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

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^ The topic has value to someone who was anticipating buying a HDD in the next couple months... buying when the topic started could save a significant % in cost.
 
Just had a 1 TB drive in my WHS die. Gotta pull it out and see if its still got any warranty left on it. Best price I found was a 1.5 TB WD green on amazon for $82 WD15EARS
 
wirednuts said:
this is where im at. its just frickin harddrives. make them somewhere else or wait a few months.

i still think half of this inflation is just because manufacturers want to make up for all the damage done to their plants.
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That's all good and fine, but it doesn't make the fact that the prices have doubled or in some cases tripled in the past few weeks any less true. I know personally if I had taken this information and ran with it when it was first posted I wouldn't be in the situation I am in now which is either wait to add storage to my server (I usually try to add 2-3 HDDs a month as it fills) or spend $150+ on the HDDs that I want when they used to cost $60-70.

Whether or not the problem is real in the sense that there is a real shortage created by large OEMs buying up what's in the supply chain or the drive manufacturers not being able to keep production high enough due to the disasters, or even if the problem is completely artificial, the situation still blows and we consumers still pay the price (literally and figuratively).
 
conehead433 said:
Let the buyer vote with their purchase or lack of purchase. This whole thread is BS.
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Nice thread crap. :thumbsdown:

This thread is very important to anyone who is currently building a new rig now or in the coming months. It may be a safe guess that doesn't include you, but you may have to revisit your cynicism if your current drive fails before the shortage is past. 😱

I've posted two HD threads, this week, about 1 TB Seagate drives at $59.99 and $66.49. I'm glad I got a couple of them. I'm even more glad because the same drives are currently $149.99 at Newegg.
 
High capacity >2tb has been hit the hardest.
Prices for 3tb has more than doubled in the last week at the Egg.
I cannot recall I have ever seen prices jumping like this in such a short time span in my tech life.
 
Anyone buying these drives at the egg at these prices are idiots, plain and simple. Hitachi 7k3000 is 399 at newegg but available on amazon from several sellers in stock and ready to ship out for 230-250 bucks shipped all day long. Buy.com has it for 200 bucks! Superbiiz has it for 250 and they have a super fast turnover and sell rate.

If the supply is so dried up and people are scrambling for drives, why hasn't everyone sold out and raised their pricing to reflect the new stock? I say newegg is gouging. I can tell you now that businesses raise pricing even on existing stock if there is a shortage. They do not simply sell out their stock at the same old cheap prices they paid before while everyone else asks a arm and leg.
Just like the gas stations do. If a gas station across the street raises pricing, the majority does it, even if one station has full tanks and the other one just ran out.

I predict that by the time the back stock at all these other places runs out, there won't be any supply problem anymore anyway. Anyway this does NOT hinder someone building a system right now. If they are dumb enough not to shop around and buy back stock and instead walk down to best buy or order off newegg and plop down 400 bucks for a storage hard drive then that is all on them. As for what happens by the end of the year or in a couple months we will all just have to wait and hope for the best.
 
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The initial price hike was because of greed. Not that they paid the new pricing for the hd's and had to sell them higher. Its was only because they 'could' sell them higher.
 
86waterpumper said:
Anyone buying these drives at the egg at these prices are idiots, plain and simple. Hitachi 7k3000 is 399 at newegg but available on amazon from several sellers in stock and ready to ship out for 230-250 bucks shipped all day long. Buy.com has it for 200 bucks! Superbiiz has it for 250 and they have a super fast turnover and sell rate.

If the supply is so dried up and people are scrambling for drives, why hasn't everyone sold out and raised their pricing to reflect the new stock?
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IMO, that is exactly what is happening and why this topic exists - to alert people of the dwindling opportunity to buy one of the few remaining drives left in stock before only higher priced resellers remain. I just checked several sites and either the price is high or they are sold out except for a few random store pickup options where they're not out of stock yet at that location.

