For many years I had been advocating for Linux distros to optimize for lower spec machines as their life times got extended. Best case, you head off potential hardware end of life, worst case you allow newer hardware to run more effciebtly. The latest shortage I didnt see coming, but it would have helped out regardless. Keeping old hardware going is vital nowadays, need to end the mind set of disposable goods.
Old 2nd hand enterprise drives on ebay have seen pretty modest increases.
Actually just went through my purchase history and its even lower than I thought. 37% inc versus May '25.
Pretty niche crowd that is down for building a NAS out of drives that have had long lives already. Basically only people with grasp on zfs redundancy & willingness to accept the risk of SSDs with heavy use but enterprise endurance.
Might even bring back some value to those _westerners_ who are still hooked into the nostalgic scene -- have you made a trip to Akihabara district lately?