Hard Drive prices

[lifeblood]

Anyone heard any estimates on when hard drive prices will drop again? I assume the water in Thailand has receded by now. Of course it will take a while to mop up, replace lost equipment, etc. Are we looking at q2 2012?, Q3?

$80 for a 80Gb HD is a tough pill to swallow.

 

[Denithor]

$80 for an 80GB SSD however is tasty.

 

[hoorah]

Anyone heard any estimates on when hard drive prices will drop again? I assume the water in Thailand has receded by now. Of course it will take a while to mop up, replace lost equipment, etc. Are we looking at q2 2012?, Q3?

$80 for a 80Gb HD is a tough pill to swallow.

I suppose its better than having your house washed away in a flood.

 

[abekl]

The floods in Thailand persist. Hard drive makers are saying it will be Q4 2012 before supply returns to normal.

 

[lifeblood]

The floods in Thailand persist. Hard drive makers are saying it will be Q4 2012 before supply returns to normal.

That sucks, both for us and for Thailand. Hopefully the water will go the hell away and they can get their lives back together again.

Thanks for the info.

 

[greenhawk]

Some factories are starting to come back on line, but all will not be there until about mid year 2012 going from what I have read. Even then, by that time new factories that did not exist at the time of the flooding will also be comming on line. It is only then that manufactures will be expecting to start processing backlogs of orders, but while the prices are high, it is not a urgent reason to get your factory back up to 100% as anything you make is more profitiable than before (ie: running at 50% and getting more money than pre-flood 100% production rates or what ever the numbers are does mean the manufactures do not have to bend over backwards and try hard for a while. The excuss of "adjusting new equipment" I suspect we will be hearing a lot of when it comes to slow ramp up times and prices high for longer because of it).

Besides, I think the effort to get some HDD factories going again is not too high on the list for the effect areas. It gives jobs and export dollars, but I think they would care more about getting local services running again first so I would expect effort / hardware/labour is being used in those directions more.

 

[Puppies04]

On this whole HDD price issue... I don't mind the fact that the prices have gone up, heh supply and demand but it really grinds my gears when I see vendors advertising "deals" where they knock 2 or 3 £ from their inflated prices and try to act like they are doing you a favour. There is no way they are paying that much more for there HDDs and a lot of very big suppliers seemed to almost instantly start jacking up their prices as if they only held 5 spare drives in the back room instead of the 100's or 1000's that i'm sure they really do.

Luckily I can manage for a few more months without any new hdds but I really feel for people who aren't in my situation.

 

[noblemo]

This article states Easter 2012 at the soonest:

http://www.trcbnews.com/flooding-in-taiwan-the-ripples-of-price-increases-in-hard-drives/116887/

The drives I saw this weekend are about twice the price compared to a few months ago. This article discusses a tool that tracks prices:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-57328378-64/tool-tracks-hard-disk-price-increases/

 

[General Kenobi]

I was thinking about this too. A very sad situation for the people of Thailand, and an inconvenience for us from a technical point of view. I may have to go the SSD route for my new build if the prices keep rising 5 percent a day like they did last month in some places.

 

[Sho'Nuff]

. .. is not a urgent reason to get your factory back up to 100% as anything you make is more profitiable than before (ie: running at 50% and getting more money than pre-flood 100% production rates or what ever the numbers are does mean the manufactures do not have to bend over backwards and try hard for a while. The excuss of "adjusting new equipment" I suspect we will be hearing a lot of when it comes to slow ramp up times and prices high for longer because of it). . .

Most factories that produce large numbers of retail goods are locked into long term supply contracts. While those contracts may allow for unexepcted events such as floods, a factory's inability to operate at full capacity often does not translate into the factory owner being able to charge more for parts supplied under those contracts. This is because the cost per part is specified in the contract.

The party that can benefit (sort of) from reduced supply is the technology developer (Seagate, hitachi, etc.) that contracts with the factory to produce the required parts. When supply is low, the developer may be able to charge for each device that includes their technology. But this is a balancing act. Charge too much and no one will buy.

In sum - factory owners usually make a fixed profit on each widget produced. Tech suppliers, on the other hand, set prices to achieve maximum profit taking into account factors such as supply, demand, etc.

 

[trevor0323]

I have a feeling its stupid Western Digital that started this price hike. I noticed they were the first drives to jump price rapidly.

What I dont understand is why External HD's are still fairly normally priced. Until this is over I guess I will keep dismantling 3tb E HD's

 

[greenhawk]

I have a feeling its stupid Western Digital that started this price hike. I noticed they were the first drives to jump price rapidly.

What I dont understand is why External HD's are still fairly normally priced. Until this is over I guess I will keep dismantling 3tb E HD's

on the first, they were the ones hardest hit by it all, IIRC.

As to external drives, most are proberly stock make long ago as most people did not bother buying them as they cost too much vs internal + own case.

though a lot of externals have the usb conectroller on board so you are not able to pull those ones appart for drives.

 

[mv2devnull]

$80 for a 80Gb HD is a tough pill to swallow.

Yes. Yet, I remember selling a used HDD for 20 cents per MB ...

Quite a portion of humankind dwells on the low ground. Little more water and we'll be swallowing bucketfuls of those pills.

