HDD prices rising

Damn, I guess stuff really is that much cheaper in the states still then. I don't get it, our dollar has been par for over a year, yet we still pay more for everything. I think I paid a bit over $100 for 1TB WD Blacks and I thought that was an insane deal. (before the flood) They're currently $179 now here. (Newegg)
 
I'm guessing your Canadian as well? Well WD Blacks have always had a price premium, but I can concur with the others that prices were that low. I paid $59 each for 2TB Seagate Green (yes only the lowly energy efficient models, but ideal for storage on my server) with free shipping from my favorite online retailer in B.C. :D
 
I'm just hoping that the prices of hard drives make it back down to pre-flooding and does not stay at the prices they are now. That would suck.
 
it's strange going into fry's these days and seeing the shelves half empty of hard drives. this was never the case before.
 
Deptacon said:
I hate these green drives, I am trying to get rid of the 5 I have. They go to sleep every 30 seconds....annoying.
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What green drives do you have and how long have you had them?

I like that they go to sleep....that's what I want them to do so I can leave my server on 24/7.
 
AQ_OC said:
What green drives do you have and how long have you had them?

I like that they go to sleep....that's what I want them to do so I can leave my server on 24/7.
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It's probably a WD green, they park the heads every once in a while. Easy fix with wddidle.exe from freedos, set it at a high value or complete disable if you expect (or need) these drives to be ready at all times or manually spin them down.
 
Seagate is a very bad example, as they are pretty much the only one not affected by the flood, but only by increased demand on customer market at elevated prices thanks to the lower supply from other manufacturers.
 
Expansion said:
Because they are greedy. They don't only want to get a 0% loss from the flood, they want to make big profit over it. I bet they would cause another flood if they could.

Seagate Announces Quarterly Cash Dividend Increase by 39%, Share Repurchase of $1B
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Really simple logic.

Fact: The flood caused a pretty serious dip in the production levels
Fact: The production levels no longer met demand

So do you in a capitalistic society:

a) Keep drives at the same price and take a huge loss while trying to get your factories back up in order to keep the self-centered willing to trample grandma on black Friday happy

or

b) Keep raising the prices until supply vs demand equal out

Who's fault is it for putting their business in such a point to allow this to happen? My guess is you guys had no problem large OEM's putting the screws to Seagate, etc when demand exceeded supply and push the prices down.

The shear hypocrisy and irony in this thread is amazing. The reason the drive prices are what they are is because people are willing to pay those prices. Not rocket science...but I guess it must be.
 
Sjakie said:
It's probably a WD green, they park the heads every once in a while. Easy fix with wddidle.exe from freedos, set it at a high value or complete disable if you expect (or need) these drives to be ready at all times or manually spin them down.
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I had assumed they were WD greens...I was hoping they were 2TB or more and maybe he wanted to sell them...I'd be interested in they still have warranty left.
 
I'll start buying drives again when the 3TB 5K3000 comes back down to 129. When I built my server they were already down to 109.99 on sale.
 
spankit said:
I'll start buying drives again when the 3TB 5K3000 comes back down to 129. When I built my server they were already down to 109.99 on sale.
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I got my 3TB 5K3000 drives for $105 shipped. I'm not buying any drives till they are under $100. Since I got six of those 3TB drives just before the flood, I can afford to wait.
 
It's interesting that 3TB Hitachi's (5400rpm) are more expensive than 3TB WD (5400rpm).
 
Trepidati0n said:
Who's fault is it for putting their business in such a point to allow this to happen? My guess is you guys had no problem large OEM's putting the screws to Seagate, etc when demand exceeded supply and push the prices down.
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So professor, when demand outstrips supply the price goes....down?

Your logic is semi-sound, however the reality wouldnt quite bear it out.

The reason any manufacturer (in any industry) would allow itself to be screwed to the ground by any one customer would two fold, firstly to gain the economies of scale allowing them to develop a bigger purchasing power/new technology increasing effeciency thus reducing cost across the entire business. Secondly because that contract was being cross-subsidised by other profit making contracts and divisions.

There is a third reason for being screwed by any one customer which is short term cashflow but I dont think that was the case with any HD manufacturer in the recent times.

The truth is the prices before the flood were at equilibrium, supply and demand meant the prices were as low as they were, if the manufacturers were not making money at that level then they wouldnt have survived. The external impact of the floods restricted supply thus causing the prices to rise - basic economics, however to what extent the prices rose depends on the real supply difficulties (we will never know the internal figues for each manufacturer) and the elasticity of demand for the product (which most manufucturers will have a good idea of but will be commercially sensative so again we will never know).

In reality drives are coming back down in price so we should be happy, how quick they are coming down can be moaned about but without the hard figues its impossible to judge if the price is still being artifically inflated.
 
young_one said:
So professor, when demand outstrips supply the price goes....down?

Your logic is semi-sound, however the reality wouldnt quite bear it out.
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It was a typo...but if you were smart enough, based upon my previous posts, you would have figured that out. ;)
 
Trepidati0n said:
It was a typo...but if you were smart enough, based upon my previous posts, you would have figured that out. ;)
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Yeah it was meant it in a jokey way, forgot to put the smiley but the professor bit sort of implied it.

On a side note, over here in the UK drives are slowly reducing in price, there does seem to be a premium on the high end consumer drives that isnt falling as fast as other segments of the market.

SSD's however are dropping fast, hopefully a trend that will continue as I would quite like some 512gb boot drives in RAID 1 for my home server.
 
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Seagate has a 4TB external, however I have not seen them sell it as internal only.
 
tbNB said:
Internal 4TB Seagate Barracuda XT ST4000DX000 now on amazon (pricey at $450):
http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Barra...ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1328801646&sr=1-1
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Not really, these are external GoFlex drives dismantled by the vendor, with the same 1-year warranty that comes with all external drives, not the usual 3 or 5 years warranty. They also have the exact same model number as the external drive. There are no official internal 4TB drives released by Seagate yet.
So the question is, would you buy a Seagate 4TB external drive with enclosure and transformer for $250, or the same drive without the enclosure and transformer for $450? ;)

Seagate always has this kind of stupid delay between the release of external and internal drives of the same capacity. I hope in this case it's because the internal drives will be using the 1TB platters that have been in full production since late last year, instead of the 5 x 800GB platters of the external drive.

I bought 2 of their external 3TB drives 2 years ago, one to use as external backup drive, one to dismantle and use internally. Both are still working great and used almost daily.
But this time I'd rather wait for the 1TB platters.
 
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My Seagate GoFlex 3TB external has a 2 year warranty, not a one year warranty.
 
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