Skyrocketing price of mechanical hard drives

[Coke Robot]

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!!!!

Well, when you put it that way....

 

[Britton30]

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!"

Or sacrè bleu!

 

[jimbo45]

Hi all
I don't know where you are all doing your shopping

Two weeks ago I was in the UK from a stint in Brussels and at PC world in Croydon (not the most salubrious area of London I'll admit) I found a 3 TB (yes 3 TB) drive for 115 GBP / 130 EUR / 180 USD (approx) I GBP / 1.60 USD.

(remember UNLIKE the US UK price INCLUDES VAT / TAX -- so be careful when comparing US prices as they are invariably shown BEFORE tax is added.

If you get the VAT refund (20% in the UK then these disks are REALLY CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAP).


SEAGATE STAY3000202 External USB 2.0 Hard Drive - 3TB, Black at cheap prices | PC World

Note PC world isn't the cheapest place either but I wanted the drive immediately !!.

Seems fine for me -- 3TB cheap enough.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[lehnerus2000]

Gouging

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.

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

Didn't IBM say something similar?

VCRs remained expensive for many years.

Remember CRT TVs?
For a long time they were expensive.
For reasons unknown to me (Asian competition?) the price dropped to dirt cheap.

Suddenly flat CRTs came out and they were ridiculously expensive.
The price never dropped down to dirt cheap, because Flat Screens (LCD & Plasma) were introduced.

When Flat Screens came out they were hellishly expensive.
The price dropped to affordable.
The price hasn't dropped to dirt cheap, because the manufacturers are all pushing 3D TVs now, which are hellishly expensive again.

I expect that the cost ($/GB) will drop, but the "bottom line" price will remain stable (~$100).
That is to say that they will cost ~$100, but the capacity will increase.

Prices have barely moved on SSDs in the last 18 months.
Most other complex consumer products (Blu-ray Players, HDDs, Laptops, PCs, Monitors, etc.) have had large price drops.

Conclusion: we are being gouged on SSD prices.

February 2010
HDD (2 TB)
$225
$0.11/GB
SSD (64 GB)
$149
$2.33/GB

August 2011 (before the price surge)
HDD (2 TB)
$89 (-60.4%)
$0.04/GB
SSD (64 GB)
$105 (-29.5%)
$1.64/GB

It's always possible that some new manufacturing technique will dramatically slash the cost.
However if that happens, I expect that it will be used to increase the profit margin instead.

Windows 7 has been out for 2 years and yet it is still $400 for Ultimate.

Cartels provide a lot of our "essential" consumer products/services now.
IMO, they set a "bottom line" price and only compete above that.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi all
Actually Flat screen TV's - even the expensive back lit one's are less than HALF PRICE that they were a year or so ago.

I suppose it all depends on what you regard as "Dirt Cheap" and affordable.

Again you have to include inflation etc.

This is where we start getting into dangerous areas like Politics -- however it seems that for once Consumer is king -- people aren't being quite so free with their "flexible friends" - aka Credit cards so there is a lot of wriggle room on prices.

Some of the prices I've seen quoted on this thread leads me to consider that however good technically in I.T some people are they definitely need some sort of course on how to source cheaper suppliers and shop more wisely.

It's tough also for those not working, on Social Security or poor pensions -- but in reality it's always been tough for that group -- the difference this time is that there are a lot more unemployed and unfortunately the biggest group are the under 25's - in Spain for example in that group are a horrific 19% !! - whilst Greece, Italy and Portugal are going to have to endure YEARS of restraint and low growth.

Europe is a BIG market for the US too so failure in Europe affects US citizens as well.

The EURO was a failed experiment (Not the Free Market part of the EU - the original "Common Market" idea which is still a great success)) for which ALL of us except a few big banks and their CEO's are paying.

The Chickens are finally coming home to roost - in combination of disastrous OFF SHORING everything and relying on single supply chains far away from the consumers and abandoning major manufacturing it's lucky the whole economic system hasn't ground to a halt already.

However if you ARE in a position to take advantage of this mess there are some GREAT bargains around.

