Skyrocketing price of mechanical hard drives

[dreamer]

Wow just came back from premier computer & accessories market.The prices of HDD have nearly doubled.Glad i purchased 500 GB external HDD six months ago.

 

[AugustusCaesar]

Nearly doubled?!?
A 1tb disk here in the north east of England has risen from £43 to a whopping £99. And I was about too build a server at home using two of these for a business I am starting up. Think I'll wait a while... a good while by the looks...

 

[maxseven]

For someone in dire need of a medium sized internal drive, this might help, until the prices go back down:

Seagate ST31500541AS 1.5TB Hard Drive - 5900RPM, 32MB Cache, SATA-3G at TigerDirect.com

Thanks sm for the tip on this drive. Mine was $85 shipped, not bad at all. And the drive is fine for my purpose (WHS2011). Made in China btw.

Funny thing about the packaging--TigerDirect shipped it in a big box, but with just a little paper thrown-in it and not even wrapped around the retail package (one of those awful plastic things that can't be taken-apart without completely destroying it). But the drive is quiet and hopefully it will last.

Thanks again.

 

[FranzB]

George Orwell's 1984, the politician's how-to guide.

Wasn't that the book that Amazon obliterated from people's e-books?

Really? Why would they do that? e-Books seem so handy....... to edit. No need to
tear out a few pages, then reprint and distribute them by the thousands.
I'll have to have a look whether Orwell also foresaw that trick. He probably did.

 

[linnemeyerhere]

Does anyone see as production is upped in other un-effected HDD production areas and when the water damage is corrected a glut of production producing a huge fall in hard drive costs? To me this seems logical effect down the road !

 

[FranzB]

Does anyone see as production is upped in other un-effected HDD production areas and when the water damage is corrected a glut of production producing a huge fall in hard drive costs? To me this seems logical effect down the road !

That would only be possible if some production lines would run below capacity and could be turned up in a few days. If that would be true they would have already increased production some time ago. Installing new facilities would be too much of a risk (certainly in view of the higher price now obtained with existing facilities and the drop in price once the other - damaged - facilities are running again) and it would take too much time, imo. But you can only make an educated guess if you are right in the middle of it; everything else is speculation.

 

[Maguscreed]

To me the surest sign that mechanicals will fall drastically in price at least once more if not twice more is the constant improvement in the ssd department. Both price and performance are skyrocketing.
People will likely continue to lean on mechanicals for large storage at least for the time being though.

 

[metalmania31]

Few months ago I bought 1 TB hdd for about $90 and I last saw on Newegg it was $209 now. Holy Crap! Glad I bought it then.

 

[badger906]

they are starting to fall somewhat. 1tb drives on ebuyer.com are below £100 now, and some around £89 mark.

 

[Maguscreed]

they are starting to fall somewhat. 1tb drives on ebuyer.com are below £100 now, and some around £89 mark.

Well while they have a legitimate reason for the price hike.
I think it's in their best interest to trim it down to the absolute minimum hike in order to move inventory through the holidays here.
This is the worst time of year this could have possibly happened.

I myself actually wound up upgrading to my first ssd on my new build instead of buying a large additional mechanical for storage because it was cheaper.

 

[badger906]

yeah i already have a couple of SSD's, but im getting to the stage where i need a) another SSD in my gaming rig b) another hard drive period as im running out of space plus my server could benifit from some larger drives instead of multiple smaller ones.

 

[Maguscreed]

yeah i already have a couple of SSD's, but im getting to the stage where i need a) another SSD in my gaming rig b) another hard drive period as im running out of space plus my server could benifit from some larger drives instead of multiple smaller ones.

Believe me I feel your pain. My 2 large external storage devices are nearing full and once I cap them off I will likely have to start playing favorites with what I want to keep. Fortunately I use steam so I can save myself about 500 gigs just deleting all the steam games I don't play anymore... can always re-dl them later.

 

[lehnerus2000]

July 2009

George Orwell's 1984, the politician's how-to guide.

Wasn't that the book that Amazon obliterated from people's e-books?

Really? Why would they do that? e-Books seem so handy....... to edit. No need to
tear out a few pages, then reprint and distribute them by the thousands.
I'll have to have a look whether Orwell also foresaw that trick. He probably did.

Here's a couple of links:

Amazon recalls (and embodies) Orwell's '1984' | Beyond Binary - CNET News

Amazon vanishes 1984 from citizen Kindles ? The Register

 

[FranzB]

George Orwell's 1984, the politician's how-to guide.

Wasn't that the book that Amazon obliterated from people's e-books?

Really? Why would they do that? e-Books seem so handy....... to edit. No need to
tear out a few pages, then reprint and distribute them by the thousands.
I'll have to have a look whether Orwell also foresaw that trick. He probably did.

Here's a couple of links:

Amazon recalls (and embodies) Orwell's '1984' | Beyond Binary - CNET News

Amazon vanishes 1984 from citizen Kindles ? The Register

Thanks for the links. Interesting but no comments; we are off topic as is.
Maybe this: all Big Brothers trip over their own big feet sooner or later.

 

[MilesAhead]

yeah i already have a couple of SSD's, but im getting to the stage where i need a) another SSD in my gaming rig b) another hard drive period as im running out of space plus my server could benifit from some larger drives instead of multiple smaller ones.

Believe me I feel your pain. My 2 large external storage devices are nearing full and once I cap them off I will likely have to start playing favorites with what I want to keep. Fortunately I use steam so I can save myself about 500 gigs just deleting all the steam games I don't play anymore... can always re-dl them later.

I just noticed some WD caviar black 6 Gb/s drives becoming available again. The prices seem to be dropping from triple what I paid last time I bought one, to double. I hope it's an omen that the gouging is starting to disintegrate.

 

[Maguscreed]

yeah I'm seeing 500gigs for about what I paid for my last 1tb.
It's easing down a little bit. I think in part the massive price hike was the industry taking advantage of a situation through the holidays.

 

[mjf]

Last 1TB Seagate (? 6months ago) I paid AUD$55. The cheapest price that I can find locally now is AUD$99.
AUD$1 = US$1.03

It may be both manufacturer and retailer keeping prices high.

 

[Maguscreed]

Well there is some shortage it's not completely imaginary.

 

[brianzion]

hi all
its not so bad here in the united kingdom i bought a seagate expansion 1TB last week for a client for £50 but i must say the internal discs seem to be increasing a little £58.36 oct 2010 £78.12 - £99.98 jan 2012

 

[carwiz]

I'm glad you guys are buying up all the old and referb drives. I was just looking at a WD-Black 1TB drive last night. I refuse to pay $240 for a drive that was selling six months ago for $90 or less. The "Egg" even has the gall to post: Was $249.99. Why don't they indicate what it really was--Was $89.99.

I'll just throw on another 500GB drive I have in my stash if I need to. I'll make do with what I have before wasting money. Besides, I'm saving up for hardware that's just around the corner.