HDD prices skyrocketting!

No, speculators are buying up stock creating spot shortages that will ease as soon as they've decided that they've made the money they want.

It's far too easy to stampede the proles into panic buying.

Same thing happens when oil product speculators buy up crude or even finished product (gasoline) futures. There is a whole secondary market for the commodity pricing and trade of electronics goods. It's not just chips. Semi-finished goods like circuit boards get stockpiled and traded as do LCD screens and disk drives. The EU just fined Korean panel makers around 500 million Euros for creating artificial product shortages that encouraged speculators to fix the prices of LCD tellys. Got to be kind of obvious when the EU investigators found warehouses in Korea, Taiwan, and China filled with flat panels when the 'market' was being told that there were severe production problems.

Just wait it out. Don't panic.

The companies that are really being squeezed by these temp artificial shortages are the high-end disk array makers. Imagine what it does to your customer availability and pricing at a time like this when you are trying to sell and deliver Enterprise-class devices with thousands of internal disk drives in each unit.

The world is a hell of a lot lot bigger than an end-user desktop and prices at Newegg.

Instead of worrying about a temp artificial shortage of disk drives I'd be a lot more worried about the semiconductor fab capacity that is going to be down for a lot longer than the drive factories are. Some of those fabs are the sole source for some high volume low margin chips. Just like the one-of-a-kind factory in Japan that made specialized pigments for 50% of the automotive paint market (knocked out by Fukushima) or the other factory in Japan that was the single source for the specialized glue that laminated ceramic chip packages together (knocked out by Kyoto).

Any time you have a real or artificial constraint in a supply chain there is opportunity for real and sudden problems.

 

Well, I don't know, the way you so eloquently put it makes it seem as if the corporations are innocent of seriously overcharging for hard-drives and scrapping consumer wallets.

 

Just because it has happened before doesn't mean it's happening now.

Conspiracies take a lot of effort. In a situation like this where it's too bloody obvious, loads of people are sure to complain, and eager governments are sure to investigate, it's not the smartest move.

The simplest explanation is usually the most accurate one.

And as long as you don't spend your money, whomever or whatever is responsible for supply and pricing problems can't take any of it.

 

newsposter,

thank you for that excellent and level-headed explaination!

+rep!

 

/whistles and looks down at his shuffling feet while peering at his 15TB server/

Get a sync program. I do that with my Steam folder.

And dammit, two of my external USB HDD's just died and was going to replace at least one of them.

 

15TB server? Only one?

Yeah, I really like and recommend MS's SyncToy - great for keeping a lot of files sync'd with very little effort.

See:
Download Details - Microsoft Download Center - SyncToy 2.1


Seriously, only one server? lol...

 

Okay...now im sort of jealous at all this data being stored lol. I need to start stockpiling.

 

That's just crazy. What the hell do you need a 15TB server for?

 

Isn't it obvious? To do a backup of one of the folders on the 300TB servers.

 

That's insane. Insanity I tells ya!

 

Hoarders!

I really don't have all that much data to hold then, it seems. Eh, there 's only so many GB (about 6 at the moment) that school work can occupy I suppose. But I did recently install a copy of VMWare Player 4 on my laptop, and plan on playing around with several OSes soon, so I might end up filling my 320 (even though that'd mean only a ~50GB increase in data).

 

​

Gotcha my dude, and really, only one server? Let me know if you download the internet, when the world ends, I'll be at HT's house going through his offline-interwebs....

 

I used to have a crazy amount of hard drives in my desktop. Only 3TB, but this was in 2005-06, so the biggest drive I had was only 320GB and the smallest I had was 80GB. In 2007 I replaced all the drives with 500GB models that were considerably faster, more reliable, and took up less room. When 2TB drives began to drop in price and increased in reliability, I got in on their action and I picked up a 3TB drive several months ago, even though it kind of sits unused. So right now I have 11TB of total space on 5 drives that uses less power, is quieter, is faster, is more reliable, and is about 1/10 the price per GB of my original array. Plus because storage is (was) so cheap, I have everything backed up and not just the most important stuff.

 

....Amazon has raised the price on the WD Scorpio Black 750GB 7200RPM drive! What was $89.99 is now like $118.99! This is ridiculous....

