Falling hard drive prices.

[Gigantopithecus]

I've purchased a dozen of these over the last few days at $60 apiece, which is only 50% higher than their pre-flood daily price of $40 each. That said, it's nice to not have to drop a Benjamin on a 500GB HDD.

Do you think hard drive prices will decrease to their pre-flood points?

 

[Arachnotronic]

Probably, but the better question is, do you guys think Seagate and Western Digital stock will go to pre-flood prices?

 

[MacGyverSG1]

Not any time soon.

My concern is reliability. It seems like all 1TB+ HDDs are junk these days. A lot of DOAs and failures within a year. I don't know who to buy anymore. It's a tossup between WD and Hitachi (which I believe is part of WD now).

 

[jhansman]

It's no coincidence that Samsung stopped making rotational media. I'm glad I got my 1TB F1s back when I did; don't know what I'll replace them with when they die. SSDs might be that inexpensive by then at the rate they're going.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

It's no coincidence that Samsung stopped making rotational media. I'm glad I got my 1TB F1s back when I did; don't know what I'll replace them with when they die. SSDs might be that inexpensive by then at the rate they're going.

...because Seagate bought their HD manufacturing business, and was in negotiations to do so even before the flood?

 

[StrangerGuy]

I spent less than $56 for a single 1TB F3. Even 1TB Hitachis now still cost 2x as much even after a loooong period of trickling price drops.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I paid $60 for my 1TB Seagate 7200.12 drives, before the floods. Even after the floods, I picked up two more from a BestBuy B&M before they raised their prices.

 

[jhansman]

...because Seagate bought their HD manufacturing business, and was in negotiations to do so even before the flood?

It's more interesting to me that Samsung sold than Seagate bought. Personally, I've probably bought my last mechanical drive.

 

[Zap]

Do you think hard drive prices will decrease to their pre-flood points?

Supposedly in 2014.

Last Samsung 1TB F3 I purchased cost $50 shipped.

 

[Gigantopithecus]

Supposedly in 2014.

Last Samsung 1TB F3 I purchased cost $50 shipped.

I'm skeptical of that source as it states that "Average selling price is said to have been stable throughout Q1 of 2012 and is expected to drop only slightly in Q2 2012."

That's absolutely false: http://camelegg.com/product/N82E16822136769

Yes, I realize this is one model, but it's gone from $120 on December 30th 2011 to $65 as of today. I'd say that's a far cry from 'stable' and 'slight drop.'

 

[Emulex]

its price fixing. but 600gb sas drives are now cheap again thank god!

anyone know if TLER is enabled on velociraptor 1TB (for sure?) the old ones came in consumer and "ENTERPRISE in big yellow sticker" models.

but sas kicks balls over mixed sata/sas with a good sas controller. sata with SAS mixed on an expander is just a mess.

 

[thelastjuju]

Its still a really bad time to buy a HDD.

Now that Seagate owns Samsung and WD owns Hitachi, its easier than ever for colluding and price fixing to take place. It honestly even seems as if the entire industry got together and decided that anywhere between 10-20% failure rates are perfectly acceptable nowadays too. The reliability on just about every 1tb-2tb+ drive (besides the exceptions of the excellent track records of the WD Black 1tb WD1001FALS and Samsung 2tb F4 prior to it being manufactured by Seagate) seems its higher than its EVER been.

But at least its a good time for people to transition to SSD's for the MAIN drive. Going to be quite some time until I can store the amount of storage I have on SSD's.

If I can get a few 500-640gb drives for a good enough price, I may just prefer to span 2tb of data over four of them. Plus the probability that all 4x 500gb drives would die is outrageously low compared to how easy it would be for just 1x 2000gb to die out. Even though I have everything backed up, a hard drive failure is absolutely nothing nice.

 

[mikeymikec]

Its still a really bad time to buy a HDD.

Now that Seagate owns Samsung and WD owns Hitachi, its easier than ever for colluding and price fixing to take place. It honestly even seems as if the entire industry got together and decided that anywhere between 10-20% failure rates are perfectly acceptable nowadays too. The reliability on just about every 1tb-2tb+ drive (besides the exceptions of the excellent track records of the WD Black 1tb WD1001FALS and Samsung 2tb F4 prior to it being manufactured by Seagate) seems its higher than its EVER been.

IF that was true (10-20% failure rates), which it isn't, they would have to be pretty stupid to engage in a tactic like that, partly because they would get investigated by just about every developed country / union out there, but partly also because SSDs are probably going to start taking huge amounts of HDD business in the next ten years, and any reputation they might have built up as a reliable manufacturer of anything would be shot to hell by what would look like obvious collusion.

