HDD prices rising

It seems the usual box-stores that sell way over priced non-OEM drives, are the place to grab some HDD goodness, while the goodness may be had. These pretend computer stores just give a set mark-up and stick with it. So funny as it is, yesterdays overpriced non-OEM shelf boxed drives are todays bargain. Go grab 1 or 2 or 5 if you have the need. Quickly.
 
techie81 said:
I bit on a 2TB minimus external Lacie dive today from BB for $99. I just didnt want to risk going a year with the prices being sky high.

Btw does anyone know what kind of drive is inside this?
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I was able to get 9x 2TB external LaCie drives. All had Seagate greens inside so far.
 
Origin_Unknown said:
2+ years do get back to the same prices as before the flood?? :eek:
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Right after this happened, I said I would be happy if we get to see sub $100 3TB drives on black friday NEXT year. :mad:

Pre-flood, we were on track to hit the $100 mark on a 3tb this BF. I was sure we would have gotten some retailers to hit that. LOL... no chance now.
 
hardwarephreak said:
An whoever said Seagate doesn't have plants in Thailand, I can turn around and see several 20packs of Seagate drives that say "Made in Thailand" on them.
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With such a major event happening on the other side of the world, it's easy to understand some TV news report getting the facts WRONG.

Bottom line, I guess, is hard drive prices will be high until at least Q3 2012.
 
hardwarephreak said:
An whoever said Seagate doesn't have plants in Thailand, I can turn around and see several 20packs of Seagate drives that say "Made in Thailand" on them.
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Just curious what size are they? 1TB+? I noticed one of my Maxtor 500GB drives was made in Thailand but also on the bottom it says manufactured by Seagate so it's after they got bought out.

So far the Seagate drives I've gotten recently have been made in China.
 
I just built a 4x3TB Raid-5 array on a QNAP TS-439PII+ NAS, and the drives cost a total of $436. For 12TB.

4xWesternDigital 3TB USB3 External Drives. Bought for $109 each. Disassembled. Out comes a 3TB Western Digital green drive that sells on NewEgg right now for $259. Amazon is also selling it for $249.

Deals are still out there. I got those at Costco. The drive that comes out of them is the WD30EZRX.
 
The only problem with that plan is you no longer have any warranty when the drives die. You'll end up paying a lot more for replacement drives.
 
nullvector said:
I just built a 4x3TB Raid-5 array on a QNAP TS-439PII+ NAS, and the drives cost a total of $436. For 12TB.

4xWesternDigital 3TB USB3 External Drives. Bought for $109 each. Disassembled. Out comes a 3TB Western Digital green drive that sells on NewEgg right now for $259. Amazon is also selling it for $249.

Deals are still out there. I got those at Costco. The drive that comes out of them is the WD30EZRX.
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How does warranty work on those, could you send them in directly or would you need to repackage them in the external case? And since youve opened the case would that void the warranty?
 
For fun I've been looking at ebay, seems there are still some half decent deals. I'm debating on if I need to join the panic bandwagon and stock up, or just make due with what I have now. Unless I get a bunch of failures, I'm good for a few years. Then again even if I do get failures, I should still be able to RMA and not pay anything but shiping right?
 
Do we know how this is impacting SSD?
I saw prices shoot up in the last week or so but not sure if that is just because the Holidays are here.
 
Red Squirrel said:
For fun I've been looking at ebay, seems there are still some half decent deals. I'm debating on if I need to join the panic bandwagon and stock up, or just make due with what I have now. Unless I get a bunch of failures, I'm good for a few years. Then again even if I do get failures, I should still be able to RMA and not pay anything but shiping right?
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Right, assuming they have the drives in stock to replace your with. Even when there are not shortages, they may not have the drive to replace yours in stock and you have to wait.
 