 

Check out Camelegg.com to see how much HDD prices have jumped on Newegg. Some 50%.

 

The major online retailers in China have also bumped up prices; I'd say 30-50% average across the board.

Sorry to pile it on, but the worst offender is NewEgg China. An older Hitachi 500GB 7200 2.5" drive I was looking at is now nearly $100, up from less than $60.

 

Guys, guys!

Do you want the prices to come down?

Don't buy any HDD's for a while.

 

It's definitely not a good time to buy a HDD. Newegg's got the 500 ScopioBlack at 90 bucks. Who's gonna pay 90 for it? I remember I paid about 59 shipped a long time ago and I thought that was a lot. Does this price increase affect the SSDs also?

 

Not so far, but an increase could very well ride on the coattails of this. There are plenty of sales and mail-in rebates still on offer for SSDs. Even ones that don't typically go on sale (Intel 510) are holding the line.

 

WOW...now Amazon is no longer even selling it directly! I'm definitely not buying any HDD right now.

 

If the SSDs would drop in price by let's say 10% they'd increase sales dramatically and if they drop even more they could criple the HDD competition beyond recovery.

 

Um, no.

10char

 

Umm, no ? Raise the price of the SSDs also, just because?

 

Are there any places that prices have not rised?

 

saturnotaku is correct. Your analysis of the consumer hard drive market is incorrect. The ONLY way to "criple the HDD competition beyond recovery" is if solid state drives offer similar storage sizes and cost per gigabyte.

 

Most likely ebay, because some people have no idea yet of the actual price and price that they actually paid for the HDD or they just want to compete.

 

Well, as far as i can tell, the price of drives like the Hitachi 7K750 don't seem to have gone up too much compared to WD drives. I'd be surprised if there's a retailer where prices haven't gone up.

 

Well, all Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB drives on eBay shot up over $200, and I mean well over $200...so much for that idea, in some cases you'd actually be better of buying 2 MyBooks and using those drives together. Just saying.

But also, what is really weird is that WDC's Store online is only charging $190 for them, while prices everywhere else have gone severely up. Newegg I think will keep their rock-steady, but still harshly over-priced at $184.99.

 

I've always said that people don't like paying a fair price for the stuff they need. For the stuff they don't, they'll pay tons extra cuz that makes it "cool" or whaver.

Best Buy and other (physical) stores sell drives and equipment at market pricing but online companies sell them cheaper as they don't have the retail portion to deal with so they pass on the savings. Let said online companies put pricing in line with other places and it's "oh they trying to rip us off!! " I'm not saying Best Buy had the "right price" all along, but if Best Buy sells it for X price then online companies have to try selling it lower as why else would you buy it from them when you can just go downtown and pick it up from the store?

Usually they get a big discount for buying a large quantity, so if there's not a large quantity to buy then i'd expect they don't get as good of a deal anymore. If you are used to buying 10,000 drives for $45 each, i don't expect if you are only buying 1000 drives to get the same discount.

 

Norwegian newspapers had about this actually.. Wired enough, now, do anyone have any idea about this apply to SSD drives? I'm looking for one!

 

Not from about 12 months ago.

For example, a Crucial C300 is about $55 (USD) cheaper today than it was at time of purchase in Nov. '10.

 

1 TB Caviar Black drives went from like 70-80 to 120 on Newegg and 8 bucks shipping. Someone go arrest Newegg CEO.

The hard drive thing has gotten so bad, we are limiting 2 hard drives per customer at our store..

 

Someone arrest your CEO for responding to supply and demand!

This you-know-what is getting really tiresome.

 

lolwhat?

 

I was finding 3TB on eBay for easy $110 each (WD Caviar Green) and the Hitachi models were like around $100-$105, but now it's somewhere over $200, it's actually gotten worse than Newegg. Newegg should be arrested for the crap they pulled.

 

I don't see anybody closing their Newegg accounts over this.

 

I just bought 2 WD 3TB and 2 Hitachi 3TB to build a media server a week ago, and paid about $120 for each. Glad I moved on them when I did!

