their last price. Sample placeholder prices are always labelled and are dropped for any product that has a real offer.
5. There is no sponsored placement: ranking is by cost per TB alone. Some outbound links earn a commission, and affiliate status is never an input to offer selection or ranking.

Full rules: https://uglyhd.com/methodology

## Key ranking pages

- [Cheapest per TB](https://uglyhd.com/cheapest-per-tb): every in-stock SAS and SATA hard drive, ranked by cost per TB
- [SAS HDD](https://uglyhd.com/sas-hdd): SAS hard drives, ranked by cost per TB
- [SATA HDD](https://uglyhd.com/sata-hdd): SATA hard drives, ranked by cost per TB
- [NVMe U.2](https://uglyhd.com/nvme-u2): NVMe U.2 SSDs, ranked by cost per TB
- [SATA SSD](https://uglyhd.com/sata-ssd): enterprise SATA SSDs, ranked by cost per TB
- [NAS](https://uglyhd.com/nas): NAS-rated hard drives, ranked by cost per TB
- [Server RAM](https://uglyhd.com/server-ram): server RAM (registered ECC), ranked by cost per TB
- [All drives](https://uglyhd.com/drives): the full index of every tracked model
- [Compare](https://uglyhd.com/compare): head-to-head drive comparisons
- [Find my drive](https://uglyhd.com/find): a three-question drive finder

## Tools

- [TCO calculator](https://uglyhd.com/tools/tco-calculator): Hardware, electricity at your power price, and expected replacements over the horizon you actually keep drives for. Ends in cost per usable TB per year.
- [RAID planner](https://uglyhd.com/tools/raid-planner): Usable capacity in TB and TiB, failures survived, resilver time, and the odds of an unrecoverable read error killing the rebuild.
- [Used vs new](https://uglyhd.com/tools/used-vs-new): Prices in the higher failure rate and shorter warranty of refurbished drives, and gives you the used price above which the discount stops being real.

## Guides

- [The used enterprise drive market: where the discount actually is](https://uglyhd.com/guides/used-drive-market-report): Why so many enterprise SAS and nearline drives end up on the used market, how the discount varies by capacity tier, and how to read an eBay seller's feedback and return policy before you buy.
- [CMR vs SMR: how to avoid the wrong drive](https://uglyhd.com/guides/cmr-vs-smr): What shingled recording actually does, why it destroys ZFS resilvers, how vendors hid it inside NAS product lines in 2020, and how to verify a specific model before you buy.
- [Recertified drives: what the grades actually mean](https://uglyhd.com/guides/recertified-drives): Manufacturer recertified vs seller refurbished vs data-centre pulls: the warranty you really get, the failure rates to expect, and the SMART fields to read the day the drive arrives.
- [Shucking in 2026: is it still worth it](https://uglyhd.com/guides/shucking-drives): The external-vs-bare price gap by capacity, which enclosures actually hide CMR drives in 2026, the warranty you give up, and the math for when shucking beats buying bare.

## Public API

JSON over HTTP, documented at https://uglyhd.com/api-docs. The free tier needs no key, returns up to 50 results per request and serves current prices only; price history needs a paid key. CORS is open. Every response carries meta.updated_at (last ingest) and meta.sample_data. The API is for programmatic calls: robots.txt asks crawlers not to walk /api/.

- GET https://uglyhd.com/api/v1/best-prices: the cheapest drive in each category and how far it beats the category average
- GET https://uglyhd.com/api/v1/categories: per-category counts, best and average cost per TB
- GET https://uglyhd.com/api/v1/drives?type=HDD&interface=SAS&sort=per_tb&limit=5: drives with their cheapest current offer; filter by type, interface, brand, condition, capacity, price
- GET https://uglyhd.com/api/v1/drives/{slug}: one drive: specs and every current offer
- GET https://uglyhd.com/api/v1/search?q=ST18000NM000J: search by brand, series or manufacturer part number

## Update cadence

- Prices are re-ingested about every two hours.
- Ranking pages, the sitemap and this file regenerate at most hourly, so a figure here can be up to an hour behind the live ingest.
- Offers expire after 12 hours (eBay) or 24 hours (Newegg, Best Buy) and are hidden once expired.
- Catalogue specifications change rarely and are hand-curated.

## Citing this site

- Cite the page URL, not this file. Quote the figure together with its date: prices move within hours.
- Suggested attribution: uglyHD (uglyhd.com), a price index by Ugly Pumpkins LLC.
- Pages that explain the data: methodology, sources and affiliate disclosure, linked below.

## Optional

- [Methodology](https://uglyhd.com/methodology): the full ranking rules, plus a buyer FAQ
- [Sources](https://uglyhd.com/sources): every price source indexed and whether we earn a commission on it
- [Affiliate disclosure](https://uglyhd.com/affiliate-disclosure): how commissions work and what they never influence
- [About](https://uglyhd.com/about): who operates uglyHD
- [Sitemap](https://uglyhd.com/sitemap.xml)