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0.5-1TB SSDs are cheap now. The only HDDs being bought are really big drives.

2TB drives are often cheaper (per TB) than 1TB drives these days.

That’s still true, but few people need more than 1TB, and those who really do, tend to need more than just 2.

In my case i just buy used HDDs from the local PC repair shop for pennies, and use them for my long term storage and offsite backups. Shops usually swap people's HDDs out for SSDs to speed up their PC, so they have a ton of ~1tb ones to sell for cheap. I doubt people like myself are impacting the market for HDDs though.

Cost cutting measures by hyperscalers in response to non-zero interest rates.

Essentially this; drive manufacturers' financial reports are a good source of data here.

For example, WD's Q2 financial report [1] shows:

Q1 2023 Cloud Revenue: $1,829M

Q2 2023 Cloud Revenue: $1,224M (down 33%)

Q1 2023 Customer Revenue: $679M

Q2 2023 Customer Revenue: $794M (up 17%)

[1] https://investor.wdc.com/static-files/5c73f7fb-869a-4850-bd2...