mattchapman said:
Do we know how this is impacting SSD?
I saw prices shoot up in the last week or so but not sure if that is just because the Holidays are here.
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I would think it'll remain stable at best. Chances are it'll start creeping up. Higher HDD prices makes SSD more attractive. So more people will end up buying SSD, even people who never considered it pre-flood. I remember reading that they can't produce enough SSD as is, definitely not enough to cover the HDD shortage. So demand goes up while supply remains (relatively) constant. Prices will end up reflecting that.
 
halcyon said:
How does warranty work on those, could you send them in directly or would you need to repackage them in the external case? And since youve opened the case would that void the warranty?
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Since the drives are the same model number of those you buy OEM/Retail from newegg/amazon, I think WD would take care of you during the 1yr warranty. The manufacture date of the drive is May 2011...pretty much proves when you bought it.

If one failed, I'm sure Costco would take it back...I didn't break the case when opening it, just slid it apart and unscrewed the disk. If one failed, I'd just put it back in the enclosure, back in the box, and tell them the drive is not working.
 
nullvector said:
If one failed, I'm sure Costco would take it back...I didn't break the case when opening it, just slid it apart and unscrewed the disk. If one failed, I'd just put it back in the enclosure, back in the box, and tell them the drive is not working.
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I think I would be more worried about not being able to easily get a replacement. I'm sure costco will accept the return but if they no longer carry that product (which would seem very likely as time passes) you won't be able to get another replacement. If you're using them for data, you may end up paying even higher prices for another new drive if that happens.
 
Zerosum said:
I think I would be more worried about not being able to easily get a replacement. I'm sure costco will accept the return but if they no longer carry that product (which would seem very likely as time passes) you won't be able to get another replacement. If you're using them for data, you may end up paying even higher prices for another new drive if that happens.
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That's why you buy more than you need and put 4/5 of them in a Raid-5 array to maintain data integrity with a drive failure.

Most likely if/when I would need a replacement at all, we'll be at higher capacities anyway....and all this price fuss will be over.
 
csshih said:
best buy now has the 1tb barracudas for 55$ :eek:

C
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Damn, I would be all over that. The thought of being able to just drive somewhere in town and buy a hard drive or any other computer part would be awesome. Especially at that price . Even pre flood, that's a good price.
 
nullvector said:
Since the drives are the same model number of those you buy OEM/Retail from newegg/amazon, I think WD would take care of you during the 1yr warranty. The manufacture date of the drive is May 2011...pretty much proves when you bought it.

If one failed, I'm sure Costco would take it back...I didn't break the case when opening it, just slid it apart and unscrewed the disk. If one failed, I'd just put it back in the enclosure, back in the box, and tell them the drive is not working.
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I broke the case a little on mine extracting it. But it was buy a 2TB internal at Best Buy for $100 or a 3TB with (possibly) no warranty for $129. I'll take the 1TB of extra space and no warranty.

Honestly, I've never lost a HDD (yeah, that's asking for trouble).

Still, what value is a hard drive warranty, really? Imagine I got a warranty on a 500GB HDD 2 years ago. What's that really worth today (ok, after the shortage). $40-$50?

Warranties are nice, but not really worth a premium. I don't buy the extended warranty on anything, and IMO the same applies here.

All I did was run it for a day or two on USB to make sure that is wasn't DOA before pulling it out of the enclosure.
 
WD Customer Loyalty Program

The Customer Loyalty Program is currently suspended until further notice. We apologize for any inconvenience.
 
GreenMonkey said:
I broke the case a little on mine extracting it. But it was buy a 2TB internal at Best Buy for $100 or a 3TB with (possibly) no warranty for $129. I'll take the 1TB of extra space and no warranty.

Honestly, I've never lost a HDD (yeah, that's asking for trouble).

Still, what value is a hard drive warranty, really? Imagine I got a warranty on a 500GB HDD 2 years ago. What's that really worth today (ok, after the shortage). $40-$50?

Warranties are nice, but not really worth a premium. I don't buy the extended warranty on anything, and IMO the same applies here.

All I did was run it for a day or two on USB to make sure that is wasn't DOA before pulling it out of the enclosure.
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I'll take my 3-5 year HD warranty any day. I've sent quite a few back and would have lost quite a bit of money if I had to purchase new drives to replace them.

