Hard Drive Prices Soar 28 Percent After Thai Floods

CommanderFrank

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The analyst’s predictions for a shortfall of hard drives have come to pass and are now beginning to wane. Prices increased 28%, peaking around the middle of the fourth quarter and are now beginning to stabilize as the HDD manufacturers’ production slowly comes back online in flood ravaged Thailand.

"The recovery of global HDD manufacturing has begun and will continue during each quarter of 2012," said Fang Zhang, a storage analyst for IHS, in a statement. "However, the recovery will be prolonged for at least two more quarters”.
 
Doh, was hoping the prices would start receding instead of stabilizing... guess more waiting is in order.
 
What are the failure rates going to be on these new "first run" drives?
Are we taking bets?
 
Doh, was hoping the prices would start receding instead of stabilizing... guess more waiting is in order.

Same here. Need to pick up 2TB drive since my available space on my current one is running out. But with the current prices, I can wait for "two quarters."
 
Amazon's prices on the WD 1TB drives I bought a while ago are still up by almost 100%. 28% my ass.
 
Yeah that's the thing. Many many people were regular consumers of mechanical hard drives the world over, especially here in the United States. Quantity makes these company huge profits, not holding back and gouging prices on fewer sold units, that I know as fact. The faster they can get these drives back in the stores at prices we were accustomed to, the better.
 
28% where ? WD20EARX 75 euros before the flood, 200e at top, still at 120 euros. Cheapo 160GB drives at 35 euros before flood, 69e after and still there.
 
What are the failure rates going to be on these new "first run" drives?
Are we taking bets?

Well, there's a reason the manufacturers don't have near as much faith in the drives they're going to be making this year and have correspondingly reduced warranties from 5 or 3 years down to 1 year.

Seagate though had their profits MORE than triple (from $159 million over 3 months to $581 million over 3 months), so you can bet they'll want this idea of a shortage to continue for as long as possible.
 
Amazon's prices on the WD 1TB drives I bought a while ago are still up by almost 100%. 28% my ass.

100%, pshh, try more like 200%. Right before the flood I bought a Spinpoint F3 for $55 shipped. Last I checked they were going for $150+ w/o shipping.
 
If you need them, buy them.

Yes, and if you don't, don't. I would like more storage but don't need it by any means. It is a luxury item until mine fail or prices come down. Prices aren't going to budge until supply exceeds demand. :(
 
Amazon's prices on the WD 1TB drives I bought a while ago are still up by almost 100%. 28% my ass.

Agreed. Not sure where they got their baseline prices, but the WD Green 2TB that was available for 60 beans before the flood is selling for $190 on newegg now. I'm just glad that I grabbed it at BestBuy when they put it on sale for 79 beans this past November.
 
My pr0n collection is gettting expensive :p

It would be nice if SSD prices came down.
 
Agreed. Not sure where they got their baseline prices, but the WD Green 2TB that was available for 60 beans before the flood is selling for $190 on newegg now. I'm just glad that I grabbed it at BestBuy when they put it on sale for 79 beans this past November.

Same, here :eek:. It was a bit excessive when I bought both on sale back in July or so, but now... I've managed to use all but 1TB combined across the two.
 
building a new box as a gift for the parents....and i have to say that buying the HDD is the most painful :p
 
Waiting here too.

Would normally have bought a few 2tb drives for space, but decided to do some cleaning instead and found enough space for now. Backup are useful, but with failure rates so high for all brands now, no choice but to raid them for anything important.
 
I wouldn't be surprised if the 28% quoted was OEM costs increase. Like Dell, Lenovo, etc.
 
Been waiting out this Thailand flood for along time. I want to see 3TB for 110 around that range :)
 
I wouldn't be surprised if the 28% quoted was OEM costs increase. Like Dell, Lenovo, etc.

