hard drive prices going up

[scottish]

So if you're planning on getting a HDD buy it fast :)

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/9493b8ce-faeb-11e0-8e7e-00144feab49a.html#axzz1bJSNfKuY



Western Digital, the world’s second-largest maker of computer hard drives by sales, earlier this week suspended its operations in Thailand after rising water penetrated the flood defences of the Bang Pa-in industrial park, inundating its factory there and submerging some equipment. Its other Thailand factory at the Navanakorn industrial park was also threatened by the deluge.




Seagate, has also been affected by the flooding, but not to the same extent as Western Digital.

[Chippiewill]

I doubt any significant price changes will occur, they still have to compete with other companies.

[scottish]

Theres been about a 10% rise already.

Some HDDs gone up by £10+ (2TB)

[Chippiewill]

They look basically the same price they were a couple of months ago?

[GommeInc]

They look basically the same price they were a couple of months ago?
The prices won't go up immediately. It's likely it will take a few weeks when fears begin to grow about supplies. It might take them ages to get the factory up and working, unless they can off-set their manufacturing operations to other countries, but it depends how rich they are. It's amazing important components like HDDs are being developed and produced in a limited number of places, completing destroying the supply line if something small happens like a flood in one area. Perhaps they may consider creating new operations in key areas across the globe incase it happens again?

First memory becomes pricey after one of the manufacturers goes bankrupt, and now HDDs are being affected. Whatever next? :P

[scottish]

You must not pay much attention :p

For example

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB I bought it a month ago for £45 now its £60.

Staff on another website;
I am watching the price of drives increase by as much as 10% an hour. Its not a good time at all for those wanting storage


As pre warned, Mechanical storage is going up in price at an alarming rate.

This is unlikely to change before 2012 with price increases potentially going to increase by even more.

These are dark times on the storage front at the moment with deals none existant for some time to come

You may indeed be able to buy drives much cheaper elsewhere but they WILL run out of stock very quickly so my advice is that you buy where you can as you will not see affordable storage at all as current stocks deplete.


Prices increase massively yesterday:

This is mainly due to the thai flooding but I am sure that the two remaining HDD vendors will have something to do with the price increase..

This is a picture of Western Digitals factories:

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/Data/2011_10_19/Thailand-Flooding-World-Wide-Impact-on-Hard-Disk-Delivery/Bang_Pa_flooding_535.jpg

not good!


etc.

[Jin]

We will live as mentioned I reckon stocks are in the plenty. Fingers crossed it will be Maxtor next time.

[scottish]

Is maxtor even a large manufacturer?

I've rarely seen them, most drives I see are Samsung, Seagate and WD. (excluding ssd ofc)

Oh and the occasional Hitachi.

Companies are panic buying by the looks of it and price has rose alot.

and nvm Maxtor is Seagate now.

[xxMATTGxx]

Yeah I'm pretty sure Seagate took over Maxtor sometime ago. I'm sure we will be fine either way, these things happen.

[Chippiewill]

Hopefully this will help facilitate a shift towards SSDs if it is major.

[Recursion]

Hopefully this will help facilitate a shift towards SSDs if it is major.

Not at the current price...

[xxMATTGxx]

Not at the current price...

Agreed, they are still too expensive.

[Chippiewill]

I said help, the shift is inevitable, but this could potentially shave some months off.

[Recursion]

I said help, the shift is inevitable, but this could potentially shave some months off.

Agree with you there. Once I can buy a 320GB+ SSD for about £60 I'll be happy, but for now... ouch

[scottish]

You're lucky to get a 60GB for £60 atm, so it'll be a good few years before 320GB for £60 ;)

[Recursion]

You're lucky to get a 60GB for £60 atm, so it'll be a good few years before 320GB for £60 ;)

That's my point.

[scottish]

Paid £130 for 120GB one, can't complain.

Especially as OCZ have released firmware for the sandforce problems.

[Recursion]

Paid £130 for 120GB one, can't complain.

Especially as OCZ have released firmware for the sandforce problems.

Can very much complain... you paid £1.08 per GB on that SSD, I paid £0.04 per GB on my 1TB drive. The speed of an SSD doesn't justify a price increase like that in my opinion :P

[N!ck]

Can very much complain... you paid £1.08 per GB on that SSD, I paid £0.04 per GB on my 1TB drive. The speed of an SSD doesn't justify a price increase like that in my opinion :P

That's clearly coming from someone who's never used a SSD as a boot drive ;).

I will never have a desktop PC that doesn't have one again (until there's something better of course).

[iScreamHabbo]

I doubt they will go up a lot.

[Fire-Fox]

I actually just grabbed myself two 3TB 3.0 USB externals off Amazon for 50% or so off. I'm good.

[Recursion]

That's clearly coming from someone who's never used a SSD as a boot drive ;).

I will never have a desktop PC that doesn't have one again (until there's something better of course).

You would be correct ;) As it stands though, storage is more important than read/write speed in my view :P

[N!ck]

You would be correct ;) As it stands though, storage is more important than read/write speed in my view :P

It's not about the continuous read/write speeds. It's all about the random i/o and access times.

[scottish]

Almost £100 per 1TB now, lmao.

[Recursion]

Almost £100 per 1TB now, lmao.

This man, isn't ********ing.

[xxMATTGxx]

Link for people to see: http://www.ebuyer.com/173804-samsung-hd103sj-spinpoint-f3-1tb-hard-drive-sataii-7200rpm-32mb-cache-hd103sj

Just wow, I have two of those and they certainly didn't cost that much.

