Guy flies from UK to New York because hard drives are cheaper there

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A Reddit user traveled to New York and bought a lot of hard drives to avoid the much higher prices in the UK.

You might be curious why someone would travel internationally to buy hard drives. The reason lies in projected prices for 2026. Major manufacturers, Western Digital and Seagate, have been prioritizing sales to large tech corporations such as Amazon and Microsoft, leaving limited supply for general consumers.

Regular shoppers found fewer hard drives available, as prices increased sharply – by 40% to 50% – over just a few months, with larger drives becoming even more expensive. The price of SSDs also went up, which increased demand for traditional hard drives and made them harder to find in stores.

Flying to New York to beat 28TB prices

Okay, so I heard this crazy story online – this guy from the UK actually flew all the way to New York City just to buy a bunch of hard drives! Ten of them, to be exact, and each one had 28 terabytes of storage. Apparently, even with the plane ticket, it was still cheaper for him to buy them there in person than it would have been back home. Can you believe that?

He noticed that the price of 28TB hard drives in the UK had become extremely low, so he decided to quickly travel to New York after the new year to buy some. He explained that prices were only expected to increase, so he purchased ten drives.

Decided to fly to the US to buy some hard drives
byu/cgtechuk inDataHoarder

Best Buy and B&H both had limited stock and limited each customer to buying only five drives at a time. When Best Buy wouldn’t accept his UK credit cards unless he used a Delaware address, he switched to using his American Express card, even though it meant paying extra due to the exchange rate.

Okay, so when I finally got to New York, I started getting seriously paranoid about getting ripped off. I ended up recording everything – like, the whole process of picking up the drives, making sure to get the serial numbers. I even filmed myself opening each drive in the hotel and running tests. I used programs like Seatools and Crystal to check them, and I copied files over just to be absolutely sure they were the full 28TB drives and not some cheap replacements or, honestly, just rocks! I had to be certain.

Getting everything back proved tricky. He realized bringing ten hard drives had been a bad idea and wished he’d only brought eight, as it would have been much simpler to manage. He carried the drives in his carry-on bag, put the boxes and power adapters in his checked luggage, and had a smooth flight back to the UK.

Let’s break down the cost savings. He bought each hard drive for £244, and with UK import tax added (20%), the total cost per drive came to about £300. The same 28TB drive was selling for £568 on Amazon UK, or around £420 if refurbished. This meant he saved approximately £268 on each drive compared to buying it new at full price. Over ten drives, his total savings were around £2,680.

He explained that it was surprisingly cheaper to buy 28TB hard drives in the US and fly them back to the UK than to purchase them domestically.

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2026-02-23 22:19