Skyrocketing price of mechanical hard drives

harleynut97 · Nov 6, 2011

After reading the posts here, and confirming new egg and tiger price increases, I took the plunge and bought a 3 tb WD my book external on sale this weekend at Best Buy for $129.99. I was going to hold off till xmas, but glad I didn't. I think the big boxes have their ad's planned out pretty far in advance so they were probably locked into the old prices. I'm just loving the usb3 capabilities of this drive. It's the first device I have had that used it.

TanyaC · Nov 7, 2011

I bought a WD20EARX for $63 in July. It is now $199, more than triple the price in Melbourne.

I had a WD20EARS fail at the same time, and they replaced it with a WD20EARX without question, which probably wouldn't have happened after the floods.

I notice that SSD drive prices also haven't been moving? Retailer capitalising on the price rises of mechanical drives seeing an opportunity to make some extra $$ or is there another reason why SSDs are not moving price wise?

burtie · Nov 7, 2011

Oh crap...I was going to get a 2TB HDD but seeing the price nearly double I think I will hold off for now. Just going to have to delete some stuff instead....

*click click*

Borg 386 · Nov 7, 2011

Plan now for serious hard drive shortages

If you haven’t noticed yet, there will be a serious issue in the availability of hard drives. This is because of the major flooding that has occurred in Thailand. While this natural disaster is incredibly unfortunate for the people of Thailand, we also will see the supply chain impacted significantly for hard drives and other subcomponents. Some ship dates at one of the largest server and storage brands in the US now list estimated ship dates after March of 2012.

In terms of news, one report puts production offline for the rest of 2011 and a statement from Seagate confirms that supplies will be short of expected demand. I had a chance to check with a few storage companies to get their perspective on this event, and there is a consensus that the impact will be significant. Drew Meyer, senior director of product marketing at NETGEAR told me that they have an inventory to go through the current quarter (Q4) of 2011. However, immediately, pricing for drives has increased as much as 70% in the last two weeks. Sourcing drives independently may become attractive to NETGEAR customers, as the ReadyNAS series of disk product have diskless options that allow the customer to source drives on their own if they choose and can purchase outside of the price fluctuations.

Article:

Plan now for serious hard drive shortages: Tips to reduce risk | TechRepublic

Borg 386 · Nov 10, 2011

Hard-disk shortage hits consumer outlets

The most immediate impact is rising prices and falling inventory of standalone drives, in the wake of the flooding in Thailand where roughly half of the world's drives are made.

"Prices are going up. We're running out of stock and no longer taking back orders," said a sales representative at PC Connection, a major online reseller.

"We have half the stock we used to have," the sales rep added.

A sales representative at CDW, another major reseller, said prices have jumped as much as $100 on some HDDs.

Article:

Hard-disk shortage hits consumer outlets | Nanotech - The Circuits Blog - CNET News

Related:"Plan now for serious hard drive shortages"

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/ne...hortages-tips-to-reduce-risk/4976?tag=nl.e102

fireberd · Nov 10, 2011

I was at the CompUSA store in Tampa, Fl, last Saturday. They had what appeared to be a full stock of hard drives on the allocated shelf space. Prices appeared to be "normal".

smarteyeball · Nov 10, 2011

fireberd said:
I was at the CompUSA store in Tampa, Fl, last Saturday. They had what appeared to be a full stock of hard drives on the allocated shelf space. Prices appeared to be "normal".

Until that stock is sold.

burtie · Nov 11, 2011

I was in Thailand summer just gone, I should have picked some up! Will hopefully be going back next year...get your HDD orders in! lol

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/new...mages-of-flooded-western-digital-factory.aspx

Golden · Nov 11, 2011

Australia as of today : Samsung F3 Spinpoint 500GB went from $55 to $77.

magnetite · Nov 11, 2011

I'm kind of ashamed of myself how I didn't stock up on hard drives before this crisis happened. Doing some projects right now and could use some extra space. Like the average person, usually I just buy another one when I'm running out. I'm not like some people who have a whole case of hard drives for emergencies.

fseal · Nov 11, 2011

Up until now stocking up would have been crazy as prices were plummeting like a rock. I bought a 2 gig drive for $130 not long ago and by the time I acutally used it I could have bought it for $80!

