jonnyohio

November 20, 2011 at 12:54am

So who was the genius that said, "hey, I got a great idea! Let's manufacturer all the parts for hard drives in one country. What could possibly go wrong?"

jbwhite99

November 19, 2011 at 9:28pm

While Seagate and Samsung may manufacture elsewhere, a lot of key components for all drives (including Seagate) are made in Thailand.  I believe it was the stepper motor.  In any case, I agree that the shoertage will be prolonged - I believe I read on this website earlier this year that the HDD makers were looking for a way to raise prices.  I really think it will be later 1st quarter before this is fixed, but remember that it takes 6 weeks for an HDD to get to the US by boat, so could be April or May before prices fall.

SSD makers need to take advantage of this - whomever can churn out volume at a good price will win.

chinomon

November 19, 2011 at 4:32am

common SSDs, now is your chance to rule the computer world!

mysteriousgamer

November 18, 2011 at 3:42pm

Ordered a Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 2 TB on www.newegg.com on the 19th of September for $109.99.  They are now $279.99 each. 

 

Wow.

lo_tek

November 18, 2011 at 1:50pm

Excuse me, folks, but the manufacturers just had a REAL flood and supplies are short at the moment compared to demand.  Basic Econ 101 will tell you that low supply + high demand == higher prices.  That is a law that cannot be circumvented.  Even if governments stepped in and forced the prices lower, it would simply create a shortage and there would be NO hard drives left for sale at ANY price.  So be thankful you can even get hard drives at all right now albeit at a higher price.  No, this is not a "conspiracy".  The higher prices are a natural economic response to market conditions.

Let's put it this way.  If suddenly some company invented a fantastic new way of making a storage that would hold 100 TB of information for about $100 a unit and it lasted 10 years based upon tests and it fit right in with current motherboard setups, it wouldn't take very long for the usual hard drive production facilities to be put out of business.  And it didn't take any "conspiracy" to do so, just good old fashioned free market economics.

So puh-lease, stop all the "it's a conspiracy to raise prices!" nonsense.  If there really were such a thing going on, it wouldn't take a flood to do it.  They could've just shut down factories to achieve the same effect.

 

 

Typo91

November 18, 2011 at 3:59pm

get used to the prices, this whole thing has been planned buy the harddrive companies, so they could have an excuess to raise prices together and keep them there.

Prices had only gotten so low due to rampent competition with each other for sales.  They had a huge volume of drives and had to fight for the consumor focus to move the drives. 

Now we are all hooked on the idea of picking up 4-8 drives for raid arrays with Mobos just around the corner shipping with 2 SAS ports (8 sata drives) or 14 Sata connectors!!

The thought of not having at least 2 TB of storage sounds like gimping any build. But its not 69.99 USD anymore.

Now they have learned thier lession, bringing production back to full bore will only cause them to have more drives to sell, which will only cause them to lower the price to move the quanity of units again, which now they know isn't worth it because we are showing them RIGHT NOW they can just charge 150%-270% the price and work way less.

I wont be giving them a penny.  The price of a Terabyte should be about 35 bucks or less, and LESS as time goes, i fully expect to see 10 TB drives in a few years for 100 bucks or less.

 

Dont believe me?  Watch, just like the gas companies (ooh nooo there is a war where the oil is, boo hoo, oil is sooo hard to get!)  Oh btw pay no attention to our consequitive RECORD SHATTERING profits.  Everyone in the company just likes those Mercedeces Benz for safety!  Safety First!

 

Thats right i said it

 

BlazePC

November 18, 2011 at 10:32am

Poor research a good article doesn't make.

Fair to say prices have about doubled on aggregate, not tripled.

1 to 2 TB drives by the two top companies can be had for around twice what they went for pre-flood.  Sure pricing varies - that's the free market - but this claim of triple the usual price is nonsense. Amazon is a great place to start the research process. Best Buy is even more astounding.

That said, I'm glad hard drives have ticked upward.  For what a hard drive provides in the bigger scheme of things, they AREN'T commodities.  They are a crucial part of any build and the life blood of everything data, media & apps.

Tripled in price?  Come on.

The propaganda machine is a funny beast; in politics as it is in everything tech.

Zoandar

November 18, 2011 at 10:18am

Reminds me of the ketchup 'shortage' in the 80s. It is logical to assume these inflated prices will remain as long the consumers allow.

I Jedi

November 18, 2011 at 9:55am

Perfect. Just in time for when I plan to build my Ivy Bridge setup in February. I couldn't be more pleased with the flood screwing me at least another $300.