You can get the OEM Hitachi 7K3000 3TB at 'egg for $299 though, and Buy.com... you wrote "shipped all day long" but where are they on Amazon or buy.com NOW? I just searched buy for Hitachi 7K3000 and found only a 2TB for $199 delivered, 3TB for $367, or $500(!).

Now let's check Superbiiz... $241 + 12 S/H = $253, so yes "right now", until they run out of stock which they will (if they haven't already and just didn't update their 'site to reflect lack of stock yet) they're a better deal.

FYI, some places are still selling USB2 externals with HDD for less than the bare drives.

formulav8 said:
The initial price hike was because of greed. Not that they paid the new pricing for the hd's and had to sell them higher. Its was only because they 'could' sell them higher.
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Didn't all the places with the lowest regular prices either sell out already or raise prices? We could say every single one of them that raised prices did it out of greed... but that's what business is, guesstimating how to best maximize profit.
 
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Its good to see soo much cynicism and speculation galore. Now lets stop having a pissing contest about who is right and wrong. There are much more productive things to be doing and one of them doesn't include arguing with people you don't even know at all. Who gives a crap either way? People will make a decision on what they want based on price... price to high then wait awhile price not too high then buy then.
 
You are right I did see alot of places said out of stock mindless1. I guess when I said all day long I mean all day today! haha. That's why I said it doesn't affect anyone buying stuff right now, but may soon. For sure if someone wants to buy one they need to jump now. It is very possible too that these sites are not updating their quantities as far as what is in stock. I still think newegg is overdoing it but other's may disagree. I think especially post holiday season that sales at least to home users will stagnate at these kinds of prices. Obviously for a business they don't have that luxury. If the price really gets jacked that high to the current newegg cost it would be tough for the oems and anyone selling and building computers to turn much of a profit.

Another thought I have had, will the flooding and supply problems delay the release of the 4tb drives?
 
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The bottom line is that mainstream desktop 7200rpm 500GB drives were available for $40 every day for at least the last year or so. Similar 1TB drives were holding at $50-60. 2TB low rpm drives were $60-80.

Now, those drives have all at least doubled in price. I've never seen anything like this in 10 years of building computers. Whether it's legitimately due to supply chain disruption or price gouging doesn't really matter. What matters is that this HDD price 'crisis' is getting worse literally by the day. It's only a matter of time before the secondary/used market starts to catch up.

If you build one computer every few years, you obviously don't care. If you're like me and build a couple systems every week, well, it stinks having to raise your total system price by even 10/15%, especially during the holidays when people are more inclined to buy computers.
 
formulav8 said:
The initial price hike was because of greed. Not that they paid the new pricing for the hd's and had to sell them higher. Its was only because they 'could' sell them higher.
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Yes, because you have first-hand knowledge of their inventories, procurement practices and hedging. geez louise.
 
Wow, the price of crappy little 160GB sata laptop drives are now almost $100 at NE. I can still get a retail WD 500GB laptop drive for $80 with free shipping at frys.com.
 
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This thread would be important to someone looking for a hot deal on a hard drive, but there are no hot deals listed here, which makes this an off topic thread. Chicken is going up, so I'm off to the store to get some.
 
Office Max has an external Hitachi 3TB drive for $120.

http://www.officemax.com/technology/drives-memory-storage/hard-drives-usb-drives/external-hard-drives/product-prod3450202?history=bhhvrlv5|categoryId~10004^categoryName~Technology^parentCategoryID~category_root@bsiwoj6k|categoryId~cat1310028^categoryName~Drives%2C+Memory+%26+Storage^parentCategoryID~cat_10004@f94uxow8|categoryId~284^categoryName~Hard+Drives+%26+USB+Drives^parentCategoryID~cat_cat1310028@ov3nnsrh|categoryId~cat10012^categoryName~External+Hard+Drives^parentCategoryID~cat_284@yempi3ff|prodPage~15^refine~1^region~1@v925oukt|refineName~Capacity^prodPage~15^refine~1^sub_attr_name~1^region~1^refineValue~3TB@poy2lzwg|prodPage~15^sort~Price+%28Low-High%29^refine~1^position~1^region~1
 
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