Based on this topic (and continuing this topic), my question once again surfaced:

And what was the layout of the prime cost of early 8 and 5.25 inch hard drives? From Seagate and competing manufacturers? BOM Cost and retail margins (including relationships with dealer networks), R&D costs and financial burden ...

HDD prices in the early 1980s were high - even when compared to floppy drives. And the effect of serial production / production scale for such "mechanical" devices is not so noticeable in comparison with chips.

It would be especially interesting to read academic or at least amateur studies on the topic - but my google-fu does not yet give adequate results.

Based on this topic (and continuing this topic), my question once again surfaced:

And what was the layout of the prime cost of early 8 and 5.25 inch hard drives? From Seagate and competing manufacturers? BOM Cost and retail margins (including relationships with dealer networks), R&D costs and financial burden ...

HDD prices in the early 1980s were high - even when compared to floppy drives. And the effect of serial production / production scale for such "mechanical" devices is not so noticeable in comparison with chips.

It would be especially interesting to read academic or at least amateur studies on the topic - but my google-fu does not yet give adequate results.