News - HDD shortages into 2012 as prices continue to rise

[Brewster0101]

Samsung 1TB F3 @ £212 from Ebuyer - Complete Piss take
http://www.ebuyer.com/173804-samsung...-cache-hd103sj

[Noxvayl]

Hopefully SSD's can take advantage of this. I would love to see them starting to go below £1 per Gb.

[aidanjt]

Hopefully SSD's can take advantage of this. I would love to see them starting to go below £1 per Gb.

I can't see it. SSDs have already achieved market penetration, the problem is getting high capacity for prices the non-mentally ill is willing to pay for. If anything, this will drive the demand for, and thus prices of SSDs up as well, unless NAND manufacturers can start churning out more higher capacity chips for less.

[Kumagawa]

So on the one hand I guess those stocks of older HDD's will start to disappear as there still cheap relatively speaking. On the other what about game consoles? the PS3 and Xbox360 ship millions of units between now and christmas and there going to eat a huge chunk of available 2.5" HDD's not to mention the chance of console shortages if Sony and Microsoft actually run out.

[davidcrofter]

So on the one hand I guess those stocks of older HDD's will start to disappear as there still cheap relatively speaking. On the other what about game consoles? the PS3 and Xbox360 ship millions of units between now and christmas and there going to eat a huge chunk of available 2.5" HDD's not to mention the chance of console shortages if Sony and Microsoft actually run out.

The big players will get first dabs at everything obviously us mere mortals looking to purchase via the regular channels will be the ones taking the brunt of this. Remember hard drive production has not simply stopped worldwide it still goes on ...

[this_is_gav]

Samsung 1TB F3 @ £212 from Ebuyer - Complete Piss take
http://www.ebuyer.com/173804-samsung...-cache-hd103sj

At least you can get it with free shipping now.

[Tobeman]

Glad I built my N36 server with 8tb drives before prices spiked, and beat it by about two weeks.

That being said, I spent 3 weeks in Thailand the other year and can't wait to go back in the future. Lovely place, great people. My condolences to the friends families of the (*checks wiki*) 317 people lost, let's just remember this effects more than just your next gaming rig build

[semo]

Hopefully SSD's can take advantage of this. I would love to see them starting to go below £1 per Gb.

Maybe more laptops with SSDs will hit the retail if this continues for much longer? HDDs can't go away soon enough IMO

[Saracen]

Maybe more laptops with SSDs will hit the retail if this continues for much longer? HDDs can't go away soon enough IMO

I'd rather have the HD than the SSD. SSDs are all very well and great for speed, but what they don't give you, except at crippling cost, is high capacity.

Give me a 500GB SSD in a laptop at more or less the same price as a 500GB HD and I'll have the SSD, thank you. But at current prices, I'll have the HD every time.

[shaithis]

Give me a 500GB SSD in a laptop at more or less the same price as a 500GB HD and I'll have the SSD, thank you. But at current prices, I'll have the HD every time.

Give it a few more weeks

[Tim_UK1]

given the recent price rises this seems a good buy if you can get by with an external drive:

500GB for £35 delivered:

http://www.comet.co.uk/p/2.5-inch-Po...ef7fb526f93483

[Saracen]

Give it a few more weeks

Perhaps.

But I want decent capacity of storage if I buy a new laptop, so I'm looking for 500GB plus. What's the cost of a >500GB SSD going to be, even in a few weeks? No doubt, a lot more than the laptop.

So yeah, HD prices may go up but I don't see SSD prices coming down drastically in the immediate future. For a laptop, it's not the differential between HD and SSD that would determine my buying decision, but the absolute level of prices. At £300-£400, a new laptop looks attractive to me, if I get the right model and spec, but bearing in mind that it's more a case of wanting than actually needing, if it goes above that, I simply won't buy.

[baius]

...not only was Scan more expensive than PC World...

A sentence I never thought I'd hear uttered on this sacred site.

On the other what about game consoles?

Taking your words completely out of context ( ) ... if prices get too much higher for HDDs, we could just buy an Xbox Elite, take a hammer to the shell, retrieve the storage device and save money.... (DTTAH warning.)

Do it this way and you're not burdened with a games console at the end of it (when you could/should be gaming with a keyboard and mouse).

Baius hath spoken.

[Jimbo75]

I just started selling media pc's on ebay - to say this is a disaster for me is an understatement. HD prices are such absolute insanity there is practically no way for me to compete with anyone who had stock of them.

[mikerr]

One plus point is that I just sold all my 1TB drives for more than I bought them for a year ago,
now I've recently moved to 2TB drives bought before the floods

It's a good time to sell if you have any 500GB or above drives lying around.

[dweeno]

So glad I ordered a 2tb drive the week before this hapened. Shame I need a second for raid in my stora :/