HDD prices skyrocketting!

In about a year I can really see SSDs being cheaper than standard hard drives. I'll be sure to point you all to this post I made when it happens.

 

i just bought a 2.5 1TB(80$) and a 3.5 2TB(70$) last month......
now both are selling at about 100$ price tag.......

 

I'm going to turn this right back around on you in that you seem to imply that every time there are price adjustments that it's attributable to "corporate greed."

In this particular situation, we have absolutely no idea how much of the price increases we can lay on the flooding. Maybe some of it is a way for folks to make a quick buck. However, to claim that "corporate greed" is solely or even the primary reason for this is myopic and stupid. We have a first-hand account in this very thread of the devastation the flooding has caused, so I'm going to go with that and not just some nebulous catch-all.

Again, I'm going to point out the hilarious irony of you complaining about corporations when you own a PC produced by the largest such corporation in the world.

The fact that there are hundreds of other places where you can buy a hamburger. Don't like what McDonald's did? Vote with your dollars. Eat someplace else, like a mom and pop burger shop. You'll get a better quality burger and you won't be supporting an evil corporation.

Altneratively, buy some ground beef and buns and make your own. Then you can have all the tomatoes you want and probably spend less money in the process.

I hear this all the time from anti-coporatists, but they can never put a number to it. When they do, the percentage they give is usually much higher than reality.

 

Lol. Yeah right.

 

saturnotaku,

+1 rep. I was just about to post something a bit similar.

People, it's your money (at least in some parts of the world). You decide what you want to do with it. There's no monopoly that New Egg has on disk drives. If you don't like their prices, find some other dealer - a big box store, Amazon, Froogle, CDW, Ebay, whatever. In the free market (away from monopolistic influences), consumers can also help determine price by purchasing elsewhere or not at all.

 

This isn't the case at all right now. Since there are so few HDD manufacturers and with WD buying Hitachi and Seagate buying Samsung it will be even worse. Even if you don't buy at the moment the prices are going to stay sky high.

 

The point previous posts were arguing is that this raise in HDD pricing is *not* market driven price increases, but corporate greed on the part of New Egg. But your post reads that this is a classic case of supply/demand. I agree w/ your post, that this is case is related to a possible supply shortage. But if enough people decide the price is too high and quit purchasing or switch to a substitute, this will be a decrease in demand and prices should fall accordingly.

However, in regards to "sky high" prices, I haven't seen it. Perhaps that is with certain models / sizes? For example, I priced out 750GB Scorpio Blacks @ $120.00 (USD) about 3 weeks ago**. Compare that with an amazon and froogle search today (Nov. 1, 2011). Those same drives range from $115 to $130 USD. Not too much of a change in price.



** - Note, this thread started on Oct. 23, 2011. So, I don't know if the price on WD Scorpio Black 750GB HDDs has changed from 6 or 12 months ago.

 

The Hitachi 7K750 was priced at 89.99 on ncix.ca three weeks ago, it is now priced at 99.99, not that much of an increase. The WD drives did get a larger increase in price, however, i don't believe it is all corporate greed. Most retailers seem to have similar prices for drives though so either they all got together for some evil conspiracy (doubtful ) or the market is what's mostly driving the prices up. Whether we see the prices going down or not will be up to us the consumers though. If the increase in price doesn't affect sales, you can be sure they'll keep high prices, why lower them when people are willing to buy them at higher prices. I'd do the same thing in their place. If HDD sales drop enough, we'll probably see the prices returning to where they were.

 

Use camelegg and you will see the prices for certain drives have well over doubled at Newegg. Newegg is always quick to rise the prices to grab about much profit as possible.

 

Guys, but that is why they are in business for... sigh.

To 'grab as much profit as possible'.

As already suggested, simply shop elsewhere and if you can - don't shop at all.

 

Spoken like an undergrad with one semester of econ 101!

 

atbnet,

Yeah, undergrad from 1968...

 

Newegg might be quick to raise the prices, but i've seen the same drives similarly priced at NCIX, Newegg, infonec, Tiger Direct and Memory Express in Canada. Either they all followed newegg, or they set the prices independently, in any case it was obvious there was going to be an increase. For me, it's simple, i won't buy any new drives for a while. I'm itching to slap a 7K500 or 7K750 instead of the slow seagate i have in my n50, but that can wait since it only use it as a tertiary computer...

