Price of HDD

  • Thread starter Thread starter The Seabat
  • Start date Start date
T

The Seabat

Holy crap, has anyone noticed the fast rise of high prices for SATA
hard drives? I bought a 4-drive NAS container a couple of months ago
and decided to do some research on the reliability and performance of
various 1 and 1 1/2 TB hard drives. When I bought the storage unit you
could get 1TB hard drives for around $60-70. Now you can't touch one
for less than $100+
What are they trying to do? Make us all switch to SSD's or, worse,
force us to use the freakin' _cloud_ ! This means it will cost me
$400 to $800 to load up my $70 NAS!! This just plain sucks.

OK, end of rant for this season.
 
The said:
Holy crap, has anyone noticed the fast rise of high prices for SATA
hard drives? I bought a 4-drive NAS container a couple of months ago
and decided to do some research on the reliability and performance of
various 1 and 1 1/2 TB hard drives. When I bought the storage unit you
could get 1TB hard drives for around $60-70. Now you can't touch one
for less than $100+
What are they trying to do? Make us all switch to SSD's or, worse,
force us to use the freakin' _cloud_ ! This means it will cost me
$400 to $800 to load up my $70 NAS!! This just plain sucks.

OK, end of rant for this season.
Click to expand...

Flood in Thailand. Try to keep up :-)

http://legitreviews.com/images/news/2011/wd_flood.jpg

"The first floor is where most of the slider processing equipment
was located. Most of the equipment was lost to the flood. They lost saws,
grinders, sorters, cleaners, steppers, alignment tool etc. It’s a real mess.
This situation for WD is pretty bad because they had all their slider
fabrication in one basket. It will take at least 4 months to start the
recovery and a year to get back to where they were pre-flood. It looks
like the high water will not recede for at least 3 weeks."

The price does not reflect the current supply levels available.
Gouging is going on. Apparently, Seagate wasn't hit quite as
hard, but that makes no difference to pricing. The Seagate plant
may be located in slightly higher elevated ground of some sort.

They're treated like "tomatoes" and if only "X pounds" are available,
the price is "Y". Expect the price to go a little higher, start of
next year.

The stories might not be entirely truthful, as to what the plants
made, or what is damaged. Initially I was hearing it was just a
hard drive motor plant of some sort that was flooded, but that's not
what the article above is claiming.

The gouging isn't even consistent. In some cases for example,
you might find drives in external enclosures, for less than a
raw drive. You buy the external and pull the mechanisms out.
But doing it that way, you get whatever crap they use in such
things ("green" drives).

Let's hope they hurry up and deliver those "memristors" :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristors

Paul
 
At the end of 2009, I purchased a 320 GB WD SATA drive from newegg
for $55.

Current newegg Price: $102.99
Click to expand...

IDE drives are fairly expensive nowadays, but SATA drives seem to be
less so. I assume that its because demand for SATA makes vendors keep
prices competitive. IDE, being older, deprecated technology can sell
for higher prices to those that must have them, for older systems and
such.
 
I didn't notice until your message.

At the end of 2009, I purchased a 320 GB WD SATA drive from newegg for $55.

Current newegg Price: $102.99

Ouch!
Click to expand...

If you are watchful,you can still occasionally find a good deal. Best
Buy had 1 TB Seagate 7200 RPM drives on sale a couple of weekends ago.
I think the price was $70. These were probably drives received long
before the flood, and not yet "marked up" to reflect the higher price
Best Buy is now having to pay for new stock.
 
Holy crap, has anyone noticed the fast rise of high prices for SATA
hard drives? I bought a 4-drive NAS container a couple of months ago
and decided to do some research on the reliability and performance of
various 1 and 1 1/2 TB hard drives. When I bought the storage unit you
could get 1TB hard drives for around $60-70. Now you can't touch one
for less than $100+
Click to expand...

Ask those business managers. Why didn't they have backup factories given
their knowledge in business? :)
 
Nil said:
JD <JD example.invalid> wrote

IDE drives are fairly expensive nowadays, but SATA drives seem
to be less so. I assume that its because demand for SATA makes
vendors keep prices competitive.
Click to expand...

