@woe2you @jakesmolka @rachel Yeah… you know how the DRAM and NAND markets have been (violently) reshaped by datacenters? HDDs have too.
QLC flash had been price competitive with HDDs on a total cost of ownership basis for a lot of applications for a couple years prior to *gestures around*. 6-10 TB HDDs haven't really made sense in volume – what's the market? – but hey.
Now, add a supply crunch. As QLC goes up, it shifts the bulk purchasing calculations and thus the HDD manufacturing plans. HDDs are sellable even at higher prices, especially if you can pack 28 TB into the same power/heat/size envelope.
My solution is tiering. I run a mix of TLC, QLC, HDD, and LTO-8, letting me add capacity over a wide a range of IOPS and $/TB. This is getting increasingly impractical at small scale, and IMO there just isn't a great answer for homelab capacities in the 10-40 TB range.