Source: Blocks & Files on April 8, 2026. Written by Chris Mellor.
VDURA says its Flash Volatility Index shows that, by Q1 2026, 30 TB QLC SSD capacity cost 22.6 times as much as equivalent 30 TB HDD capacity.
The Flash Volatility Index provides a view of SSD pricing. VDURA says it tracks “how flash media volatility translates into real-world cost exposure and how that compares to the current HDD market. The accompanying Storage Economics Optimizer Tool allows organizations to model total system cost across different storage architectures, performance targets, and media mixes, giving infrastructure teams a way to evaluate trade-offs before committing capital.”
There has been a sustained period of rising SSD prices. Pricing for 30 TB TLC enterprise SSDs increased by 472 percent between Q2 2025 and Q1 2026, rising from $3,062 to $17,500.
Over the same period, 30 TB QLC SSD pricing increased from $2,450 to $15,121. Analysis shows that the cost multiple between 30 TB QLC SSDs and 30 TB HDDs expanded from 4.9x in Q2 2025 to 22.6x in Q1 2026.
SSD prices have continued to rise steeply, increasing by almost 24 percent in the three weeks between March 4 and March 23, 2026.
VDURA suggests this sustained SSD price ramp is “fundamentally reshaping the economics of flash-based storage.”
Using its Storage Economics Optimizer Tool, VDURA analyzed the cost impact of flash pricing changes across common storage architectures for a 25 PB deployment delivering 1,000 GB/s of sustained performance. At Q2 2025 pricing, an all-flash architecture carried a three-year cost of $9.69 million. By Q2 2026, that same configuration increased to $48.17 million, a 397 percent increase driven primarily by flash media pricing.
A mixed-fleet architecture (HDD+SSD) delivering the same performance results in a total three-year cost of $11.37 million, “maintaining throughput while significantly reducing exposure to flash price volatility.”
VDURA has a commercial interest in mixed-fleet systems, so its claims should be viewed in that context.
Erik Salo, SVP of Product and Operations at VDURA, said: “Mixed-fleet architectures, which separate performance from capacity within a single namespace and intelligently tier data across flash and HDD, experienced significantly lower cost escalation. This shows how greater architectural flexibility can reduce exposure to flash pricing shifts without compromising performance.”
The Flash Volatility Index and Storage Economics Optimizer Tool are available here. There is supporting technical analysis detailing SSD pricing trends and architectural cost impacts. VDURA will publish quarterly updates to reflect evolving market conditions.