Also, if you send a 500GB drive back they would probably send you back a 1TB drive in return these days.
 
i just noticed today building my new desktop, the prices have almost tripled. :( damn you mother nature.
 
danman said:
I'll take my 3-5 year HD warranty any day. I've sent quite a few back and would have lost quite a bit of money if I had to purchase new drives to replace them.

Also, if you send a 500GB drive back they would probably send you back a 1TB drive in return these days.
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I sent a 500GB WD Blue back a while ago and they sent me a 500GB Black as a replacement.
 
nullvector said:
That's why you buy more than you need and put 4/5 of them in a Raid-5 array to maintain data integrity with a drive failure.

Most likely if/when I would need a replacement at all, we'll be at higher capacities anyway....and all this price fuss will be over.
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I'm thinking about doing just that. Do external hard drives have a warranty void if remove sticker you have to break to open the case like power supplies do?

I've never done Raid before and my motherboard doesn't have it onboard. Can anyone give me a suggestion on a fairly cheap but decent Raid card?

If I were to do Raid 5 and move it to another computer when I upgrade will it all work with a different Raid card.... say one onboard the motherboard coming from a PCI card?
 
Is it sold as an external hard drive or an external enclosure with a hard drive?
 
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...le-bracing-for-worst-in-thai-floods-tech.html

Seagate CEO said:
Still, Seagate Chief Executive Officer Stephen J. Luczo is forecasting difficult times for the drive industry. Each of the hundreds of thousands of drives Seagate’s Thai factories ship every day contain parts from 130 or so suppliers, many still under three feet of water. The projections by some Wall Street analysts that production will be back to pre-flood levels by summer are nonsense, Luczo says.
“This is going to take a lot longer than people are assuming, until the end of 2012 at least,” he says. “And by then, demand will have gone up.”
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As if he isn't trying to scare every one to go out and buy up drives now. I can't seriously see this going on for a whole year, they ought to have things back to normal by the Q3 2012 at the latest, otherwise the drive industry is going to implode.
 
ashman said:
As if he isn't trying to scare every one to go out and buy up drives now. I can't seriously see this going on for a whole year, they ought to have things back to normal by the Q3 2012 at the latest, otherwise the drive industry is going to implode.
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And you're basing that on what, exactly? Information that the CEO of one of the major hard drive manufacturers doesn't have? If he was really trying to screw with people, he'd convince them not to buy drives now, so Seagate could keep a stockpile around to sell when prices go even higher in a couple of months. You never want to be the first guy to run out of stock.
 
Could have sworn a year+ ago I got a WD Black 1TB internal drive for 105$ at best buy. It's $219.99 on newegg now! Wow!
 
My order from Newegg two months ago:
9/15/2011: 2x 3TB 5400RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s hitachi desktar drives at 109 each ($219.98 total)
Today's prices: 2x drives at 259.99 each, 519.98 for two...:eek:

On a side note, best buy has the 3TB goflexdesk external seagates for 159, as does amazon, limit 1. I plan on getting 3 from BB/1 from Amazon for a 4 disk raidz1, 9TB should be enough additional space for me till prices come down again next year. I have read they are 7200 rpm drives, but have not cracked one open yet to confirm.
 
Wow! I didn't realize how much the prices went up! And I just got 2 x 3TB Seagates for $111 each... now, it's like double hte price.

Good luck, guys! Hope no one is in need of storage any time soon :eek:
 
This really is typical :( just before the price rise I ordered 10x 2TB drives, got ripped off and refunded.
Soon as I was refunded the prices started jumping!

I now have zero storage free space lol
 
maxm said:
Do you know which Seagate model# drive is in the Lacie Minimus 2tb?
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The ones I got were LaCie "hard disk - design by Neil Poulton", whoever he is.

ST2000DL001-9VT156 and ST2000DL003-9VT166 in the two I've added to RAID so far.
 
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