Read a rumor once that the tsunami in the Thailand that "knocked out" HDD factories several years was used as cover to buy up large amounts.

Did non-HDD factories in Thailand experience a similar price increase after the tsunamis? (I don't know the answer -- I'm just curious)

Now, think that the data is immutable, doesn't necessarily have to be in a hard disk. Could be in tape.

Backup tapes have significant capacity and are cheaper than hard drives.

Yes, but why backup the internet if you can't process the data afterwards without waiting for ages for the results.

You mean if stored on 4TB HDD... but they could easily cut that 250 million in half by using 8TB drives.

8TB HDD were manufactured only since 2014.

not sure when they came out but pretty sure that you could get 8TB SSDs before that

Buying 100 mil. 8TB SSDs when SSD market is even smaller than HDD market would be not possible without everyone noticing. That's entire year (2015) of total SSD units production. 8TB drives would be at the time a tiny fraction of the total.

I think that you underestimate the US Government... they are not a regular consumer...

Who says that it isn't?

US defense spending built most of the technology industry. That activity didn't stop.

No need to store all the data.

One can probably leave out all the torrents, youtube and netflix videos that fly across the internet. Stick to text of emails, calls and chats only. Suddenly you only need a few thousand drives.

Even if you do need that data, you can probably dedupe the large sites fairly easily. Save one copy, then just record the ID of the video watched/downloaded.

He's talking out of his ass. Remember, Binney hasn't worked at the NSA since 2001. Where do you think he gets these numbers?

Compression may help a lot though in such use case