Greater demand does not keep prices competitive. Given the same
supply, greater demand increases the price. The only time that
increasing demand is beneficial to a consumer is if a product is
in so little demand that no seller can offer it because the
overhead of providing the product outweighs the money they can get
for the product.
--













IDE, being older, deprecated technology can sell
for higher prices to those that must have them, for older systems and
such.
Click to expand...
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From: Nil <rednoise REMOVETHIScomcast.net>
Newsgroups: alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Subject: Re: Price of HDD
Date: 25 Nov 2011 05:40:36 GMT
Organization: ?!
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Message-ID: <Xns9FA86E29E037nilch1 130.133.4.11>
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User-Agent: Xnews/2006.08.24
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Click to expand...
 
Bob H said:
Haven't you heard, there's been a flood in Thailand and its
still there as of yesterday.
Click to expand...

Has it been on any major news sources?

If you knew about it, you should have posted about it.
--
 
I didn't notice until your message.

At the end of 2009, I purchased a 320 GB WD SATA drive from newegg for $55.

Current newegg Price: $102.99

Ouch!
Click to expand...
Thats beacuase noone wants that size anymore so they are more expensive and
less in demand. Its like DDR2 memory, everyone wants DDR3 now.
 
Ask those business managers. Why didn't they have backup factories given
their knowledge in business? :)
Click to expand...

All the industries are into "just in time" inventories/deliveries. A
concept to get around inventory taxes & less warehousing to cut
costs.

Stockpiling/backup has been "out-of-date" for years.
 
If you are watchful,you can still occasionally find a good deal. Best
Buy had 1 TB Seagate 7200 RPM drives on sale a couple of weekends ago.
I think the price was $70. These were probably drives received long
before the flood, and not yet "marked up" to reflect the higher price
Best Buy is now having to pay for new stock.
Click to expand...
$70 for a 1TB is horrible IMHO.
 
$70 for a 1TB is horrible IMHO.
Click to expand...

Hmmm, where do you find a better deal? As the previous poster
mentioned, $100+ for a 320 GB is really bad...... so what is your
"good" level?
 
Ask those business managers. Why didn't they have backup factories given
All the industries are into "just in time" inventories/deliveries. A
concept to get around inventory taxes& less warehousing to cut
costs.

Stockpiling/backup has been "out-of-date" for years.
Click to expand...

Same concept for military? :)
 
I guess you haven't been keeping up with the news.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-57328378-64/tool-tracks-hard-disk-price- increases/
Click to expand...

No, actually, I haven't. I had heard about the Taiwanese floods, but
didn't make the connection to the hard drive shortage. I wonder how
long until things stabilize. I've gotten used to dirt cheap drives.

Still, my impression is that older technology like IDE drives sell
for a premium compared to the new stuff. I've been in search of DDR
memory for an older computer I'm trying to revive. I did find some
used DDR on craigslist and eBay, but it was more expensive than new
technology like DDR3 at the popular online stores.
 
Man-wai Chang said:
Ask those business managers. Why didn't they have backup factories given
their knowledge in business? :)
Click to expand...

The whole thing is suspicious.

My guess is, there is hoarding by speculators, and there'll be a massive
dump of cheap drives later, when the scheme backfires.

Paul
 
Really? I have two used/old IDE/PATA HDDs and very old one
(Quantum -- SMART says very old age, but it still works). I
checked eBay, but they are not high priced. Are those expensive
prices referring to new ones only? I could sell mine. :(
Click to expand...

This is just my impression based on my recent search. I wanted to
replace an ailing 250 GB IDE drive, and it seemed to me that the price
per MB was much, much greater for that technology than it was for new
SATA drives. I was looking at new or new-old-stock drives from
established retail sources. I expect the situation is different in the
used market.
 
Charlie said:
If you are watchful,you can still occasionally find a good deal. Best
Buy had 1 TB Seagate 7200 RPM drives on sale a couple of weekends ago.
I think the price was $70. These were probably drives received long
before the flood, and not yet "marked up" to reflect the higher price
Best Buy is now having to pay for new stock.
Click to expand...

They had a 1TB Barracuda for $55 a few weeks ago, and I almost picked one up
(kicking myself now because I didn't).

Jon
 
Paul said:
The whole thing is suspicious.

My guess is, there is hoarding by speculators, and there'll be a massive
dump of cheap drives later, when the scheme backfires.

Paul
Click to expand...

That wouldn't surprise me at all. Remember the soaring RAM prices years ago when one of the major producer's factory
burned down? RAM escalated for a short period of time due to an "inability to produce", then went down to where it was
before, or even slightly lower, IIRC.
 
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