Storage HDD Prices

The shop where I work is now selling 500GB 3.5" drives for £108 It's a small shop and cost prices for us have gone through the roof.

 

The good old 1TB Spinpoint F3 which I bought for £37, is now £94 on Scan...madness! Hope they come down soon, NEED MOAR TERABYTEZ!

 

6 months+

 

I just checked on Scan, i bought a 1TB Samsung spin point F3 a month ago for £42 now its £98.13 ..

 

Thought this may be of interest.

Was going to grab a couple of those, but now I just decided I can probably get by with what I have.

Have too much stuff stored anyway.

 

wow mite c if i got any spare drives to sell

 

Once the mayhem has calmed down and the situation fully assessed then the prices should come down within a month or two,

So far only one hard drive manufacturing plant has been flooded which would only affect 15% of the world's output on HDDs.

 

In one of those ironic moments, PC world are cheaper than Scan or Aria on HDDs. Get em while they're hot. Only one or two online deals that are competitive, but in stores there will still be some brown box stock sitting there.

 

The Western Digital Caviar Greens in my local PC world were made in Thailand. Talking about ironic.

 

You repeat this over and over, while the whole computer industry says otherwise.

 

That contradicts what I have read in several forums and on several news sites.

WD had a plant flood. Some other manufacturers have had to close plants due to either flooding or the threat of flooding. The manufacturer of most of the motors used in drive in other countries has been affected. Supply lines (transport links, etc) have been affected.

Overall, from what I have been reading, estimated worldwide production has dropped by about 40% because of the Thailand floods, and that number will come primarily out of what end users like us get to see, as the large manufacturers will still buy in bulk before we get to see anything.

As demand is typically not changing, price has to go up in order to reduce that demand.

It's expected to last about 6 months, as even when the floods have subsided the production plants will have a lot of work to do to recover or replace damaged machinery, and that will keep prices high for an extra few months.

 

We seem to be going in circles on this thread :=), this is the full list of effected companies that we now about so far (country still flooded, and not getting any better):

Hitachi GST

Prachinburi (HDD assembly)
Saha Union (HDD assembly)
Sarawak (disk media)
Seagate

Korat (HDD assembly and disk heads)
Korat (disk heads)
Toshiba

Pathumtani (HDD assembly)
WD

Navanakorn (HDD assembly)
Bang-pa In (HDD assembly and disk heads)
Asahi Glass

Bangkok (disk media)
Furukawa

Rojana (disk media)
Hoya

Changmai (disk media)
TDK

Rojana (disk media)


Minebea

Rojana (motors)
Nidec

Rojana (motors)
Ayutthaya (motors)
Hutchinson

Ayutthaya (suspensions)

Magnecomp

Rojana (suspensions)
Min Aik

Ayutthaya (HDD components)
Cal-Comp Electronics

Bangkok (PCBA)

 

debs

Only 40 per cent of all hard drives made in the world comes from Thailand. China is the biggest manufacturer of hard drives and also there are manuafcturing plants in Malaysia, Brazil and USA.

Now 40 per cent figure means that although there are flooding in Thailand worldwide it means production will not drop more than 40%. This figure should also be less due to the fact that Seagate have of their plants intact while Western Digital only as one.

Western Digital have two manufacturing plants where one has flooded and the other one has not.

Seagate have confirmed their manufacturing plants are safe and were able to continue to manufacture HDDs up until last week when there were concerns for personnel safety in their lown homes.

Also there were reports that component manufacturers TDK and Nidec were switching production sites. So all of this means that the impacts of the floods shouldn't last long. The 15% figure was calculate on the basis that only one plant was out of action.

I think once people takes a more rational view about how the floods in Thailand have affected hard drives prices elsewhere then we should see the prices come down to a sensible level. Of course, there will be some people talking up the costs in order to profit from the situation. Also, other countries should be able to ramp up production to mitigate against worldwide shortage.

 

Guess what.. our price has changed from the vendor too.. and we pay the cost at the time we ship from our warehouse. Rebate schemes etc are pulled from vendor.

We are feeling it too, I wish it was a cash fest for us but it really really isnt

 

Gimme your number, il pass it on to my WD.Toshiba etc as there clearly all wrong. Do you work in the industry or you just someone who cant see past the fact the price of a drive on scan has gone up. Industry is in bad times and you think you know better.. you sir are a noob

 

http://www.computerworlduk.com/news...unlikely-to-cause-hard-drive-price-rise-soon/

The journalist who wrote this article has also taken a rational view.

Give it about a month and the HDDs prices should be back to a sensible level once the hysteria has died down..

 

Guys, stop feeding the troll.

 

I'm no troll as all my posts are above board and using reasoned argument.

I'm just like most reasonable members who wants to see reasonable prices for hard drives and hopefully this would be the case once the mayhem surrounding the Thai floods has receded in the next 4 weeks.

No one in their right mind wants to see high prices for HDDs and yet there are a few people who do.

I shall repost the link as it very clear that there is no jusification for the rip off prices we are seeing for hard drives.

http://www.computerworlduk.com/news...unlikely-to-cause-hard-drive-price-rise-soon/

 

Reposting a link you only posted 2 posts up doesn't make it any more or less valid, it just makes it irritating

I hope you are right, but that is one article saying there is no big problem. There are LOTS of articles saying why it IS a big problem.

It's not currently an issue for me, as I just received a 1TB drive I bought off eBay last week for £45, and as I have decided to buy an SSD instead of using that drive I might be able to double my money on it in a week or two, and put the money toward a slightly better SSD I won't need a new mechanical drive for a few months (when I build a system around an SR-3 with a couple of SB-EP Xeon (32 cores in total).

 

I'm with A..L on this - market forces are the factor here - if the primary driver for low prices can no longer provide supplies at the previously super-competitive price, the other vendors will happily increase their own prices to capitalise on that competition vaccum. Economics are about supply & demand, but competition is something else again. Not suggesting there might be some price-fixing going on, but the cynic in me can't help but wonder how we go from plentiful supply to massive price increases on the back of one flood in one country. Just look at the fossil fuel market.

<edit> forgot to add - then look at the record profits being posted by petrochems.