0pTicaL · Nov 11, 2011

I wouldn't fret, for some reason the price of external hdds haven't jumped as crazily as internal hdds.

2TB Hitachi external can be had for $119.99 on Newegg.

linnemeyerhere · Nov 11, 2011

Can't really compare a external drive with a usb 2.0/3.0, 5400 rpm, 8gb cache with a proper sata II/III 7200 rpm / 64gb cache drive.

Lebon14 · Nov 11, 2011

^ Yes, indeed. Access time are much lower that way.

Also, this tragedy is really unfortunate. However, I see a chance for the SSD to shine or at least have more spotlight. We might see a huge price drop for those in the near future.

lehnerus2000 · Nov 11, 2011

Why would they drop the price of SSDs?
They can hold the price and look more competitive.

I agree that dropping the price now, would be better from the long-term perspective (use this opportunity to get more people hooked).
These days short-term profit, trumps long-term returns.

IMO, the price of SSDs won't drop (for many years) they'll just slowly increase the capacity.

Britton30 · Nov 11, 2011

lehnerus2000 said:
IMO, the price of SSDs won't drop (for many years) they'll just slowly increase the capacity.

That statement may go down in history, like:
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
— Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment, in 1977.
In 1975 a TV repairman said he thought the price of VCRs (remember them?) was as low as possible due to the high tech involved and preciseness of manufacturing, etc, etc. They were (on sale) around $1500 at the time.
I had to replace a HDD, 80GB,5400 RPM, at a cost of $189.
Not putting you down at all here, but I see the SSD price per gigabyte falling a lot in the next two years. OEMs will soon be including them as a standard drive, in laptops first then more in desktops, driving demand, supply and tech to make them better and faster.

legacy7955 · Nov 12, 2011

Britton30 said:
lehnerus2000 said:

IMO, the price of SSDs won't drop (for many years) they'll just slowly increase the capacity.

Click to expand...

That statement may go down in history, like:
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
— Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment, in 1977.
In 1975 a TV repairman said he thought the price of VCRs (remember them?) was as low as possible due to the high tech involved and preciseness of manufacturing, etc, etc. They were (on sale) around $1500 at the time.
I had to replace a HDD, 80GB,5400 RPM, at a cost of $189.
Not putting you down at all here, but I see the SSD price per gigabyte falling a lot in the next two years. OEMs will soon be including them as a standard drive, in laptops first then more in desktops, driving demand, supply and tech to make them better and faster.

I totally agree, unless there is collusion involved with manufacturers .

I hope by some miracle that some of the HDD makers might set up shop back in the USA. Considering transportation costs it is starting to make good sense now.

0pTicaL · Nov 12, 2011

linnemeyerhere said:
Can't really compare a external drive with a usb 2.0/3.0, 5400 rpm, 8gb cache with a proper sata II/III 7200 rpm / 64gb cache drive.

Actually the Hitachis I linked (Touro Desk series) are their newest models (5K3000) sporting 5940rpm with 32MB cache.

If you want the 7200rpm versions (7K3000) they are called the Touro Desk Pro series and cost $10 more respectively.

I would buy their external just to use it as internal. At the current prices now it's a steal.

hitachi global storage technologies

Coke Robot · Nov 12, 2011

Ohh...this is painful. A three terabyte hard drive cost 160 dollars in August. It's now almost 300! I think the French say, "Mon dieu!" :eek:

lhorwinkle · Nov 12, 2011

It's not so bad. I saw a drive 30 years ago ... 5 MB for $5000. Just the raw drive. So that's $1000 per MB. (And that was with NO controller and NO host adapter.)

Today's 2 TB drive for $300 ... is just $0.0015 per MB. CHEAP!!!!

Skyrocketing price of mechanical hard drives

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