News Hard drive market set for double-digit slump

The prices haven't fallen since the floods back to their original levels, while the prices and speeds of SSD's continue to fall to keep making them more attractive options.. that and more cloud based storage.

 

I want drives but I will wait till the prices drop

 

fluffy white clouds above our head. no HDDs required.

 

I'm after a 4TB drive for my NAS and maybe a new 2TB Desktop drive to replace my aging (and nearly full) 1TB one. Although as its mostly full of Steam games getting a 512GB SSD could also be an option...but maybe next year.

 

Couldn't care any less, as I don't have tons of data to begin with.

The workfiles from the last 10 years take up some 20GB (PSD, HTML, AI, JPG, etc), my MP3-files use some 60GB, and I'm not collecting much movies, maybe some 4-500GB of series and movies.

A 1 TB NAS (backup) + 32 GB (workfiles) and 64 GB (music) USB-stick is all I need really to store and backup my files

 

True. But, where as before 5 users would have 5 hard drives, with cloud storage 5 users could share a single cloud hard drive. Its a more efficient use of a single disk.

As for R&D on hard drives, I say screw it. Lets just move to SSDs make em big and cheap. Hard drives will eventually go the way of the dodo.

 

Prices should be coming down, we're not down from the floodrelated pricehike yet.

 

if you are Intel, your storage is now mostly SSD based

 

This.

My retailer of choice sold 1TB Spinpoint for 44,90 EUR just before the floods.
Now the cheapest comparable drive goes for 81,00 EUR. Plenty of headroom to drop prices.

I do know I'd get better EUR/GB ratio from bigger drives, though. Still gonna sit tight and wait for prices to drop.

 

I'm still buying hard drives, until SSDs match them for price per GB they're gonna be useful. I mean I can't afford to pay for 3 512GB SSDs in my laptop, but I'll take 1 240GB SSD and a 1TB HDD. Oh and in my NAS 3TB drives are great, but then I store a lot of video, I'm a hoarder of sorts.

 

There's been consolidation since the floods, so will prices come down again? Not saying you've got cartel like price practices going on but 2TB drives could be had for as low as £46 pre- floods. Now they start at around £70

 

I think everyone is waiting for prices to come down. I have 5 physical drives in my current PC, 1x 1.5TB, 2x2TB, 1x 500GB and 1x 250GB. I am waiting for to come down so I can fill a NAS caddie with 3TB or 4TB drives for a decent price and then have an SSD in my main system. At the current prices it is just too expensive to justify the move as I still have a little space on my current setup.

 

2TB for £46? jesus how did i miss that!

 

oops I forgot about the local storage aspect of the cloud

 

They have come down quite a lot from their post-flood peak . But they're still at least 40 percent higher than before the flood.

 

ssd prices are actually climbing- pre xmas a crucial M4 could be had for £100 for a 256 ; now they are £150 and climbing.


but , hdd`s do need to drop in price - there`s no supply issues yet the prices are sky high , ergo punters wont buy them.

 

Last drive I purchased was right after the flood. Knew I would need one and knew they would be hard to get because of the flood and because of the panic. Price was 60 bucks, 20 more than I usually paid. They're still priced high. Why would I even think about buying one until the price comes back to something more sensible? I don't feel sorry for the market. I held off purchasing 6 drives in the past year. I took some I had and wiped them where I normally would have bought new.