HDD prices skyrocketting!

Floods in Thailand to be blamed as 60% of WD's manufacturing capability is there (40% in Malaysia).

See prices on NewEgg.com as of now (10/23/11):

Newegg.com - Hard Drives

I bought a 2TB WD EARS drive for $65 last week (10/14/11) and the same drive is now $119!

Newegg.com - Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS 2TB 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

MORE - Nimec Hit Hard by Thailand Floods; Here Comes the Great Hard Drive Shortage of 2011

Hard drives could get scarce: Apple, analysts | Nanotech - The Circuits Blog - CNET News

 

And here I was just about to put a HDD up onto ebay. Wonderful! Seriously though this sucks! I hope they can get back to production quickly.

 

Thankfully, I am in no need of HDDs at the moment. It's definitely a seller's market.

This is a nice example of management thinking with their wallets instead of their brains since the labor there is cheap, not caring about geological factors such as this.

 

Luckily I bought a 2TB drive for my server last week.

 

Because natural disasters don't occur in places such as Taiwan or Japan, right?

 

You can tell it is mostly WD Drives getting the price boost because most of WD's manufacturing facilities are in Thailand. Sure there are a few Seagate's and Hitachi's up as well but they are still pretty affordable vs. the WD at the moment.

 

Wonder if this is helping drive the prices up:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/off-topic/619212-china-cutting-off-rare-metals.html

With around 11.8gb left on my 250gb, I need a new one, what a royal pita!!!!

 

Not really... If most of the manufacturing facilities are out of order, they won't need rare earth metals for a while...

 

When I made that comment, I was referring to the fact that these factories were built in a flood basin. Considering that ~25% or so of the world's HDD supply comes from Thailand, I don't understand why companies such as WD decided not to build factories on higher ground. At least then the flood waters wouldn't have stayed and render the factories inoperable for (possibly) several months.

 

You could prehaps get by with buying a high-capacity flashdrive for now. Move all your documents, pictures, and possibly video to something like a 32GB flashdrive to free up space on your HDD. After that, just wait it out. I don't see flash storage prices rising at the moment, though if the supply of HDDs are still low after some time, prices might rise due to an increase in demand (since flash is a substitute of magnetic storage, cross-price elasticity would dictate that flash producers raise their selling prices to hike up revenue).

 

If only it was that easy, my Video folder is 157gb, and my Music hits 30gb.

I'll probably just wait a while for prices to come down, any new Film or Music purchases will have to wait!!

 

If HDD prices get above 0.4€/Gb, they probably don't even need to rebuild the factories, everyone will get SSDs instead.

 

Wow, that's one heck of a collection. And I thought I had a big collection (~100GB video, 10GB music)...

 

Newegg was just looking for a reason to push prices through the roof! Thank God for eBay!

 

This is nothing more than another example of the current paradigm of corporate greed. It has become such a convenient tool to gouge the consumer at every possible opportunity and natural disasters are as good a reason as any. Natural disasters happen; that's what insurance is for.

There is no economic necessity for this type of immediate and drastic price increase merely because there was a natural disaster or one predicted. The market should dictate those changes and only when there is a greater demand than supply and only over time.

Now that we've been brainwashed into accepting these unscrupulous practices by the oil industry, all companies are jumping on the bandwagon and can now choose to raise their prices even when there is the slightest hint that a natural or man-made disaster might occur.

As educated consumers, we need to refuse to accept this and put an end to these practices. By refusing to buy these products we can send a clear message to manufacturers that they don't prosper while we suffer; and that these "get rich quick" schemes will not be tolerated.

I'm not suggesting that a business shouldn't be making a profit, but how on earth can any business justify increasing prices in the midst of a worldwide recession when all of us as consumers are being forced to accept cuts in pay? This nonsense has got to stop.

