HDD Prices

X

xTrident

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 20, 2011
Messages
385
Quick question. Did something happen from a year ago that has driven up HDD prices, not just a little bit but over 200%?

I'm not saying the HDD I got a year ago I didn't get via an online deal, but what I got for $99 a year on Newegg, now costs $249. I would have assumed it would drop in price being technology a year older, that isn't a SSD.

It's a Western Digital Caviar Green 2 TB HDD. After ripping DVD's to it for a year I'm down to around 150 GB of room left on it, and starting to get a little ambitious on getting another. But the prices they are asking out of these HDD's is ridiculous. So, anyone know what happened?
 
From the front page of [H]

Thailand floods will hurt overall PC shipments

I did notice it a few weeks ago after not having shopped for hard drives in at least a year and I was like, okay, are hard drive manufacturers conspiring/price fixing? Didn't they hear that Samsung, Micron and a few others got caught in the memory price fixing thing a few years ago? LOL
 
Did you miss the other threads about this and that google would've answered your question in 10 seconds?
Basically the Thailand floods have destroyed much of HDD and component production facilities and this had reduced apply driving prices up markedly.
 
Beta4Me said:
Did you miss the other threads about this and that google would've answered your question in 10 seconds?
Basically the Thailand floods have destroyed much of HDD and component production facilities and this had reduced apply driving prices up markedly.
Click to expand...

I could have Googled it, but didn't. And I have [H]ard forums as a favorite and just bypass the site, so no, I didn't see any of those.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback guys. I've been looking at HDD's every two weeks or so waiting for a deal, or prices to drop so I was a little shocked seeing them today.
 
xTrident said:
I could have Googled it, but didn't. And I have [H]ard forums as a favorite and just bypass the site, so no, I didn't see any of those.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback guys. I've been looking at HDD's every two weeks or so waiting for a deal, or prices to drop so I was a little shocked seeing them today.
Click to expand...
That came across way more beastly than intended :eek:

Also, with deals, it's a tough one...the longer you wait the more chance a deal will have come up but the higher prices will climb!
 
Beta4Me said:
That came across way more beastly than intended :eek:

Also, with deals, it's a tough one...the longer you wait the more chance a deal will have come up but the higher prices will climb!
Click to expand...

No biggie. I decided to look at [H]ard's main page and found it there, albeit was over halfway down, but it was there. And I also looked farther down this forum and found a long thread on it. I checked just the top of this forum, but admittedly I didn't put much time at all in finding an answer.

What I'll probably do now is wait till June when IDC said the industry should start coming back to normal. If I run out of room on my 2 TB, I'll just start loading things onto my OS/game drive until I can actually afford them.
 
because of this. i cant even buy them from users on this forum. i bought 2tb for $130 shipped a piece and from CAN. not sure which actual model but user is posting for about 20% higher. newegg is about 240 shipped ridiculous
 
dangbrandon said:
because of this. i cant even buy them from users on this forum. i bought 2tb for $130 shipped a piece and from CAN. not sure which actual model but user is posting for about 20% higher. newegg is about 240 shipped ridiculous
Click to expand...

Like I said, the same exact HDD I bought for $99 before, is $249 now... I get a price jump due to a lowered supple, but 99 to 249? That's incredible!

I can't convince myself to spend that much on a HDD either, no way.
 
xTrident said:
Anyway, thanks for the feedback guys. I've been looking at HDD's every two weeks or so waiting for a deal, or prices to drop so I was a little shocked seeing them today.
Click to expand...
Gonna be waiting for quite a long time for HD deals now. I'm seriously telling people to buy them now if you can't wait to at least 2Q 2012 for storage. With stock shrinking it will more likely get worse. I kinda feel bad for people not realizing now and end up forcing to buy storage early next year. Sure it's gonna be a pretty big premium unless a solution (if there is one) comes.
 
I hope they go back down, HDD prices almost doubled, time to go with some SSDs!
 
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.

Deals are still out there.
 
Yeah, have fun saving money buying 2 TB of space in ssds.

$250 for 2TB ..... vs...... $300-$400 for 256 GB.
 
Something fishy is going on with this. (bad pun not even intended)
Not every hard drive is produced Thailand. They are actually not even the number 1 exporter of them either.
 
Yeah, I read that more hard drives are produced in China. But if Thailand produces 45% of hard drives, then China must produce 46%-55%. Is it really true that 91% of hard drives are made in China & Thailand?
 
blackhand1001 said:
Something fishy is going on with this. (bad pun not even intended)
Not every hard drive is produced Thailand. They are actually not even the number 1 exporter of them either.
Click to expand...


I picked this up off another post elsewhere, hope it explains it a little better:
"the largest hard drive motor manufacturer Nidec has the factories near WD and their factories are flooded so they stopped production. Another company that had produced disk heads and other stuff near the flooded area announced they're going to move the production to US but this meant a 1-2 week pause in production at the very least"
 
I'd rather raid smaller drives myself. I just saw a deal not more than a week ago for 2tb @ 80 bucks.
 
Pkirk618 said:
I'd rather raid smaller drives myself. I just saw a deal not more than a week ago for 2tb @ 80 bucks.
Click to expand...
I would prefer that as well, but I wouldn't exactly call a 2TB a 'small drive' :D

Some of us have to deal with a port cost as well. Even if I can get the gb/buck down on smaller drives its not worth it. At your prices, that's $40/tb. I ended picking up buying out my local MC of 3TB drives (post flood) at $124 each.

The additional cost comes from all the other things that's needed to support those drives in a normal whitebox. I'll need a case/chassis, power, SATA/SAS expanders, cables and more. Those are fixed, so it would be financially smarter to fill those with large drives then more numerous smaller ones.

Doesn't really apply to small system builders or people only adding a few drives to their already existing system. People with free onboard SATA ports or free bays on their local box. Just not as easily scalable.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top