News - Hard drive prices to remain above pre-flood levels until 2014

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IHS iSuppli blame demand, vendor lock-in and supplier oligarchy.

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Read more.

What? Got to wait till 2014 for the price to come down... Hmmm... Am hoping SSD will be cheaper by then...

"prices of hard drives leapt 28 per cent"

28%? I was lucky enough in timing to buy two Barracuda Green 2TBs before the disaster (just over £50 each). They *doubled* in price (about £100 for just one, as far as I recall). Even now, after some price easing, they're still way above pre-flood levels (£80), about 55-60% up.

That reported 28% average must hide a lot of variation, with an awful lot of "cheap" drives pulling the average down. Tell us what they are! ;-)

This is getting ridiculous now! Western Digital are not dealing with this as well as Seagate, Seagate are starting t get reliability back and they have MUCH better prices. On Scan I see Seagate prices going down every now and again but WD prices are frozen

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Originally Posted by CommissarTommy

This is getting ridiculous now! Western Digital are not dealing with this as well as Seagate, Seagate are starting t get reliability back and they have MUCH better prices. On Scan I see Seagate prices going down every now and again but WD prices are frozen

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WD's have mostly always been a bit higher price (agree though there is quite a jump in some configs atm), they also lost much more in the flooding which they might be trying to claw back a little on every drive sold to cover cleanup costs etc.., seagate can afford to lower prices more due to there shocking 1year warranty on mainstream drives as it means less inventory to store for warranties etc.. WD's mainstream is 2yrs

what a bugger. i was looking for 3tb drives to hit near the £50 mark and 4tb drives to hit the £100 mark

WD has always had a higher price but not usually this much higher. Also can WD use Hitachi's facilities to make drives? How is the clean up going? I have not seen pictures for so long (that's why I didn't know WD were hit so much more that Seagate) If Seagate put their warranty up to 2 years I think people would not have this extremely negative attitude towards the brand. I always buy Seagate and I have yet to be disappointed :)

Ask the camel:

http://uk.camelcamelcamel.com/produc...588&h=373&fo=1
http://uk.camelcamelcamel.com/Seagate-ST2000DL003-Barracuda-3-5-inch-5900RPM/product/B004C0WVP6

Though 2TB were definitely below £50 pre-flood in some places - 2.5p per GB
Current prices are around £79 ( or £110 for 3TB) - 3.9p /GB

HDDs have always been low margin, so after the initial price hikes due to the floods,
they now don't want to lose the nice margins they're currently enjoying.

Well looks like I'll be holding off on my server a bit longer then.... luckily I'm in no rush and it's actually making me back up my media lol

Well, that sucks. Guess they won't be seeing my money for a while.

I think WD were more heavily effected than Seagate if I recall correctly which might explain the stagnant pricing on their drives. I too got 2 x 2TB just before the floods at around £45 a drive, I was hoping to also get a couple of 1TBs for RAID and have been holding off for a while but 2014 seems a little absurd. Still at least SSDs are coming down in price, might be able to get a 512GB drive for a decent price soon.

Shame indeed. One year guarantee from seagate you say? Unacceptable considering the price difference IMO.I'm happy that SSD's came to very affordable prices lately at least, still haven't got one though but its on the shopping list of must soon get :)

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Originally Posted by devBunny

"prices of hard drives leapt 28 per cent"

28%? I was lucky enough in timing to buy two Barracuda Green 2TBs before the disaster (just over £50 each). They *doubled* in price (about £100 for just one, as far as I recall). Even now, after some price easing, they're still way above pre-flood levels (£80), about 55-60% up.

That reported 28% average must hide a lot of variation, with an awful lot of "cheap" drives pulling the average down. Tell us what they are! ;-)

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That's because the most of price increase was created by re/e-tailers.

And you can thank mass media for hyping flood and shortages and price increase. That is one of the main reasons we saw 150% price jump and prices are still far from pre-flood time.

Media justified such ridiculous price increase and customers accepted it. And now both manufacturers and retailers will do everything to keep the price high, though there's no shortages for a few months whatsoever.

The reduction in the warranties is sad though.

Not really on topic but, that analyst in the article has a great name, Fang Zhang

wait, only two (parent) companies now making hard drives, bumper profits from price gouging based on a natural disaster, why would they ever want to substantially reduce prices again now theres no credible other competitors?