And the brick and mortar played the shortage game to the hilt. All the hard drives sitting in their warehouses before the flood all of a sudden looked wet to them and up the price went.:D
 
Our company was planning to add a couple of SANS this quarter but decided to wait due to the inflated price of HDDs. We'd be paying approximately 3x as much for 3/4 the amount of storage.
 
You guys just like to complain. Hard drives are dirt cheap. Compared to the Intel 520 SSD... ^-^
 
Was going to.upgrade my old and tired 500gb storage drive to a pair of 1tb WD black drives but until retailers at least use some lube when they bend me over..
 
What are the failure rates going to be on these new "first run" drives?
Are we taking bets?

Wait, basically they have to replace the all production equipment as well?

Man, this is more depressing than I first thought.
 
Wait what 28% increase?

*does math*
500GB HD last year cost $45
500GB HD this year cost $90

*punches in calculator*
*smoke emerges*

Yeah I guess they're right 28%
 
What are the failure rates going to be on these new "first run" drives?
Are we taking bets?

My suspicion is that it will be higher than normal. Newer machines, possibly more dust around from the construction, and I'm sure it takes quite a few production runs to tweak everything 100%. I could be wrong though.

I'm just glad I managed to ride through the worse of this, I still have 2 spare drives not counting my hot spare. I am starting to run low on space though, but I can probably do a cleanup. Lot of the data is duplicated.
 
What the hell average drive prices was this guy checking? Prices went up far more than "28%" /facepalm.
 
I've always bought verbatim dvdr's on sale to offload my porn, so I don't need to buy new hard drives.
~$20 for a 100pack.

dvdr's and bdr's are how you deal with this shit.
Also, you won't lose 2tb of shit from a click of death.
 
Wait what 28% increase?

*does math*
500GB HD last year cost $45
500GB HD this year cost $90

*punches in calculator*
*smoke emerges*

Yeah I guess they're right 28%

Why do you think that every HDD on the planet is bought through places like newegg? A vast and significant majority of HDD's are sold to OEM's. They have nice contracts in place which guarantee a certain amount at certain price. These contracts are more important that a small business or the home user.

What is left is sold to companies like Newegg, etc. The thing here is that there is no "real contract". Newegg says "I want X drives of Y type". However, it is more than Newegg. Since supply doesn't meat demand (at leat not yet), they can sell the drives to who will pay the most. The prices keep going up until the supply/demand equation balances "nicely". Just after the floods...places like Newegg were fucking us over intentionally. Now, it is the consumer fucking themselves over by being willing to play those prices so seagate/etc can keep the prices where they are.

Why is an iPad $600? People pay it.

My guess is people here want a law which forces supply to exceed demand so price is always minimized to the consumer. :p
 
I've always bought verbatim dvdr's on sale to offload my porn, so I don't need to buy new hard drives.
~$20 for a 100pack.

dvdr's and bdr's are how you deal with this shit.
Also, you won't lose 2tb of shit from a click of death.

Actually, if you have a Blu-Ray burner you can get a pack of 20 (500GB) for $16.79 shipped. Too bad the burners are still frickin expensive.
 
Actually, if you have a Blu-Ray burner you can get a pack of 20 (500GB) for $16.79 shipped. Too bad the burners are still frickin expensive.
Thats because sony and the others, through climate warming, have had their warehouses constantly flooded by monsoons for the last few years:eek: The waters are slowly receding as you can tell from the slow price drops. :D
 
I've always bought verbatim dvdr's on sale to offload my porn, so I don't need to buy new hard drives.
~$20 for a 100pack.

dvdr's and bdr's are how you deal with this shit.
Also, you won't lose 2tb of shit from a click of death.

Search and access times are quite a bit worse for 400 DVDs than a 2TB drive though.
 
Lol this is news?

This^^^. This is old hat.
One thing for sure, I picked a bad time to want to build a WHS box. Last June I bought a WD 2TB black edition for $99 at Microcenter and now they want $279 for the same drive. I'll just have to wait for a few runs to pass by....
 
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