What's up with HDD prices???

About an hour ago I was checking on HDD prices for my Uncle and notice that ALL the prices seemed higher then usual. So I installed an Add-on for FireFox called the Camelizer, which keeps track of historical price data for Amazon, Buy,com & Newegg.

This is what I discovered.

WD Caviar Black WD5002AALX 500GB SATA 6.0Gb/s ---> http://camelegg.com/product/N82E16822136795

Seagate Barracuda ST500DM002 500GB SATA 6.0Gb/s ---> http://camelegg.com/product/N82E16822148767

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3500413AS 500GB SATA 6.0Gb/s ---> http://camelegg.com/product/N82E16822148701

And it's not just Newegg. its all the major eTailers!!!

WTF WTF WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not cool. Not cool at all...

And here is why http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/t...w/10529244.cms

Makes me happy my raid 5 went last month, just replaced last month with 4 1T blacks and picked up a 2T black while i was at it and still have 3 500G left that were still good from the raid 5.

Yeah, flood in Thailand didn't do WD any favors! :(

Meh. This is just speculation impacting prices. I don't think there will actually be significant supply issues because of the flooding.

This otta make SSDs a lot more attractive. That's assuming of course the flood doesn't cause a shortage of SSD parts.

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Originally Posted by zombie67

Meh. This is just speculation impacting prices. I don't think there will actually be significant supply issues because of the flooding.

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But capitalism is all about opportunities to increase profits. Happens every time..... :mad:

That sure sucks, I'm so glad I don't need to buy any new HDDs at the moment.

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Originally Posted by Aux10

That sure sucks, I'm so glad I don't need to buy any new HDDs at the moment.

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Could impact supplies for months (6?), so I heard.

I just dived beneath the scope....I got my 1TB WD Black on a friday....Tuesday moring the price went up about 30% here in Denmark...Come to think of it....Why the hell did I not buy 2!??!!:(

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...drives&x=0&y=0

If you can use one of these they aren't as pricey as the new ones. I have an 80gb coming for a repair project and I have used them before with no problems. Let's face it I am cheap!

Forbes says :(

Since I can't sleep, and puttsin around as my sister is fond of saying, I was on Newegg and noticed that some of the Seagate HDD prices seemed lower then the current average.

So I took a closer look at the Seagate Barracuda ST500DM002 500GB 7200 RPM which is now listed at $84.99. And although it is still $50 over the summer lows it is $25 cheaper then several weeks ago.

Take a look see at the Camelizer price chart (Link)

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Originally Posted by Fire$torm

Since I can't sleep, and puttsin around as my sister is fond of saying, I was on Newegg and noticed that some of the Seagate HDD prices seemed lower then the current average.

So I took a closer look at the Seagate Barracuda ST500DM002 500GB 7200 RPM which is now listed at $84.99. And although it is still $50 over the summer lows it is $25 cheaper then several weeks ago.

Take a look see at the Camelizer price chart (Link)

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Looks like the shortage could last well into the 2nd quarter of 2012. Having Seagate pick up market shares may force WD to drop prices. Got to love competition.

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Originally Posted by Mike029

Looks like the shortage could last well into the 2nd quarter of 2012. Having Seagate pick up market shares may force WD to drop prices. Got to love competition.

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Yeah, I haven't looked into it yet to confirm, but it appears to me that SSD price drops have slowed down. It is logical to assume that WD, Hitachi and others are reevaluating marketing strategies and product road maps/time lines regarding their entrance into the SSD foray. You may end up seeing WD buy up OCZ in order to remain competitive to Seagate.

Has anyone else noticed the recent drop in SSD prices? More so in the smaller sizes like 60GB. ex. Newegg has the OCZ Agility 3 60GB selling for $54.99 after rebate! Close to a $30 price drop in two months.

That's a good thing because they are nice and fast; 60GB is more than plenty for a crunching rig or an OS drive for some high speed love! :D

Sent from my MB860 using Tapatalk 2

As far as HDDs go are the current prices the new normal? It's been months since they've gotten stuff back up but I don't much of a change in prices.

From my point of view I believe Hitachi and Seagate have decided to maximize profits by keeping prices inflated. WD and others suffered greater damage to their fabrication plants and so cannot compete. That lack of competition allows for this form of market manipulation. SSD prices have been dropping at a faster rate since the HHD plants went offline. So this transition to new storage tech is also affecting HHD prices.

So to answer your question, HDD prices will come down some more but will not match the pre-flood lows. The good news is when the next-gen SSDs hit the market, current-gen projects will drop to all time lows.

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Originally Posted by Fire$torm

Yeah, I haven't looked into it yet to confirm, but it appears to me that SSD price drops have slowed down. It is logical to assume that WD, Hitachi and others are reevaluating marketing strategies and product road maps/time lines regarding their entrance into the SSD foray. You may end up seeing WD buy up OCZ in order to remain competitive to Seagate.

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Well, I was on the right track.... If you have perused Newegg lately, you may have noticed HDDs from a new company called HGST, which is Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. It's new in the sense that it is now a subsidiary of Western Digital. WD acquired HGST in March of this year for $4.8 Billion. My thinking is that as Hitachi has a huge presence in the solid state component market. Their extensive knowledge in this area can help WD accelerate their entrance into the SSD segment. The acquisition will certainly help WD's short term profits but at the expense of inflated HHD retail prices. Hitachi was one of those quite companies that made its money via mass sales, pressuring competitors to match them.

Huh...so not necessarily good for the consumer? Oh well, I'm sure it's better than Seagate buying them out and leaving WD hurting - because then we'd have even less competition. As long as WD and Seagate are both healthy and thriving I think there will be at least a little jab at each other, don't you? :)

On the other hand...at what point prices come down to make two say, 256GB SSD drives in a mirrored RAID setup reasonable, then I will probably kiss HDDs goodbye. I honestly only have about 120GB stored on my office server RAID data drives as, and even then I could probably cut that down quite a bit if I absolutely had to. Unfortunately 128GB SSD is probably not quite enough...maybe I could settle for two 200GB SSD drives in a mirror?:-B We'll see, not quite there yet, LOL! :D