 

Yeah grrr. Just hoping my army of 2TB drives (10 in all, 7 in my WHS, 3 as external backup) hold up until this blows over. Been hoping for 4TB at < $120 sometime in the next year, reduce number of drives in my system.

 

Hey, it's not like you need a new drive anytime soon. I don't think 4TB drives at under $120 was going to happen until the very end of next year anyway.

 

wait a sec, 10 HDDs?

I'm hoping for 2TB external WD 2.5 to arrive...

But, I'm really into that WHS thing now.. but don't know where to start..

UPDATE:

WOW, I did take a look for 2TB My Book, prices are 4 times higher then what usual here in Norway. Guess I'll have to delete my backups to free some place before this is over..

 

Spoken like a true capitalist. Are you then implying that our position are unfounded and that there's really no such thing as corporate greed? And every increase is merely due to market fluctuation? Is that what you want us to believe?

Last year there was a blight on tomatoes and McDonald's had to stop selling them for a while. After a time they brought them back but now only include one slice per sandwich instead of two. Are we suppose to not notice?

In addition, the whole time that the shortage existed, there was no change in price for the sandwich. Where did that money go? It wasn't passed on to the consumer like some have insisted. Now that the blight is over, the new paradigm is just one tomato slice. What am I missing?

I don't think there's anyone here who doesn't feel a business shouldn't make a fair profit, but using the market to justify these huge jumps in price for the most mundane reasons are just inexcusable.

 

I was just slightly annoyed about that, but I don't eat at McDonalds enough to file a complaint, perhaps if I was still 18, I would probably be livid.

 

Krane and Mihael,

Thanks for the lol...

 

Thanks to whoever posted the Newegg.com price tracker, Newegg.com price history charts, price watches, and price drop alerts. | camelegg.com site.
Its not just WD that have shot up, other brands too.

I was just planning to get an HDD, prices were decent here in Europe last week...I will go tomorrow and get one!

 

WD has begun to break contracts with OEMs due to the shortage. Sucks for us that they put all their eggs in one basket.

 

Asus is going to run out of HDDs in November

ASUS: 'We run out of hard disks at the end of the month' ? The Register

 

Stop using WD? Honestly I can't help but think the industry is using these floods as an opportunity to create an artificial shortage and hike prices up. In fact, I'm pretty positive that is the case. They all act like WD is the only hdd maker out there.

 

tiller, glad I'm amusing someone, because I sincerely wasn't amused, at least while trying to get my #7's and #8's.

Wait, WD isn't really all that it's cracked up to be, the real benefit of using them is a 5-year hardware warranty, I think Seagate and Hitachi are good too but they only offer 3-years tops.

 

The best overall HDD's were provided by Hitachi. Period. Before them was the IBM drives (Hitachi bought IBM HDD division).

WD's are also high on my recommended list, but I would trade to any contemporary/current HDD by Hitachi in a heartbeat.

Seagates are out of the running for me except for the XT Hybrid. These work so well I am shocked to see them wearing the 'Seagate' brand, especially compared to the 7200.4's which ran Vista as if I was running it on floppy disks vs. the 7K500 I bought shortly afterwards.

For me a warranty on storage devices - whether for 1 yr or 10 yrs - doesn't mean squat - once my data (or my client's data) is on that HDD, a Hammer is the only way they leave my office (and this world).

Too bad Hitachi was sold recently.

There is a 'best' HDD and while WD's are not at the very top of my list (as long as Hitachi's are available), it is much more than the warranty period which defines 'best' for me, at least where storage devices (and my data) are concerned.

Keep in mind here that I'm concetrating on 2.5" drives for notebook systems with my comments above.

In the desktop space (but still 2.5" size category) WD has no equal with their vRaptor line which I have enjoyed from the first 37GB models (now at 600GB and still faaaast). I will still not hesitate to take a hammer to these drives if they failed (even within the warranty period) - however, these spectacular performers have never given me reason to, yet.

 

This cannot be taken at face value, because the disk controllers, circuitry are also made in Thailand, so even if only half of the HDD manufacturing facilities are sunk, the others not in Thailand will also be affected because they cannot get access to disk controllers/circuitry, which will still raise prices anyway. This is less corporate greed than supply and demand.