 

People people, this is just business 101. It's called managing the demand by raising pricing. If the demand out paces supply prices always go up, in this case it's to slow down sales (therefore them losing money). They still have to feed Dell and HP and all the other OEMs with their (contracted) quotas as much as they can and those prices are locked in contract. Since they sell a ton more drives to OEMs than they sell at NewEgg, they slow down retailers orders by raising pricing. If they are pumping more out to NewEgg because people are buying them like crazy and then HP and Dell gets a 50% order, they'll risk losing bigger business that way than the 500 people that were gonna buy on Newegg but changed their minds.

 

It's called double dipping. The insurance company would have paid them but then turning around and raising the prices on the consumers is just a low-balling them. Corporate greed is an understatement. Just because some of their factories got hit doesn't mean, the world is going to run out and start buying hdds at a rate any different than usual. The point of raising prices is if they are going to indefinitely run out, like forever.

That is likely not going to happen. WD is a reliable company but honestly, if they start charging like they are, they are going to lose out in the long run to other competing brands (e.g. Samsung, Hitachi). Granted some of those comapnies were hit as well, but that doesn't mean they are raising the price of their drives an extra $70. I was planning on a getting a second WD Caviar Green (3TB) because I bought the first for $114.99.

But now I'm probably going to get a Samsung or Hitachi drive because the WD CG 3TB is $184.99. Seagate at the moment is offering great price cuts as it is and worse case scenario, I'll just get them from eBay.

I don't think I could have said it better myself, even if I wanted to.

 

thats tiny my friend has like 10tb of video

 

Wait, what is insurance gonna cover? WD's plant DIDN'T get flooded, just the supply chain. This has nothing to do with corporate greed as they know if they raise the price at NewEgg they'll obviously sell less. This is why they put out the press releases saying their numbers are gonna be lower knowing full well their stocks are gonna take a hit as a result as well. You could see it as they are trying to milk the situation but that's only shooting themselves in the foot if that was the case. As you so rightly said people who would have normally bought a WD drive might now check out Hitachi or Samsung or something else. The problem with that however is the same company, Nidec (not Nimec as i said earlier) provides all the parts to WD, Hitachi and Samsung so their prices will have to go up as well to manage demand.

If you are selling out of product in 2 days and then you are empty for 5 days a week is NOT good for business even though you might think so. If customers come by on Wednesday and then thursday and see your store still empty because you are waiting to be restocked they might not come back on Friday or at all after that. They'll go somewhere else and get what they want. Even on a normal day NewEgg will limit people to 5 drives per order. Why else would they not allow you to buy all 10,000 drives they have in stock at one point? They are getting the same money right?

 

Well Nidec is a Japanese-based company and I'm not sure how their contractual agreements work out with the companies they deal with, if they were insured or if they weren't insured is up to them. I misread and thought it was WD's factories that got hit, but my point stands about the price-raising, why is that WD is the only one doing it?

Furthermore, I did a little reading up on the updated news from the flood, it seems that one of the seven factories was hit and water has only partially flooded the factory, while the province itself maybe flooded in other areas, the factory itself has only been partially overflown. Although, they have shut-down several factories but none of them have been effected, but the fact that they are closed does mean something.

Many of the factories are merely closed because of "danger perception" and the fact that water-levels may or may not rise but as the majority of the storm has passed, it'll take some time to re-open those factories but nothing that indicates all of their suppliers factories are entirely underwater and if WD doesn't sell all of their HDDs at twice the price, they won't make money.

It does suggest some type of corporate greed on WD's part, no one raises the prices of mechanical drives that much because they feel like it's a great move for the company. Personally, I believe they want to make it seem worse than it is (by raising their prices) so they'll get more product revenue that way. Because, like much of everyone else in this recession, their stock numbers haven't really been doing so well the last 3-months and putting out sub-par to crap SSDs hasn't really helped instill the confidence of their investors as they had hoped nor gotten them the gains they wanted.

It's a load of crap that they are punishing their consumers because some of their products are really good, such as their 3TB drives, guess we'll have to pay premium price on their drives now or find alternative means of storage via Seagate, Hitachi, White-Label or resort to using eBay.