Yeah, i'm a speed junky when it comes to drive. Mostly psychological factors, but that's how i am i guess. Still, i'll pass until prices drop or it is confirmed they won't.

 

Remember two years ago when RAM prices increased 2-3x? Look where they are now, lower than they were before the increase. This will pass, because people don't like suddenly paying twice as much for the same item.

 

A large norwegian company (Or sweedish idk really) had a special offer for 1TB WD My Book with ethernet sharing.. I bet they regret now..

 

Any idea when the prices will drop to normal levels? 6-8 months? Or longer?

 

I wonder about that as well actually. My 1TB is full, and I'm starting to use my 1TB Backup drive as data storage, which is no good.

 

It will be a while I think. Seems like the WD factory might possibly take something like 6 months to salvage and start production.

You might find this link interesting although IMO the final statement seems a bit overly pessimistic.

Thailand Flood Leads to HDD Drought :: TweakTown USA Edition

 

I'M LOOKING FOR 1041pcs HITACHI HARD DRIVES !!!!
IF ANYONE KNOWS A DISTRIBUTOR THAT CAN SUPPORT THAT QTY PLEASE LET ME KNOW ASAP !!!
Thanks...

 

Thanks

Hmmm 6 months to salvage/rebuild the factories, another 4 months for the market to accomodate the new supply..looks like prices are gonna stay high till late 2012.

 

Prices in Belgium went up insanely, at alternate a WD hdd costed 38€ (3.5", 500gb), before the flood they went up to 50, and after the flood to 70€.
The 1 gb hdd (black, not blue) went from 77 to 200€.

Maybe I should sell my 4 year old 120gb wd scorpio blue now?

 

It's definitely a sellers market right now.

 

Guess its a good thing I have a few Amazon gift cards to help lessen the blow when I eventually purchase that WD Scorpio Black I've been eyeing for weeks....

Still its such a bummer when I think about how close I was to buying it for $89.99 just a few weeks ago. Then I said I'd wait so I could purchase it together with the Samsung 830 SSD. And now the 830 is out of stock pretty much everywhere!

 

Heh, prices still havent increased here, I just bought a 2tb toshiba 3.5 external drive for 90€ two days back. Maybe I should get a 2.5 1tb external for 90 euros to help me over the next year...

 

Thought I might as well put out an update and I guess companies ran out faster than we thought they would. ASUS is almost completely out and they only have enough to last the next 26 days. Or perhaps, they just want to sell it at higher price so that they make more money this quarter. Anyway, drive prices are out of this world at the moment.

 

Does not compute.

 

the supply chain for commodity components is very very short/shallow.......

 

I added a Western Digital 2tb hdd to my cart last night on Newegg at $94.99...by the time I went to checkout it was $142.99. Guess no NAS for me

 

I had two spare laptop hdds waiting in the drawer to collect dust:

- Seagate Momentus 7200.4 ST9500420AS 500GB 7200 RPM 2.5" SATA
- HITACHI Travelstar 7K500 500GB 7200 RPM 2.5" SATA

Both are now being sold for $129.99 on newegg. I guess this is the best time to sell those old drives.


--

 

Wow. The Samsung hdd I bought a few months back from Newegg for $34.99 is now going for $89.99. Bahahahahaha. Newegg.com - SAMSUNG Spinpoint M8 HN-M160MBB 160GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive
Seriously anyone who thinks this is not an artificial shortage designed to drive up prices needs to pull their head out of the sand. The one example I gave is old stock Newegg has had for ages. I've watched that particular hdd for months, and it's always been in stock. We're being cornered by a market, that claims Thailand floods, which affect Western Digital hdd's, and even then, only 25% of the market, is somehow causing not only existing, but future stock of hdd's prices to almost triple across the board for all hard drives. That means Hitachi, Samsung, WD, Seagate, etc. Hard drives that are not even manufactured in Thailand. This is an artificial shortage designed to raise prices and people need to wake up to the fact that we're all being taken for a ride.

