VDURA hikes its enterprise SSD pricing, now costs 22.6x more than hard drives — the price of a 30TB SSD has climbed 472%
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Mixed-fleet storage vendor VDURA has materially revised the enterprise SSD pricing figures in its Flash Volatility Index, telling customers in an April 8 update that the cost of a 30TB TLC enterprise drive climbed 472% between Q2 2025 and Q1 2026. The Milpitas, California, company's January launch release for the same index put the rise over the identical window at 257%. VDURA hasn’t explained the gap between the two readings.
Where January’s release pegged Q1 2026 pricing for a 30TB TLC enterprise SSD at an already princely sum of $10,950, April’s release puts it at an eye-watering $17,500. A year ago, that price was around $3,000. April's update also introduces a QLC line item that wasn't in the January release, putting 30TB QLC drives at $15,121 in Q1 2026, up from $2,450 the previous spring.
In terms of the 16.4x TLC-to-HDD cost multiple VDURA cited back in January, April’s update replaces it with a new 22.6x figure calculated against QLC rather than TLC. Unfortunately, that makes a direct comparison with the January reading impossible without knowing the underlying methodology. VDURA says the index draws on “publicly available market data under a uniform commodity pricing methodology,” but the company hasn’t named its sources or disclosed which channels it surveys.
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According to Chris Mellor of Blocks & Files, which first reported the April update, “VDURA has a commercial interest in mixed-fleet systems, so its claims should be viewed in that context.” The company currently offers to undercut any all-flash config from Vast Data, Weka, or comparable vendors by 50% under a promotion it calls the ‘Flash Relief Program.’
Setting the revision aside, an interesting data point from the April update is VDURA’s claim that enterprise SSD prices climbed by almost 24% in the three weeks between March 4 and March 23. That’s consistent with reports from Kioxia, which has said its entire 2026 NAND production is sold out until 2027, and Phison, whose CEO Pua Khein-Seng has warned that the shortage could extend for a decade. Phison has since begun asking its own customers for shorter or upfront payment terms after its suppliers did the same.
VDURA says it intends to publish quarterly updates to the index.
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Luke James is a freelance writer and journalist. Although his background is in legal, he has a personal interest in all things tech, especially hardware and microelectronics, and anything regulatory.