 

Humm,,Production facilities shutdown due to natural disasters- would drive prices up,,However,,thats temporary,,,Inflation it appears is not temporary,,prices in many consumer goods has risen sharply-too many to name.

Cheers
3Fees

 

If that's the case, prices haven't actually driven up (the value of the product stays the same). Instead, that would only mean that the value of the dollar is going down. It's definitely down, but not enough to warrant the huge, sudden increase in HDd price.

 

Nevermind that Newegg got these at the "discount" rate before the flood, but are now selling them at higher prices. Stupid. Not that current production problems should affect stock on hand, but whatever, just another example of corporate greed as another said. Just yet another reason not to buy from screwegg.

 

lol... I have 150gb+ of music.


most of it is legal too

 

Well I can definitely confirm prices went up. A Samsung hdd I bought a few months ago for $34.99 is now at $42.99 today (at screwegg).

 

Sad part is mine is legal as well, I'm so afraid of backing it up song by song that I just end up copying the iTunes folder into my External each time and delete the previous one. It takes a really long time to transfer over but I mean, what else can you do?

 

So what about seagate?

And what about all the CPUs that are made in malaysia?
Yea I was making a point... Obviously CPU manufacturing is a much more extended process, hence we aren't affected like newegg wants us to think.

but seriously malaysia isn't the only place HDDs are manufactured, is it?

 

Someone else already said they only make up 25% of all hdd shipments. Really, this shouldn't affect prices at all.

Edit: Hmm, this is interesting. My Samsung hdd was made in Korea, and my Seagate was made in China. WTH Newegg???

 

I don't know if I'd call 1m-3m of water partially overflown. It's not just WD either plus there are other factories that make parts for HDs.

 

Well comparatively speaking in regards to the rest of the province, but yeah hwo knows, maybe it's like Venice...

 

Supposedly 25% of HDD production is in Thailand. But at the same time, only 1/3 of Thailand's HDD production has been affected.

1. That is only 8% of the world's HDD production that has been temporarily suspended.
2. Is the other 92% of worldwide hard drive production already at 100% capacity? I seriously doubt it.
3. Is there no backlog of HDD's? Are they flying straight from the factory into consumer's hands? Nope. Any time you buy a bare drive or a new laptop, you can check the HDD's manufacturing date.

This is just price gouging, pure and simple.

 

Accept for a couple of cables I need to get, I think I'm done with Newegg.

 

100% agreement. More and more I think about it, I don't think it's WD's fault as much as it is Newegg's fault. I did some checking online even Tiger Direct doesn't have WD listed as pricey as Newegg. Aside from the ones that need to be expensive like the Caviar Black series but that's to be expected because of the performance it yields.

Newegg is a bunch of fiends, I thought about ordering RAM from them earlier this year and was like that when I saw I could get for $40 cheaper w/shipping and no tax on eBay!

 

It'll be interesting to see how drive manufacturers handle RMAs for a while. I just filed two with Western Digital and I'll probably be filing one more later this week.

NewEgg really showed their true nature when they gouged out prices on current inventory just to take advantage of the situation. I stopped buying drives from them back in 2008 because of poor packaging. Recently they allegedly changed their drive packing methods to permanently resolve complaints, so I was considering using them as a source again for future purchases.

After this incident they've earned a spot on my refuse-to-buy-hard-drives-from-list for a very, very long time.

 

An ironic statement coming from someone who owns a laptop produced by the largest PC corporation in the world.

 

i believe operations in Thailand produces some parts of hard drives that other factories uses.

 

Wow pitchforks - yikes!

Anyways, same drive i metnioned earlier at also at:

Amazon: $119
Amazon.com: Western Digital Caviar Green 2 TB Desktop Hard Drive WD20EARS: Electronics

So it's not just newegg, but lots of other places have had the prices go up too. The newer version at Amazon the EARX is $138 or somewhere there last I checked.

Seagate pricing went up even more too last I checked, a 2TB drive for $209! The other "green" drive from them went up about $30 as well to $99 that I can see.

