Skyrocketing price of mechanical hard drives

My Notebook's 2.5" picked a REALLY crappy time to start dying on me... had to buy the only one Amazon is selling at a steep $134.99 (they of COURSE did not have any of the 320GB ones left... only 500GB, 250GB, and 160GB). I waited two days to confirm it was the HDD... I have at least 8 different indicators so had to do it. PXE "Operating System Not Found" Media Test Failure (IDE0 HDD not recognized in BIOS), Event 51 Disk and Event 57 NTFS errors (when it finally DID let me in), along with intermittent spinup failures, mini-freezes (ghosted shortcuts when moved), snap-ticking noises with the system in idle and etc. (oddly the drive keeps passing error checks left and right, must be a fluke there) SUCK! SUCK! SUCK! ROYALLY SUCK!

By the way, this HDD used to cost only $67 - $80 back in May 2011!

And the kicker is... it could still be my MOBO's controller going out (though it's not likely given the symptoms with the new snap-ticking). No way to tell unless a new one is plugged in and booted. And I of course only have two 3.5" external HDD's that can't be used to test that because they just HAD to make Notebook HDD's 2.5". Like 1" less makes all the difference...

I guess it's a small blessing that Amazon offers a 30-day "no questions asked" return policy on these things, unlike everywhere else. So at least my @$$ is covered there. No tax and free S&H too. Bonus.

But still:

EvilOzzmess said:

My Notebook's 2.5" picked a REALLY crappy time to start dying on me... had to buy the only one Amazon is selling at a steep $134.99 (they of COURSE did not have any of the 320GB ones left... only 500GB, 250GB, and 160GB). I waited two days to confirm it was the HDD... I have at least 8 different indicators so had to do it. PXE "Operating System Not Found" Media Test Failure (IDE0 HDD not recognized in BIOS), Event 51 Disk and Event 57 NTFS errors (when it finally DID let me in), along with intermittent spinup failures, mini-freezes (ghosted shortcuts when moved), snap-ticking noises with the system in idle and etc. (oddly the drive keeps passing error checks left and right, must be a fluke there) SUCK! SUCK! SUCK! ROYALLY SUCK!

By the way, this HDD used to cost only $67 - $80 back in May 2011!

And the kicker is... it could still be my MOBO's controller going out (though it's not likely given the symptoms with the new snap-ticking). No way to tell unless a new one is plugged in and booted. And I of course only have two 3.5" external HDD's that can't be used to test that because they just HAD to make Notebook HDD's 2.5". Like 1" less makes all the difference...

I guess it's a small blessing that Amazon offers a 30-day "no questions asked" return policy on these things, unlike everywhere else. So at least my @$$ is covered there. No tax and free S&H too. Bonus.

But still:

Buy a external drive, take it out of the enclosure and put it in your laptop. Money saved.

Western Digital My Passport Essential 320GB - $59.99

0pTicaL said:

EvilOzzmess said:

My Notebook's 2.5" picked a REALLY crappy time to start dying on me... had to buy the only one Amazon is selling at a steep $134.99 (they of COURSE did not have any of the 320GB ones left... only 500GB, 250GB, and 160GB). I waited two days to confirm it was the HDD... I have at least 8 different indicators so had to do it. PXE "Operating System Not Found" Media Test Failure (IDE0 HDD not recognized in BIOS), Event 51 Disk and Event 57 NTFS errors (when it finally DID let me in), along with intermittent spinup failures, mini-freezes (ghosted shortcuts when moved), snap-ticking noises with the system in idle and etc. (oddly the drive keeps passing error checks left and right, must be a fluke there) SUCK! SUCK! SUCK! ROYALLY SUCK!

By the way, this HDD used to cost only $67 - $80 back in May 2011!

And the kicker is... it could still be my MOBO's controller going out (though it's not likely given the symptoms with the new snap-ticking). No way to tell unless a new one is plugged in and booted. And I of course only have two 3.5" external HDD's that can't be used to test that because they just HAD to make Notebook HDD's 2.5". Like 1" less makes all the difference...

I guess it's a small blessing that Amazon offers a 30-day "no questions asked" return policy on these things, unlike everywhere else. So at least my @$$ is covered there. No tax and free S&H too. Bonus.

But still:

Buy a external drive, take it out of the enclosure and put it in your laptop. Money saved.

Western Digital My Passport Essential 320GB - $59.99

LOL

I have one of those and never thought of what it cost versus a bare drive. And to top it off, I got it cheaper than usual since I bought a re-certified unit that had been returned to WD for some reason. Mine works perfectly every time.

The recent price hike is mostly due to the flooding in Thailand where even industrial parks have been inundated and production stopped. Apparently 15% of all hard drives are manufactured there.

FranzB said:

The recent price hike is mostly due to the flooding in Thailand where even industrial parks have been inundated and production stopped. Apparently 15% of all hard drives are manufactured there.

Apparently, you have old data. That's already been discussed here and the number is closer to 70+%. A 15% loss in manufacturing wouldn't have such a large impact on the market as we're seeing now.

Those are recent data from the Bangkok Post.

My 1.5 TB storage drive just died last week, do you guys know when is it expected for the prices to go down a bit?