HDD prices

[Dird]

I guess most of you are living in a happy world of TBs or at the very least 320GB+. I, however, am stuck here with an 160GB HDD (my 1TB external HDD probably has that in a certain kind of asian movie alone).

Does anyone remember what you could get 500GB/1TB HDDs for before the flood? I bought my external HDD over 1 year ago for $93 but that same external now costs $117

That way I can see if/how much they're falling back to normal price since one site said Q1 this year to return while another said 2013...

 

[GoStumpy]

They were ridiculously low, which I think is a part to play in why the flood skyrocketed them with so much 'media' attention... To allow manufacturers to get the prices back to a reasonable level... We may not see pre-flood prices ever again...

I paid $59.99 with free shipping for my 1TB WD Blue drive (WD10EALX), mere weeks before the flood...

I think ~$75 is reasonable for a slow 1TB HDD, so when they're in the $75-$85 range I wouldn't feel bad buying one again :thumbsup: Right now they're in the $125-$130 range for 1.5TB and 1TB drives alike, :'(

 

[Dird]

No such thing as ridiculously low

 

[MrTeal]

It still seems like the best value in something like a 2TB drive is just buying an external drive. You can pick up a 2TB GoFlex for less than the cost of buying a bare 2TB drive at regular prices, and external drives are much more likely to have sales and rebates on them.

http://camelegg.com/product/N82E16822136514
I miss the good old days.

 

[SabaII]

Anyone hear anything about when the prices will start to settle down further?

 

[BoberFett]

I'm running desparately low on hard drive space. I'd like to put a 2TB drive in my machine and use a 2TB WD Mybook Live for redundancy (I'm getting nervous about my data) but I'm balking at paying $400 for the pair. If that's what I have to do I guess I'll suck it up, but I was hoping prices would return faster.

 

[aigomorla]

No such thing as ridiculously low

i was looking at 2TB's to build another RAID5 array.

They were arround 69.99 -> 79.99 in price b4 floods.

Now those same HDD are 149.99 -> 189.99

I call that rediculously low b4 the floods.


Anyhow i dont think we will ever see decient prices on HDD for a while.

Newegg seems to be controling the prices... and they realized people are still paying for them at those odd prices.

Data centers need to be up, and my friend said, they couldnt set one up because of the HDD shortages.

But once a vendor has sniffed profit on a exponential level, its hard to tell them to stop.

Anyhow... its a nice time to move over to SSD's...
I expect to see HDD prices flatten out as soon as the primary supply tell these secondary vendors to stop acting like captialistic pigs and correct their prices... because this can only hurt the PC industry with less upgrades... and less people buying stuff means less production, which also means less chances for things getting cheaper.

 

[truckerCLOCK]

Prices just went up ...well on the drive I was looking at a ..WD 3tb which was $199 @ Newegg, today it is $219

 

[superjim]

It's pretty crazy how the flood shot HDD prices through the roof. I picked up 2x 2TB Hitachi 5900rpm drives for my NAS for $60 bucks each from newegg a few months before the flood. The same 2TB HDD now is over twice that much ($150 + $7 shipping) on newegg! I should wipe them and ebay them....

 

[Soundmanred]

Bought 3 2TB drives for less than $70 each on Black Friday at Office Depot. I figured it was my last chance for a while for cheap storage, and I'm glad I did!

 

[Blain]

Does anyone remember what you could get 500GB/1TB HDDs for before the flood?

I don't remember prices for those drives.
But I do remember paying $200 for a 10GB 5400rpm IBM HD.

Prices are cheaper these days.

 

[jjmIII]

Does anyone remember what you could get 500GB/1TB HDDs for before the flood?

I was buying Samsung F3 1TB's for $50 shipped. They were always in Hot Deals.
Against my better judgement I bought a 1TB 7200.12 @ TD for some crazy deal of $34, never used it....It sold on eBay in days for $108 .

 

[GaiaHunter]

1 year ago a samsung f3 1TB cost me €50 - same shop is €108 now.
1 year ago a 2tb external hard drive WD Elements cost me €75 now it is €139 on the same shop.

 

[aigomorla]

i honestly expect the prices to stay high until middle of this year.

i dont expect them to fall, because as i said, it takes the supply line themselves to tell the vendors to correct the prices.

At this point, the industry isnt as rich as they used to be, hence they are enjoying the extra income.