I guess we'll see some numbers come press release time that show their sales down 66% or some crazy number as a result.

 

Wow, this is crazy. Kinda glad I don't need any HDDs, though an external 2TB+ would be nice, for image backups...

 

Yeah, I was wondering what was up with this:

See:
Memory Express Computer Products Inc. - Canada's Source for Computers, Laptops, Monitors & more...


Either way, HDD's are a commodity - with a supply shortage the prices go up - with an over supply prices go down. Economics 101.

What is the point of this thread? (Sorry, didn't read all the posts...).

 

Fact:

In India the price of HDDs has gone up. I'm setting up a media NAS for family.

I saw a 2 TB WD Caviar Green for 3900 INR. Committed a buy and next week it was up to 4300 INR.

 

Newegg should burn for what they are doing to customers. I'll be setting up a NAS for my household this coming week and I don't mind a small hike in prices but what they are doing is highway robbery.

 

Just looked up the same WD drives on Amazon and the prices are just as bad. I haven't been using Newegg at all recently but that's mostly because they charge tax in my state. Maybe now I'll have another reason not to use them. They've done some shady things in the past too (such as charging more for a 10-pack of Windows licenses than 10 individual Windows licenses).

 

Having just returned from 4 weeks in Thailand managing the disaster recovery and rebuild efforts for a couple of fabs, I can say that the scale of the 'tech devastation' there is being very much under-reported.

The floods have taken out just about 50% of the in-country HDD manufacturing capability with WD being hardest hit. Good thing for them that they haven't fully integrated Hitachi yet. The non-Thai Hitachi factories should be running at full-tilt. Seagate is also in a good position to take up some of the slack. I wouldn't plan on buying any hard drives for a few months. It's very much a supply-demand situation with speculators ordering many many tens of thousands of drives to stockpile.

A lot of value-added semi fabs are also out of commission. These make a huge variety of commodity chips like disk controllers (!!) imaging sensors. The Korean fabs (Samsung and LG mostly) are ramping up but that will take time.

Nikon and Sony have lost all of their DSLR manufacturing capability there. Expect DLSR and lens pricing (including used) to start heading upwards.

Nikon has a single camera factory in Japan they can lean on for DSLRs. Sony may be able to start up production in Japan but this will take time. Remember that Japan is under pretty strict industrial electricity rationing because of Fukushima. Both Sony and Nikon have postponed the intro and delivery/sales of their new high-end DSLRs because of the loss of factory capabilities. Canon is not affected. Nikon, Sony, and Tokina all make lenses in Thailand but I have no info on those plants.

It is not the immediate loss of factory output/capacity that is the problem. The plants are quite literally being washed away including their precision equipment. What is being lost is the capacity to do or build things.

The floods are projected to stay very high for another 5-6 weeks. Add 2-3 weeks for hazmat cleanup before rebuild teams can even get started.

It might be faster to bulldoze the plants to the ground and start over. As a point of reference it can take 3-5 months to build a class 100/1000 clean room fab from a clean and fully prepped building. These buildings will be anything but clean.

Smart companies are already building and expanding capacity elsewhere. Dumb companies will be out of business.

 

Interesting. Thanks for providing some (needed) clarity.

 

I'll reiterate my point that there is no global shortage of hard drives. There are plenty of samsungs, seagates, hitachis, toshibas, etc. They are not affected by this flood. It disgusts me that retailers are raising prices on ALL hard drives claiming there is this "global shortage" when there is not.

 

speculators. Also note that Hitachi in particular cancelled what was supposed to be a 90 day rebate offering on their coolspin drives.

Just wait it out folks.

 

No, it's greedy corporations.

 

Wait this should clear things up for you:

 

It's a lot more fashionable and trendy to believe in the big huge evil corporations and greed rather than the same supply chain speculators that play with other component shortages.

You guys are going to believe what you're going to believe.

 

So what you are saying is that companies rose those prices because everyone is at 100% capacity and that hard drives are no longer going to be found in 6 months.