[scottish]

Cheapest 1TB 7200RPM;

Overclockers.co.uk - Seagate Barracuda - £91.99 (I paid just under £45 just over a month ago)
Aria.co.uk - WD Caviar Blue - £100
Scan.co.uk - Hitachi - £82.80
Microdirect - Seagate - £90
Dabs.com - Hitachi Deskstar - £79.99

Some double the price of earlier this month, others over double.

[N!ck]

Gah, should have bought a new 2 TB storage drive when I had the chance @ £60 :(.

Edit: Just grabbed one at £85 :P.

[Jordy]

I might be wrong but there looks like a lot of profiteering going on here by technology firms. Prices on eBay look barely unchanged, suggesting no real shortage yet.

[scottish]

It's distributors

They put the price up like mad, so e-tailers need to put their price up to reflect this (otherwise for example, ebuyer will buy all of arias stock @ £45 for 1TB then aria needs to buy more stock from dist at a much higher price

But yeah they'll be profiting a good bit as well from their existing stock


@Nick, Aria was selling 20 of their 2TB drives earlier at £65, but was only for last 20 so doubt theres any left now :p

---------- Post added 26-10-2011 at 07:05 PM ----------

http://files.upit.me/1319749584.jpg
http://techgage.com/images/news/western_digital_flood_102511.jpg

Not cool....

[GommeInc]

It's interesting to see people panic buying hard drives - it makes a change to bread, butter and milk :P It seems many are slowly becoming out of stock, so any price hikes are just going to reflect the demand and importance of restocking, ebuyer has got to make a profit and somehow manage to get some more in seeing as people seem to be panicking all of a sudden :P

[scottish]

mhm

Apparently when next Seagate drives are finished production they're going to ship them in bulk by air instead of boat to restore supply faster

So wonder if they'll actually manage to calm down the panic buyers, or if we'll be paying £150/TB by xmas :p

[N!ck]

@Nick, Aria was selling 20 of their 2TB drives earlier at £65, but was only for last 20 so doubt theres any left now :p


Not cool....

Yeah, I know I looked a few days ago. Aria is my standard place to shop since it is in walking distance meaning no postage costs and I get my stuff instantly :).

[AgnesIO]

This increase is shocking.

Blatantly profiteering, the hdd's on sale would have been brought by companies such as eBuyer way before this.

Suddenly SSD's look slightly better value.

[scottish]

http://regmedia.co.uk/2011/10/27/wd_lake_1.jpg


http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2011/10/24/disk_drive_economics/

[Jutnux]

That's clearly coming from someone who's never used a SSD as a boot drive ;).

I will never have a desktop PC that doesn't have one again (until there's something better of course).

Or you could just use Ubuntu and boot in 7 seconds :rolleyes:

[AgnesIO]

Or you could just use Ubuntu and boot in 7 seconds :rolleyes:

But we don't want to use Ubuntu..

[Recursion]

Or you could just use Ubuntu and boot in 7 seconds :rolleyes:

Ubuntu doesn't boot in 7 seconds.

[Stephen!]

Ubuntu takes longer to boot on an SSD than Windows 7 does for me.

[scottish]

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2011/11/01/hdd_flooding/


So far Acer has confirmed price rises on the next batch of shipments and rival ASUS revealed yesterday it will run out of disk drives by the end of this month. Other PC vendors have noted the challenges in securing HDDs but have not commented further.


DRAM is likely to feel the strain of a slowing mobile PC market as "any reduction in PC sales due to supply constraints will further depress the already oversupplied DRAM market", said iSuppli.

Some camera makers – including Sony, Nikon and Canon – have been disrupted by the natural disaster in the Far East as have car makers, with Ford, Mazda, Hino, Honda, Isuzu, Mitsubishi, Nissan and Toyota suspending production in Thailand. ®

[Jutnux]

Moral of the story: Don't buy a HDD until this is over.

[scottish]

or buy one if you see it cheap

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2011/11/03/disk_drive_prices_may_double/


Hard disk prices doubled in the past fortnight following the severe flooding in Thailand and could potentially rise by the same amount again, channel sources have warned.

The world's second largest producer of drives behind China, Thailand, is dealing with the aftermath of flooding that has killed 380 people, inundated 14,000 factories and left 660,000 people out of work.




Distributors have already put the brakes on disk drive shipments and are prioritising supply for loyal trade customers ahead of expected shortages. Some analysts estimate that some 48 million fewer drives will be shipped in Q4 than in the same quarter a year ago.

The average price of a 1TB drive was £45 prior to the disaster, but such disks are now being flogged for a 100 quid or more, a distie source told The Reg, adding that given the scarcity of stock "prices could double again".

The severity of the shortfall in supply means that additional price rises are on the cards, predicts James Ward, boss of specialist storage distributor Hammer.

"Shortages became so severe so quickly and will have a lasting impact on the industry for at least the next six to nine months," he said.

Sukh Rayat, senior veep at distil Avnet, added: "Prices could go up significantly further based on what we are seeing in the market."

Not all of the major distributors were willing to make a call on incremental price hikes.

"I believe that for the quarter shipments will be significantly down. I don't know if we'll able to sell more than 40 to 45 per cent of what we could," Alain Maquet, EMEA president at Ingram Micro told The Reg.

Taiwanese vendor Acer has confirmed pending PC price rises due to the supply problems and Asus said it will run out of drives by the end of this month.

[scottish]

http://regmedia.co.uk/2011/11/07/newegg_price_chart.jpg (http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2011/11/07/hdd_drought/)

[scottish]

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2011/11/08/nidec_update/

Production from Nidec (disk drive motor supplier) has resumed, so hopefully theres an increase in supply of HDDs now.

[scottish]

You must stop posting useless **** in every thread ;)