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Hard drive prices spike...

jav6454

jav6454

macrumors Core
Original poster
Nov 14, 2007
22,303
6,263
1 Geostationary Tower Plaza
Hard drive prices have continuously been increasing ever since Thailand got hit hard by monsoons. First and foremost, heart goes out to Thai people, I've been in a hurricane style rain before, not fun.

Anyways, Western Digital and many other companies that make hard drives in Thailand have been hit hard. Facilities flooded and what not.

Problem for us is that because worldwide production is centered in Thai facilities, we are experiencing a shortage in HDDs.

Example, I bought 3 months ago a WD 500GB Scorpio Blue drive from NewEgg for $49.00 USD after instant rebate. Now? Go check, it is around $119 USD. That's a 2x increase in price. Crazy.

Wanna see crazier? WD Caviar Black 1TB at 7200rpm used to cost $79 at most and dropping. Now? $219.00 USD and climbing! Crazy stuff.

Consider the following, all these companies had 4 months worth of inventory. However, we are already seeing drastic price hikes. Imagine after the shopping spree... Cyber Monday and Black Friday will most definitely not have many HDDs on sale...


Discuss...
 
jav6454 said:
Hard drive prices have continuously been increasing ever since Thailand got hit hard by monsoons. First and foremost, heart goes out to Thai people, I've been in a hurricane style rain before, not fun.

Anyways, Western Digital and many other companies that make hard drives in Thailand have been hit hard. Facilities flooded and what not.

Problem for us is that because worldwide production is centered in Thai facilities, we are experiencing a shortage in HDDs.

Example, I bought 3 months ago a WD 500GB Scorpio Blue drive from NewEgg for $49.00 USD after instant rebate. Now? Go check, it is around $119 USD. That's a 2x increase in price. Crazy.

Wanna see crazier? WD Caviar Black 1TB at 7200rpm used to cost $79 at most and dropping. Now? $219.00 USD and climbing! Crazy stuff.

Consider the following, all these companies had 4 months worth of inventory. However, we are already seeing drastic price hikes. Imagine after the shopping spree... Cyber Monday and Black Friday will most definitely not have many HDDs on sale...


Discuss...
Click to expand...

Here in NZ prices haven't jumped that much yet, I'm considering picking up a 2TB external drive before they do...
 
I actually bought a 2 TB external a few weeks ago and the store had a limit of two drives per person. I guess nows the time to dig up old drives and enclosures.
 
Prices are crazy, especially for SATA 3.

I managed to snag some used "Like New" drives through Amazon, the day prices were beginning to slowly creep upward. Even these were overpriced, and are mostly gone now.
 
Holy moly, you're right! I got a new 750GB 2.5" 7.2K RPM SATA drive for my macbook and an enclosure for my old one as well as a screw driver kit from OWC for under $90 a couple of months ago, now it's going for $158. Very glad I got it then.

My heart goes out to the Thai people also.:(
 
Pretty crazy- glad I picked up 4TB this summer ($59 each from Newegg). That brings me to about 10TB of total storage, and I've got a good 3.5TB free so no worries for awhile.
 
It's not over out here either.... Heavy rains continue every day and flooding continues
 
Abyssgh0st said:
Pretty crazy- glad I picked up 4TB this summer ($59 each from Newegg). That brings me to about 10TB of total storage, and I've got a good 3.5TB free so no worries for awhile.
Click to expand...

Wow. I'm only using 5GB of my hard drive with documents and Apps. What the hell are you storing to use so much?
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

Glad my drobos both have a fully stocked set of 2tb drives. Paid £47 for each drive now 99.97
 
I'm just hoping our RAID array doesn't have a disk die and kicking myself for not buying a spare drive.

We have 8x 2TB ecogreen drives in RAID5.
 
Indeed, prices have skyrocketed here in Australia as well. I picked up a 2TB WD Green a couple months ago for $84 (to replace an RMA'd drive). Now that I have the replacement drive from WD, it's also having disk errors. I'm wondering if I send this one in as well, will I have to wait until they get back into production until I get a replacement?
 
Gav2k said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

Glad my drobos both have a fully stocked set of 2tb drives. Paid £47 for each drive now 99.97
Click to expand...

Well sure. If you already have the surplus storage you think you'll need then you're laughing, for the time being. I've got 2 1TB WD Green Drives put away, waiting for enclosures, which cost next to nothing. These are just storage drives. I've already got 3 TB active plus 1TB for Time Machine.
 
Mord said:
I'm just hoping our RAID array doesn't have a disk die and kicking myself for not buying a spare drive.

We have 8x 2TB ecogreen drives in RAID5.
Click to expand...

Well, you are still on time to to buy that extra disk... and if a disk dies, the most hassle you'll have to deal with is waiting for the RMA (if under warranty).

NewEgg just started pushing November deals and so far I haven't seen a single HDD put there.
 
yg17 said:
Holy crap, 1 TB drives have nearly tripled in price :eek:

How long can we expect prices to remain high like this?
Click to expand...

Until OEMs can get their factories up and running again. The Monsoon period shouldn't last too long. I was in Thailand in 2010 December and there was no sign of floods or monsoon anymore.

I'm more worried about the factories. If the floods have damaged the actual factories, then we might have even longer wait in front of us since fixing will take awhile (plus OEMs will charge us for the expenses).
 
yg17 said:
Holy crap, 1 TB drives have nearly tripled in price :eek:

How long can we expect prices to remain high like this?
Click to expand...

For quite a while. Many expect shortages to go all the way thru Q1 2012, or until facilities in Thailand are back online. Right now prices aren't hiking as much due to the built up inventories, but as those dry up... well, you can imagine the rest.


Hellhammer said:
Until OEMs can get their factories up and running again. The Monsoon period shouldn't last too long. I was in Thailand in 2010 December and there was no sign of floods or monsoon anymore.

I'm more worried about the factories. If the floods have damaged the actual factories, then we might have even longer wait in front of us since fixing will take awhile (plus OEMs will charge us for the expenses).
Click to expand...

OEMs won't have to pass down costs to us, they are recovery those costs with higher than usual prices. At least, thats my thinking.
 
yg17 said:
Holy crap, 1 TB drives have nearly tripled in price :eek:

How long can we expect prices to remain high like this?
Click to expand...

I assume it will be quite a while. A similar instance of this happened with memory back around 2000. I don't recall the reasoning for it but memory prices tripled.
 
jav6454 said:
For quite a while. Many expect shortages to go all the way thru Q1 2012, or until facilities in Thailand are back online. Right now prices aren't hiking as much due to the built up inventories, but as those dry up... well, you can imagine the rest.
Click to expand...
So who wants to fight for...hard drives?

jessica. said:
I assume it will be quite a while. A similar instance of this happened with memory back around 2000. I don't recall the reasoning for it but memory prices tripled.
Click to expand...
I have also brought up the 1999 earthquake given its impact on RAM prices.
 
jav6454 said:
OEMs won't have to pass down costs to us, they are recovery those costs with higher than usual prices. At least, thats my thinking.
Click to expand...

That's what I meant ;) OEMs will charge us a bit more so they can pay the repair costs. It's not like they will send us all a letter asking for money, or beg on the streets :p
 
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