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?
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.
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.
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.