What's going on with Samsung's 2TB HDD pricing (HD204UI)?

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Limp Gawd
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Jun 17, 2009
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Samsung's 2TB EcoGreen Drive (HD204UI) has routinely sold for $59 online (Newegg, Frys, SuperBiiz, Mwave...) over the past year. Today I noticed that the price has shot up across the board by nearly fifty percent and in some cases 100%. Newegg for example is now selling the drive for $109 with $8 shipping or $58 more than what I paid 2 months ago ($59 w/ free shipping). Could this be a result of Seagate's acquisition of Samsung's HDD Division?
 
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Ah, understood. The people of Thailand have been hit hard these past few years :(
 
Yea, I actually had glanced at that the other day because I needed to pick up a couple more, and was shocked to see it over a $100. I'm hoping I can just wait it out.
 
I was wondering what was going on with Meritline's pricing when I got their email today. I thought, "This drive use to be $30-40 less not that long ago".
 
Hmm, SSD prices going down and platter drives are going up.
 
In my case, one of my HD204UI's has been acting funny so I wanted to purchase a spare to dump the data on to before doing an RMA with Samsung.

Just curious: Does anyone know if Samsung would sell a replacement logic board for the HD204UI? I'm pretty sure the HDD itself is working properly and that it's the logic board that is giving me the issue. I would swap boards with one of my working HD204UIs but I don't want to chance screwing up a second drive.

/edit: Just got a super-speedy reply from Samsung in under 5 minutes :eek: The answer was 'No' but I'm still floored by the response time.
 
Haha, better to get a quick response even if its not what you wanted to hear, than to be stuck waiting a week not knowing.

I'm sad that these have gone up - they were my go-to 2TB drives for price/performance/reliability, notwithstanding the initial firmware issue. Maybe its just me, but the next closest in price are Seagate and Hitachi, and I'm not a huge fan of either.
 
Safety said:
In my case, one of my HD204UI's has been acting funny so I wanted to purchase a spare to dump the data on to before doing an RMA with Samsung.
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Most companies will do an Advanced RMA, that way you can get the drive first, move your shit around, then send it off.
They will want a CC number on hand and give you X days to get the drive to them.
 
Thanks for the reminder BE but unfortunately Samsung does not offer Advanced RMAs.
 
also isnt it because of China holding back on "rare-earth" materials to get the price higher again ?
 
Amazon is now selling this drive (HD204UI) for $140 :eek:

Good thing I recently bought 10 of them from matrix563 for a fraction of that.

Im nearly out tho. This really really really sucks.
 
aviat72 said:
Check the dates; the latest cut started Oct 21 unlike your article from July 6.
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Exactly, they tried to cut supply once before and it didn't work. Once the market price increases, someone will start bitching out China until they fix it.
 
This the same HD204UI that I just ordered open box from newegg a couple days ago for $31.99 shipped that's on a UPS truck headed for my house as I type this?
 
SunnyD said:
This the same HD204UI that I just ordered open box from newegg a couple days ago for $31.99 shipped that's on a UPS truck headed for my house as I type this?
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Yes and the price for a new drive from Newegg has risen from $109 to $129 in the past 48 hours.
 
For those with a Micro Center nearby, they have these drives for $79. Not the best price they've been, but not bad and certainly better than the $130 Newegg wants. They do have a sign asking you to not buy more than two. This was at the Mayfield, OH store and they had a few on the shelf. I'm not sure if they had anymore in the back, so I suppose this is YMMV.

EDIT: They also had 2tb Western Digital Greens for $79, but I believe they were refurbs. The Samsungs are new OEM drives.
 
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good time for SSD players to take more market share. Not that SSDs are really 2TB replacements but you know every couple dollars pushes more people over the edge.
 
Keep in mind that Samsung sold their hard drive business to Seagate. Even with the above was not in play those drives are starting to leave the market.
 
rudy said:
good time for SSD players to take more market share. Not that SSDs are really 2TB replacements but you know every couple dollars pushes more people over the edge.
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Where this shortage will really have an effect is in the OEM laptop market where storage capacity is arguably secondary to the power savings, decrease in heat and high tolerance to shock offered by SSDs. Not to mention the 'snappiness' factor when compared to a slow 2.5" hdd.
 
prometheum said:
wonder why external HDDs aren't being affected by this nearly as much. Target around here still has 2GB WD elements for 120; Seagate 2TBs for 115, best buy has WD mybooks for 2GB for $90! that's a steal even for just a WD Green inside...think i may pick one or 2 up this weekend
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A local store like Target isn't likely to update their prices as quickly, I wouldn't think.
 
GoldenTiger said:
A local store like Target isn't likely to update their prices as quickly, I wouldn't think.
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best buy should definitely know; and large chains like target would notice interruptions in the supply chain like this. even external HDDs at the egg are pretty cheap. <$120 for a 2TB drove is a pretty smoking deal pre or post flood
 
The 2tb Samsung F4 is now available @ newegg for the low price of $229.99 + $7.28 shipping. My server picked a wonderful time to have it's drive fail. The cheapest 500gb drive is over $100 after shipping at newegg.
 
Safety said:
Where this shortage will really have an effect is in the OEM laptop market where storage capacity is arguably secondary to the power savings, decrease in heat and high tolerance to shock offered by SSDs. Not to mention the 'snappiness' factor when compared to a slow 2.5" hdd.
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ASUS is going to run out of HDDs at the end of the month, and that certainly will have a big impact on the laptop market:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/31/small_profit_for_asus/

So THAT is when you are going to start seeing things you haven't ever seen before in the HDD market. If you're a business that regularly buys batches of HDDs, you had better start considering your options now.
 
Vediovus said:
The 2tb Samsung F4 is now available @ newegg for the low price of $229.99 + $7.28 shipping. My server picked a wonderful time to have it's drive fail. The cheapest 500gb drive is over $100 after shipping at newegg.
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Best buy 2tb external drive for $80
 
Geez this is crazy. Hopefully I can ride this out.
 
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