Consumer Alert - Buy Hard Drives Now. Prices To Rise.

[MustISO]

Micro Center is still honoring sale prices and they had a crap load of drives on the shelves. It may get bad for consumers at some point but the OEMs are probably really feeling it.

 

[SparkyJJO]

My boss tried to pick up a few drives at Microcenter and they told him no, he couldn't get more than two.

I have a refurb 1 TB Seagate ES.2 drive sitting here unused (just got back from warranty) if for some reason I need any more space. I have only just reached half-full on my current 1 TB drive that I've had for a couple years however, so I doubt I'll be needing more space anytime soon.

 

[Jeff7]

I agree completely that mechanical drives still have much to offer in terms of value for quantity of storage, but my point still stands that SSD manufacturers should jump on this opportunity to gain as much market share as possible. They don't really need to be 100% competitive on a $/GB basis, but if they can make arguments for the drives being more reliable, faster, physically smaller, more power efficient, and priced reasonably higher, I think they can do some serious damage in the marketplace. I also doubt that there will be many more times in the near future that mechanical HDD prices will quite literally double in price overnight and if they play their cards right they can definitely use this to their advantage.

I guess I'm making an argument for the potential in this situation, but most likely you are right about how it will actually turn out. In the end I don't care, I just need more TBs!

It definitely would be nice to finally be able to ditch our sophisticated little record players, no argument there.

But yeah, I see what you mean that this would be a good time to do the market share thing. Once you've seen a PC with a SSD in action, you're not going to want to go back. And you might also go preach the good word to your friends.
"Ok, I'll get this program started loading and get back to....oh, it's done already."


(My dad's new computer has an SSD as the primary drive, thanks to my own purchase of one awhile ago. He likes the speed of course...though he also went from a ~1GHz AMD T-bird to an i3-2120T - dual core, 2.6GHz. And about 5x more RAM.)

 

[SparkyJJO]

I was working with a tablet recently at work. It is an Atom processor, ran Windows 7 (which sucks on a tablet, by the way - Windows 8 is looking to be much, much better suited for tablet use). Anyway, I was amazed how fast the thing booted up and then found it has an SSD. Dang it, now I want one in my PC. Still can't justify the cost :\

 

[jjmIII]

Why do you need "proof" on "the hdd thing". Just google it.

I guess I'm just laughing you think hdd's are being "held back" like diamonds. I want links that say hdd thing is artificial like diamonds....that is what you said. And not one link. I want a bunch!

 

[Dulanic]

Artificial or not it sucks.... I can't find a 2TB 7200 drive for under $100 which was easy to find a week ago.

 

[PBat51]

Artificial or not it sucks.... I can't find a 2TB 7200 drive for under $100 which was easy to find a week ago.

Believe it or not.... check Best Buy:\

 

[ElFenix]

new microcenter ad is out, i don't see an internal hard drive. there's a couple external units but profit margins have always been good on those.

 

[bankster55]

According to this article its gonna get a lot worse.
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/4385/thailand_flood_leads_to_hdd_drought/index.html

 

[batmanuel]

I'm so glad I grabbed a 750GB laptop drive a few weeks ago for my wife's Macbook. I was planning on getting it during the holiday sales, but I found a good Shellshocker deal at Newegg and jumped on that. What i paid $50 at the beginning of the month is now running $100. It's crazy!

 

[formulav8]

A few days ago I bought a 2TB HD for $70 shipped. Now its over $135 for the same drive @ newegg. That is just wackey.

 

[Mitch101]

Yup looks like prices have doubled. Glad I cleared out a bunch of stuff I might just burn a few discs to make room.

 

[Rakewell]

Anyone have any idea how long this is gonna last?

 

[videopho]

Anyone have any idea how long this is gonna last?

Actually no one knows because simply the disaster has continued to wreck havoc the region.
Some people do not realize that this is going to impact everybody whether directly or indirectly.

 

[Miklebud]

Just picked myself up a 2TB External for $90 at BestBuy... Waited too long to finally buy a back-up drive.

 

[Harvey]

I scored five jars of TJ's peanut butter, per my previous alert. I may use them as a hedge to pay for future hard drives. :biggrin:

 

[formulav8]

The OEM's are majorly going to feel it. They won't be able to sell $$300-400 computers with 750gb-1TB hd's anymore. It will be 320GB or something now. I at least hope i'll get their lost customers.


Edit: my $70 2TB HD is now $150 :thumbsdown:

 

[mephiston5]

I ended up getting a SSD rather than a HD for my new build. I just could not bring myself to pay the going market rate for a good HD.

Sad that it takes a major interruption in our global supply chain to really notice/care about the hardships of others.

 

[Mloot]

Yesterday I scored a Seagate 2tb (5900rpm) drive for $75 + tax at CompUSA. It was the last one on the shelf with a red sale tag. It rung up at the register for 139.99, and I had to take the cashier to the shelf to show him the tag, and then it took a manager to override the 139 price. I needed a storage drive for my htpc build, and I felt lucky to pay what I did considering the recent markup.

 

[batmanuel]

The external prices seem to be holding for now at least in the B&M retail stores, thanks to their sale ads that were printed way in advance. I just grabbed a WD 2TB external from Staples for $100 to tide me over until the hard drive prices get back to normal.

 

[wirelessenabled]

I scored five jars of TJ's peanut butter, per my previous alert. I may use them as a hedge to pay for future hard drives. :biggrin:

+1 Too funny:biggrin:

 

[knightc2]

Man, this sucks. Piecing together a new build and was all set to get either two Samsung F3's or two Hitachi 7K1000.D for a RAID setup and the prices have more than doubled! Would go SSD but the reliability has me concerned. Wonder what this will do to OEMs with BF and the holiday shopping season coming up...

 

[Emulex]

i got the last 500 of those 160gb drives - now i'm gonna be rich!!

 

[Exodor]

Holy hell.

I bought this Samsung 2 TB drive for $79 back in May.

It's $229 now.


I guess I'll wait to build that RAID...

 

[Nebor]

I should part out my NAS comprised of 3TB drives for profit!