 

[C1]

Some factories are starting to come back on line, but all will not be there until about mid year 2012 going from what I have read. Even then, by that time new factories that did not exist at the time of the flooding will also be comming on line. It is only then that manufactures will be expecting to start processing backlogs of orders, but while the prices are high, it is not a urgent reason to get your factory back up to 100% as anything you make is more profitiable than before (ie: running at 50% and getting more money than pre-flood 100% production rates or what ever the numbers are does mean the manufactures do not have to bend over backwards and try hard for a while. The excuss of "adjusting new equipment" I suspect we will be hearing a lot of when it comes to slow ramp up times and prices high for longer because of it).

Besides, I think the effort to get some HDD factories going again is not too high on the list for the effect areas. It gives jobs and export dollars, but I think they would care more about getting local services running again first so I would expect effort / hardware/labour is being used in those directions more.

Hard drive manufacture could possibly be an area which could justify a careful or limited start up. The obvious concern is determination of HDD reliability (eg, MTBF) and that procedure takes time to ascertain even under accelerated stress testing. If you are an HDD maker, then you want to ensure to not release a boat load of HDD's that has reduced MTBF due to some subtle manufacturing oversight associated with setting up or beginning a new factory line.

Also, a significant break such like what has happened is a logical opportunity to implement any manufacturing equipment and/or planned product line technological upgrades as part of the new start up process.

 

[Hogan773]

Wow. I've been doing other things and haven't really paid attention to HDD prices. When I read the AT article on current recommended system builds I saw $150 for the Sammy Spinpoint. I thought it must be a misprint, or perhaps they MEANT 2x75 for a twin drive system.

Then I looked at Newegg and holy shnikes there it is. $150 for a drive that I got for $50 about 9 months ago when building my SB system.

I just read elsewhere that there may be some hoarding effects going on here too - as CDW, Dell etc gotta make SURE that they have enough HDDs for their needs.

Too bad there isn't a way to short the market for HDDs like for stocks. I'd be willing to bet that in a year's time the price for a 1TB drive will be about $40, if companies are hoarding, existing capacity comes on line plus maybe some new capacity too in areas that AREN'T in a Bangkok zipcode, etc. Still, the mfrs might try to hold prices high as being able to TRIPLE your retail price on a mature product is almost unthinkable, but I think once the world realizes that there is not a shortage, then the hoarding goes away and mfrs will have to race back down to lower prices.

 

[General Kenobi]

I was checking out a Western Digital Caviar Black 750GB unit (SATA 6GB/s) and the price had went up over 30 euros overnight to 167,90 euros or 225 USD! And this is from the largest computer part retailer in Finland.

 

[lifeblood]

Luckily my nephew, who is building his first PC with guidance from me, was able to find a 500Gb Hitachi for $84. Not great, but at least palatable.

 

[FAUguy]

This Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB was $199 two weeks ago, then dropped to 179 and now is 169 on NewEgg. Too bad the 3GB model is still $289.

 

[Shmee]

I see the nice 1TB single platter hitachi drive is 129 now. Used to be 59. Oh well, its still a better deal than most others. Any other good HDD's coming out that can best it for a similar price? (having TB platter(s))

 

[General Kenobi]

I can hardly imagine anything competitive being released until the mainstay products are being produced at full capacity once again.

 

[dud]

It seems almost surreal ...

6 months ago I was considering a WD Scorpio Black 500GB 7200 RPM replacement for my Dell precision. I thought $65 was too much. Now Newegg wants $150 for the same drive???

I think not.


I can afford to wait indefinitely if need be. I will not pay 3x what I could have paid 6 months (or so) ago.

You know what you can do WD ...

 

[Mark R]

..

 

[Mark R]

I just read elsewhere that there may be some hoarding effects going on here too - as CDW, Dell etc gotta make SURE that they have enough HDDs for their needs.

It's already gone past that stage.

Lenovo recently sent out a alerts to their major enterprise customers, saying that they can no longer supply the customers' preferred hardware configurations, because they have exhausted their stocks of popular hard drives (particularly 7200 rpm drives), and do not anticipate getting any more supply within the next 3 months.

Customers are being offered alternative hard drive options (such as 5400 rpm drives), and warned that further changes to the options may be coming in the near future.

 

[greenhawk]

Too bad the 3GB model is still $289.

High end models move slow at the best of times. Espically as the manufacture wants a fast return on R&D costs.

As is normally common, it is the second and third highest capacities that are generally the best value (all else equal).

 

[CPA]

Some factories are starting to come back on line, but all will not be there until about mid year 2012 going from what I have read. Even then, by that time new factories that did not exist at the time of the flooding will also be comming on line. It is only then that manufactures will be expecting to start processing backlogs of orders, but while the prices are high, it is not a urgent reason to get your factory back up to 100% as anything you make is more profitiable than before (ie: running at 50% and getting more money than pre-flood 100% production rates or what ever the numbers are does mean the manufactures do not have to bend over backwards and try hard for a while. The excuss of "adjusting new equipment" I suspect we will be hearing a lot of when it comes to slow ramp up times and prices high for longer because of it).

Besides, I think the effort to get some HDD factories going again is not too high on the list for the effect areas. It gives jobs and export dollars, but I think they would care more about getting local services running again first so I would expect effort / hardware/labour is being used in those directions more.

What? lol, no, I can assure you that manufacturers are not fine at running at 50% of capacity. That doesn't even make sense.