What SSD makers are now doing tho is partying... because they should see an increase in SSD sales, which i hope will drive SSD prices down even lower, and make HDD supplies act quickly.

Once ur on a SSD, u cant go back.. unless ur using it for purely storage reasons.

 

[MrTeal]

I worry that these are the kinds of times when industries collude. There's very few large players in the HDD market, and all of them have been hurt by the flooding. There's already a justifiable reason why prices have skyrocketed, it wouldn't take much for them to get together and agree that while they could start to lower prices as costs go down and pent up demand dries up, they might just just go down slower and not as far as they would have normally.

Hope I'm wrong, because I'd love to pick up a couple 2 TB drives to replace a half dozen 500GB / 1TB drives.

 

[bryanW1995]

Remember that there is now literally 1/2 the competition that we had a year ago with Samsung/Hitachi selling their hdd business units. And as awesome/cool/etc as ssd's are, the vast majority of people need more than a 256gb storage drive. I'd be very surprised if the deals get back down to the $$/Gb that we saw in early 2011 for quite a while, at least on internal drives. Of course, deals are/were still around. I bought a 2tb wd20ears on 1/26/11 for $90 shipped, and on BF 2011 I was able to get a 3tb usb 3.0 goflex for $100 + tax at bestbuy. Supposedly both of those aren't very good hdd's, but so far (knocking on wood) I haven't had any trouble with either of them.

 

[bryanW1995]

<snip>
Once ur on a SSD, u cant go back.. unless ur using it for purely storage reasons.

So true! I'd go a step further and even say that having the storage drive accelerated with SRT is also fantastic, it's really improved my overall satisfaction with my rig.

 

[exdeath]

Take at as a blessing like me that you are disciplined to conserve space and use that to go exclusively SSD.

I've limited myself to the smallest capacity drives since the first generation Cheetah X15s were only 18 GB so I'm just naturally used to it. Even though I have an array with 960GB, it's only for speed, I don't even use 100 GB of it.

If you are a hoarder that should be on a digital version of "Hoarding: Burried Alive" just get an external USB3 or eSATA 6G drive for archive/backup.

HDDs can join 8 tracks and VHS tapes in hell.

 

[exdeath]

I'm not a conspiracy theorist by any stretch but I suspect HDD manufacturers have long been jealous of the $/GB SSDs get away with and realized they have been giving away too much space for too little money for too long.

I wouldn't doubt HDD manufacturers are riding out the "flooding caused prices to go up" wave for as long as possible and using it as an excuse to prop prices long after recovery... maybe even like gas prices, once they go up they will never come back down now that people are slowly getting used to it...

 

[groberts101]

people will buy fewer HDD's when prices aren't copasetic. Also consider that the used market, recycling/reuse of existing HDD, and falling SSD prices will inevitably force them to comply with the overall consumer demands. Good old price undercuts to gain market share will force the major players to quit gouging for too long as well.

HDD prices must fall back to earth.. and they will. They must to keep sales sufficient enough to keep making profit margin. Those margins are already low enough as it is.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

i use a 250gb hdd and it took me 5 years to fill it up

 

[Gillbot]

I'm not a conspiracy theorist by any stretch but I suspect HDD manufacturers have long been jealous of the $/GB SSDs get away with and realized they have been giving away too much space for too little money for too long.

I wouldn't doubt HDD manufacturers are riding out the "flooding caused prices to go up" wave for as long as possible and using it as an excuse to prop prices long after recovery... maybe even like gas prices, once they go up they will never come back down now that people are slowly getting used to it...

I'm waiting for the next excuse to jack RAM prices back up.

 

[Panopticon]

some big box retail stores do not seem to be as badly effected by the floods as others. I read a tip somewhere that some target stores that had stock of pre flood drives hadn't raised the prices. I went to my local target and they only had 2 flavors of internal drives, both were sold out. Sad when you go to friggen target looking for an HDD but my new rig only has 128GB ssd and its not enough. My only storage is an aging and full 500gb wd mybook and its making me nervous to have no data redundancy.

 

[Dird]

Take at as a blessing like me that you are disciplined to conserve space and use that to go exclusively SSD.

I'm not. This PC now can't even stream 50% of YouTube videos smoothly (5fps; 100% CPU) or HD movies on HDD. So games are out the question to install just like most more powerful software.

 

[SabaII]

I am seriously considering going SSD now that HDD prices are up. I use hardly any storage just the couple games I play and a couple of programs. These HDD prices are ridiculous.