The History of the US shows it's a resilient country and I'm sure it will re-start its economy sooner rather than later -- just remember how Microsoft and Apple started.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[smarteyeball]

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

On 5th of OCT, I grabbed two Samsung F3 Spinpoint I TB's for $59 each.

$139 today.

I also grabbed A Samsung Story USB 3.0 2TB for $109 - that's now $199.


With hindsight comes a desire to kick ones self for not buying more.

Thank you hindsight

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.

I think you'll find a lot of us are like that at the moment

 

[Coke Robot]

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!"

or sacrè bleu!

haha!

 

[0pTicaL]

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

On 5th of OCT, I grabbed two Samsung F3 Spinpoint I TB's for $59 each.

$139 today.

I also grabbed A Samsung Story USB 3.0 2TB for $109 - that's now $199.


With hindsight comes a desire to kick ones self for not buying more.

Thank you hindsight

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.

I think you'll find a lot of us are like that at the moment

Hitachi's external HDDs are still at pre-flood prices. Just buy the external, take the HDD out and use it as a internal HDD. They are also the fastest drives on the market atm.

 

[seekermeister]

There is nothing cheap about the price of hard drives. I checked just a couple of weeks ago for a WDC 3TB internal SATA, and the lowest price was only $120 shipped. I couldn't afford it at the time, but I just checked again, and the cheapest for the same drive was $239 shipped.

 

[Britton30]

Didn't IBM say something similar?

Windows 7 has been out for 2 years and yet it is still $400 for Ultimate.

Yeah, IBM did, can't recall. Windows XP Pro OEM version was $149 until they ran out at Newegg. I just ordered a SSD which had went up $5 a few days before my order.

 

[seekermeister]

Didn't IBM say something similar?

Windows 7 has been out for 2 years and yet it is still $400 for Ultimate.

Yeah, IBM did, can't recall. Windows XP Pro OEM version was $149 until they ran out at Newegg. I just ordered a SSD which had went up $5 a few days before my order.

It's still only $139.99 at TigerDirect. I only paid $99 for W7 Pro Upgrade on prerelease, then later $165 for the same thing, except it was the Retail version. I notice that the TD price for the Upgrade version is now $199.99.

 

[bishop101]

I bought a WD Caviar black 1tb at my local PC shop 2 months ago for $80.00 before tax, now it's up to $179.00 before tax for the same drive.

 

[seekermeister]

The solution to rising prices for me, is to wait until they fall. Fortunately, I have extra hard drives. I just have to spread my files around a bit more than I would like to.

 

[badger906]

according to something i read online the prices apparently wont start to come down until q2-q3 of next year.

 

[PwnFrnzy]

That's going to be a very painful wait since I've been wanting to add an extra hard drive or two.

 

[bishop101]

Can someone explain why SSD prices have not gone up and are not affected? I assume it's because SSD's are not manufactured in Thailand perhaps? And they don't use the same components.

 

[badger906]

SSD's don't contain rare earth elements such as neodenium magnets.

They probably contain trace elements of gold and silver, but all circuit boards tend to.

 

[legacy7955]

I'm certainly curious where do the major manufacturers have their plants that make the SSDs? Anyone know the answer to this ?

 

[badger906]

It might be more the case that stockist have large quantities of SSDs as the initial high price is off putting to the average consumer as it is.

I mean nobody with a computer needs an SSD, its just nice to have the speed. I for one am considering buying a second, as I've only around 60gb remaining, which I will soon fill

 

[lehnerus2000]

Didn't IBM say something similar?

Windows 7 has been out for 2 years and yet it is still $400 for Ultimate.

Yeah, IBM did, can't recall. Windows XP Pro OEM version was $149 until they ran out at Newegg. I just ordered a SSD which had went up $5 a few days before my order.

It's still only $139.99 at TigerDirect. I only paid $99 for W7 Pro Upgrade on prerelease, then later $165 for the same thing, except it was the Retail version. I notice that the TD price for the Upgrade version is now $199.99.

I should have been more specific.
I meant the boxed retail version.

Also it wasn't from a computer specialist store, it was a couple of large consumer electronics chains.