Admittedly companies do act pretty stupidly, like the way Ahead (makers of Nero) is acting by bloating Nero beyond belief instead of just doing minor bug fixes and necessary additions to Nero 6 (such as Blu-Ray writing) and using what would have been a decent reputation to accelerate sales of a new product that would allow them to move beyond dependence on optical media. Ahead/Nero should have been polishing a "Gold edition" of Nero with a lifetime update subscription, being fully aware that fewer and fewer people are going to want it, while funding development into whatever Next Big Thing they feel most comfortable about migrating to.

 

[TonyScott]

Drive broke down two days ago and i had to replace it. Searched for a 1TB lower than $50 but found none. Had to settle with a $90 Seagate. Now I'm wondering if I made the right choice. I heard somewhere that you can freeze an HDD to restore it but never tried it though. (If somebody tells me that it might just bring back my HDD to life, I'll knock my head on the wall...)

 

[Revolution 11]

If your concern is your data, freezing the drive could be risky and is definitely a last resort method. Make sure to follow the guides for hard drive freezing (moisture protection, etc) and if the drive works, back up the data immediately until the drive dies for real.

If your concern is the hard drive, just buy another one. I would never use a drive that failed and then was restored by freezing it. You can bet your house that there will be increased data corruption and stability errors.

 

[jaydee]

As much as price, I'm just as concerned (if not moreso) about the length of warranties shrinking to as little as 1-year. You have to buy a WD RE4 or Black to get the 5-year warranty and they cost $120 for 1TB

All of the low cost HD's that I see only come with 1 year warranties...

 

[Revolution 11]

Blame the duopoly that is now in control of the world's hard drive production. I would normally say that it might be time for splitting both companies in half to make 4 competitors but hard drives is a very mature, highly technical, low-margin product that may not support many companies.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Have a couple of unused 1TB F1s, 2TB F4s and Hitachis around.
Who knew HDDs would be a better investment than gold

 

[Gigantopithecus]

As much as price, I'm just as concerned (if not moreso) about the length of warranties shrinking to as little as 1-year. You have to buy a WD RE4 or Black to get the 5-year warranty and they cost $120 for 1TB

All of the low cost HD's that I see only come with 1 year warranties...

WD's Blue line OEM drives have a two year warranty. Agreed, though, that the decrease in warranty length on many drives is a bummer for consumers.

 

[Gigantopithecus]

I paid $60 for my 1TB Seagate 7200.12 drives, before the floods. Even after the floods, I picked up two more from a BestBuy B&M before they raised their prices.

I purchased 38 1TB 7200.12s from various Best Buys at $70 per when it became obvious that this was going to be bad. Then they lowered the price to $55 a week later - I did not do the price adjustment over nine receipts at the same time at the same store.

Have a couple of unused 1TB F1s, 2TB F4s and Hitachis around.
Who knew HDDs would be a better investment than gold

I did. Thankful for 0% APR credit cards. Only have a handful of those Seagates left, though.

 

[Revolution 11]

I purchased 38 1TB 7200.12s from various Best Buys at $70 per when it became obvious that this was going to be bad. Then they lowered the price to $55 a week later - I did not do the price adjustment over nine receipts at the same time at the same store.

What? This is blasphemy. Why would you buy at a Best Buy? Why? D:

Never feed the beast.

Smart decision on hoarding those hard drives though, :thumbsup:. Wish I had gotten in on it.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Smart decision on hoarding those hard drives though, :thumbsup:. Wish I had gotten in on it.

I'm just bloody thankful that I rebuilt both my fileservers (2x 15x 2TB) right before the floods hit

 

[thelastjuju]

WD's Blue line OEM drives have a two year warranty. Agreed, though, that the decrease in warranty length on many drives is a bummer for consumers.

hah and the blue drives I used to buy had three year warranties!

Warranty goes down, red flag goes up.

I'm thinking these WD EURS might not be a bad choice.. they come with 3 year warranties:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136783

But they do advertise the dreaded "intellipark" feature with this drive. :'(

 

[WT]

Last Samsung 1TB F3 I purchased cost $50 shipped.

I recall that deal. I bought 2 for $105 shipped. Won't see that deal repeated anytime soon.

 

[Zap]

I recall that deal. I bought 2 for $105 shipped. Won't see that deal repeated anytime soon.

Especially since the new "Samsung" drives are rebranded Seagates.