Do you think the hard drive prices are still inflated?

Hello,

I was wondering if people thought that the market for the hard drives was still inflated due to the horribly unfortunate events that happened on the other side of the world. IE: would it be worth it to wait a bit longer before making a big purchase. According to this news site, companies are ramping their production back up. However, I feel like we will be feeling the effects of this for awhile. So what do you think? Buy now or wait?

Thank you for your help,
c2

 

Buy only if you have to. Desktop drives are still inflated by a good 50% (especially Western Digital) relative to pre-flood prices. I'm sure laptop drives are still similarly overpriced.

 

Oh yes definitely. Despite the need for data protection, I still can't quite justify buying a 1TB external drive as backup nowadays because the prices are jacked up pretty badly compared to pre-2011 levels.

 

Actually, you are in that 'need to buy' category if you don't have any backups of your data. Go buy one. Now. Don't come crying to us if your hard drive tanks and you need help to try and recover your data .

 

Thanks for the quick response guys, I can afford to wait a few months so I guess I'll wait lol.

 

Yep, you should wait if you can. A seagate Barracuda 1TB is still close to 100$ in Canada and it was 60$ pre-flood. That is still vastly inflated. The 2TB drive prices seem to be less inflated, but still are.

 

this is the ssd section, ssd prices are low, buy an ssd. I needed an HD and instead bought an ssd because it was actually cheaper since I don't need much space and I buy an HD later on and stick it in my optical slot.

 

externals tend to be cheaper, you can rip the drive out. I hesitated before the flood now I just keep waiting .

 

I'm still waiting for prices to drop. But most importantly I want 4TB drives at < $150. But I guess I may have to wait a couple more years. They are definitely inflated though. I was buying 2TB desktop drives (green) for $70-80 each. I really want to update my WHS with 4TB drives. Too many dang 2TB drives is only asking for issues.

 

Well, NewEgg just had a sale on the Seagate Momentus XT hybrid 500GB drive for $89.99. The first one I bought last July from NewEgg was $99.99.

 

It keeps going down so the longer the wait, the cheaper it is. This is the 2TB I got for $80 over a year ago:

SAMSUNG EcoGreen F4 HD204UI 2TB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5' Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive | Newegg.com price tracker / tracking, Newegg.com price history charts, Newegg.com price watches, Newegg.com price drop alerts | camelegg.com

 

And it's $130 today. Point is hard drives are 40-50% more expensive than just before the November 2011 typhoon WD incident. It will probably be end of this year before prices get back to the level they were in early 2011.

 

Which is a shame, because the HDD in my desktop just died. Thankfully, I had an unused 2tb lying around that I could repurpose.

 

What about SSD prices? Are they inflated as well?

 

SSD supply was not effected by the floods, if anything they are still going down.

 

you can view "inflated" in different perspective (disaster,business decision, inflation) but I have no idea what is their profit margin(probably real high seeing more company join the market, but then I cant make one myself @home), so no consumer can really say if SSD price is inflated or not.

 

they are still inflated you could get 3TB 7200rpm drives from 130-170 bucks off newegg and they still haven't gotten close to that price. It'll be awhile until they come down to a year ago normal prices...let alone drop to new record low prices