I have purchased the last of the things I need from Newegg, and I wont be going back to them. They were the first to raise prices on this news. It's unfair and completely dishonest what they have done (and other companies followed suit after them). I'm done with Newegg. As soon as I recieve the items I purchased some time next week, there is a very high probability that I will be closing my account with them.

 

Even the article I posted up there says that at best WD is the only one effected, however, most consumers are stupid and will believe anything, which is why raising the prices across the boards work.

Except people like us suffer.

@Qing Dao: The article says that ASUS will run out drives by the end of November, I don't how much of that is true and how much of it is false. But if these prices stay like this, we'll need Black Friday just to buy these drives at their regular price.

 

I think a misconception between those who think that this is an artificial shortage is that hard drives that are not from WD are mostly not manufactured in Thailand. Perhaps their assembly is not in Thailand, but what about the circuity? The drive controllers? Those are made in Thailand (and other parts of the world), and those have been affected, so it's an across the board shortage. It just depends on the extent of the shortage, and judging by the news I'd say the situation in Thailand is really, really bad right now so it isn't entirely without reason that prices are skyrocketing at the moment. Just because Samsung's brand (for example) is plastered on the drive and the words "Made in China" are on the drive does not mean everything on the drive is from China, more often than not the components from a drive come from all over the world, and once any one of these components experience a shortage, the entire hard drive cannot be manufactured until the supply of that component is restored.

Just my two cents on the matter.

 

^ I agree with you and I understand where you are coming from, but nothing warrants a $170 increase on the merchandise though. I understand that there is most probably going to be a shortage but nothing states that it will be a permanent, the current price for a 3TB WD Caviar Green is $288, when I bought mine off eBay it was listed at $115 (new/unused). Just saying, the price increase is obscenely high.

 

I agree that the price increase is very high, but the floods aren't expected to subside for weeks and it would take months for production to restart. Also, during that period of time, operations have to be transferred to other factories and these costs all inevitably pass down to consumers. Maybe the silence from the companies on why the price increase is so staggering makes some of us unhappy and suspicious, but whenever crises like this happens all we can do is wait, moaning about it won't help matters

 

Thankfully, most of the time, hard drives aren't "OMG I NEED IT NOW!" items unless yours dies, and hopefully in that case you're still covered under warranty. Delete some old stuff or copy it to DVD if you're running out of room and wait it out.

 

And a good two cents it was.

For instance you guys could try googling NIDEC.

Expect knock on effects with laptops and PC's.

 

Something else to consider: Manufacturers are still going to have to provide support for their products. Perhaps any existing supplies that would otherwise have been sent to retail channels are being diverted for return/replacement purposes.

 

I would recommend anyone trying to buy a hard drive as their primary operating drive to reconsider and buy a solid-state drive, simply because of the price increase.

 

I would recommend anyone that is buying anything to buy it only if they 'need' it, not simply 'want' it.

If it's a 'want', then the $$$ shouldn't matter anyway.

 

I bought a 1TB Caviar Green a few weeks ago for $65. Now Newegg has the same drive listed for about $130.

 

You guys are ignorant, i dont mean that in a rude way i mean it as not knowing. WD is affected by the floods in Thailand. Nidec is under water as well and they product HDD Motors. That will also affect the others...

 

I don't think that applies to SSDs does it?

 

Haven't seen SSD prices climbing (HDD thread...).

 

Yeah but the guy made it seem like it was for all drives hdd or otherwise.

 

this is getting insane now ....
WD green 2TB i bought last month for 70$ is now selling at 140$.....

 

By 'others' I'm sure he meant other than WD.

 

This is Gods way of saying "Get your butt in to gear and stop living in the 90s. Buy a SSD"

 

WD Scorpio Black 750GB 7200 RPM Drive....$89.99 a few months ago.

Now it's $179.99 on Amazon.

 

Yes, some e-tailers are increasing margin, but that doesn't mean the end of the world. A bigger question is doesn't anyone shop around anymore? Or do ppl not know how to look for the best prices?

For example, at the time of this post, you can purchase a Scorpio Black 750GB for $120 at Office Depot. It's not $90 USD, but this price is only $10 more than I found three weeks ago.

 

Living in the 90's? I don't want an SSD.