Technical > PC Hardware Discussion/Reviews > Hard Drive Prices

Hard Drive Prices

Yeah, all the WD Black drives are really high on Newegg right now. SSDs don't seem affected, though. A high-end Corsair (85K IOPS) 120 GB was going for under $1/GB in a Newegg spamvertisement a couple days ago.
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reply to Kramer
Yep flooding in thailand hit alot of companies hard.

reply to Kramer
»hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/1···g-prices

It's another example of the industry price gouging. All vendors have fabs located in multiple countries (common ones are Thailand, Malaysia, China, and Taiwan).

This same sort of thing has happened with DRAM prices as well. Vendors use "acts of God" as an excuse to inflate prices.
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Making life hard for others since 1977.
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reply to Kramer
I think at best this is just an anticipation of possible shortage, or more likely, just price gouging.
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Yes we Cain!

reply to koitsu
In the end they will make more money on the drives they sell at the higher prices, but with a 30% hit to the supply it is either higher prices or severe shortages (ie no drives in the stores) take your pick. Higher prices will bring demand down closer to the supply and makes things more stable until the supply recovers and the old equilibrium is restored.

reply to koitsu
While they may have fabs in other locations... got news for you if they are all running close to 100%... when you take down one... you run short on supply... but with out knowing what capacity each place is running at... saying o it is all a scam is nuts.

reply to koitsu

reply to Kramer
Holy mackerel! I just got a 3 TB Hitachi a few weeks back for $109 and now it's $110 more at $219.99! WTF!

»www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a···22145493

reply to Kramer
And keep in mind, all the fab equipment is destroyed. Million dollar machines. Actually millions that is. This kind of thing is good for semicon equipment manufacturers, and good all around because it means upgraded equipment, so greater capacities.

However, to rebuild a fab can take a couple years, if the fab has been deluged.

After what happened in Japan, now this. What is next, a Texas dust bowl (actually, maybe!)

EDIT:

My wife in The Philippines has seen about a tripling of house flooding over the course of this year so far, and it has flooded her house over twice as high as ever. She lives not far from the water's edge, but drainage is very poor in her slum.

The poor folks in Asia have really been going through some crap with this rain. But I am thinking a silver lining might be some refocus on maybe building fabs in her country again. I sure hope so, in a country that only hires 20 somethings for any decent job, even 20 somethings can't get work now. And there is a well educated work force there.

Her country has seen 3 times as much typhoon and tropical storm weather than normal, most of it on Luzon, not where she is, but it has hurt the entire country.

Even so, the risk to flooding is lower in her country than much of Asia if the fabs are built in strategic places, like the central and southern provinces, where she is. It is only the slums in her area that see the worst flooding. The industrial zones don't see it so much.

Imagine going 3 days in flood water, nowhere to go, nowhere to sleep, nowhere to cook food, no job, nowhere to even sit down... And when it floods, dengue fever (which my boy there might have right now) runs rampant (mosquitos are the vector). I got dengue fever and almost died from it, it was horrible.

Guys, if you pray, pray for these poor folks, and while you are at it, my own kid, please.
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reply to Bill
Yes, I don't buy the intentional price gouging theory. If that were the case then supply would be the same. Right now find me a WD drive you can buy more than one of on Newegg. I needed 5- 500gb drives this week for someone and I don't think we are really going to ever get them even though Best Buy has said they will deliver them. Price is based on supply and demand. We have a product here with a relatively stable demand and a dramatically reduced supply. Prices are going to rise. There is also something going on with rare-earth minerals that China is restricting that will balance out in the long term. They are truly trying to manipulate prices by restricting supply. This will come back to haunt them. They have literally killed the goose that lays golden eggs. »www.voanews.com/english/news/asi···798.html

reply to Kramer
Suddenly SSDs became a lot more attractive!

reply to Kramer
Why would you build a factory in a flood plain? Do not care how cheap the labor or any incentives.

reply to Ken Peterson

reply to Kramer
I was at MicroCenter today and they had a sign up that said to the effect that "With regards to the current hard drive shortage, we'd appreciate if our customers would limit themselves to two HDs per transaction."

I was able to get one of those 3TB 5200 RPM Hitachi drives for $124.99 (plus tax) so not too much more than I paid a few weeks back.

And in the grand scheme of things, I agree with the post by Octavean above about the loss of life due to the floods and that's the real tragedy.

»www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/···20111028

The loss of life and number of homeless people must be staggering.

The fact that there are a number of dealers not raising prices leads me to believe I was somewhat wrong with the reality of their being some price gouging going on here. I was able to order a WD External AV drive for my FIOS DVR today directly from WD for 88 bucks with a coupon code. That's a really good price. On the other hand all the black drives were just unavailable. I guess if you have something that no one else has and a lot of people want, you can charge what you can get away with. It's nice to know Microcenter is being decent about it. I wish they were not 4-5 hours of driving to get to and come back from for me.

reply to Kramer
I was watching a report on the BBC and the reporter said that he was able to stay back the flood waters with a make-shift cement wall. Instead what happened is the water table flooded too and now he has water backing up through the sink and toilet. He now has 2 foot of sewer water with all it's connotations and he believes he would have been better off to just let the river flood which would have kept enough pressure on the sewer water to not come up through the floor. It's just big mess in an area that doesn't have the resources or the monies to combat it. If you were going to by a hard drive before the prices went up instead send that 100 bucks or whatever to the Red Cross or any of the humanitarian efforts to help these poor people out. That's what I did.
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If you can’t protect life then how can you protect liberty? - Ron Paul

reply to Kramer
Interestingly the 3 TB hard drive that I purchased from MicroCenter last week for $125 is now $220.

»www.microcenter.com/single_produ···=0361177

Gouge much?

reply to Kramer
Back in June I bought (3) 2T|SAMSUNG HD204UI for $79.99 each for a total of$239.97.

»www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a···22152245

Today, they are priced at $229.99, up $150.00. If I had waited until today it would cost me $689.97 for three drives. Talk about sticker shock!!
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reply to Kramer
if people have price guarantees in place and you return the drive, do you get back the new inflated price?