why are HDD prices still so high?

[Splash]

Were the 2Tb disks you bought at £54 each SATA2 or 3? Also I recall seeing a fair few "today only" type deals at circa £55, but don't recall the list price ever being that low. Perhaps they were loss leaders?

Anyhoo, #firstworldproblems

[scaryjim]

so why are UK prices still so high?

Your linked article doesn't actually say wholesale prices are down, just that more drives are being shipped. It also doesn't tell us what the year on year growth was like compared to 2010, just that it was the highest annual shipments. Given they were talking about recovering from a "sluggish third quarter", I'd assume that the shipments this year weren't much higher than in 2010.

Anyway, even assuming that wholesale prices are now lower than 2010, there's a reasonable chance that most retailers still have some older drives in stock that were bought at higher wholesale prices. They won't lower retail prices until those have filtered through.

Anyhoo, #firstworldproblems

QFT

[shaithis]

Still rather unhappy at prices myself.....although they did seem very low pre-floods.

Personally, I think they were selling close to cost....then the floods happened and they put prices up too high....this made people buy SSDs that otherwise wouldn't have and that has caused SSD prices to fall so much that HDD sales are still considerably lower then they would have been.....so now they are looking to make a decent profit off of each drive.

I really feel that it will get worse for HDD manufacturers unless they drop prices again, SSDs are still dropping and if things like ultrabooks and tablets really are going to sell a lot of drives, they are more likely to be SSD then HDD - IMO.

[technodean]

The real reason for the prices not dropping is supply and demand. Before the floods we were at a time where quality of our movies images etc wasn't that big. Sky now are using 1tb drives in their hd boxes as we are recording more and more HD content. We are ripping more and more bluray/ HD videos for our ht pc's, our cameras are now shooting at 24 and 36 mp and recording 720 and 1080p videos. Even the new music videos in the past year via youtube have gone to 1080p. So remember its not just us the public who need these hard drives but the companies who supply us with the HD content. Myself about 4 years back I had my 1tb external Hard drive and it never got filled in over a year. Just off the top of my head my pc has 4.2tb of storage, I have 3 2tb external, 1 1tb external, 2 320gb and an 8gb hd. And I still need more.

[DanceswithUnix]

Red drives are WD black RE drives at lower RPM. Pretty much the exact same hardware and firmware + red label. There is absolutely nothing new or revolutionary so you have to wonder why you cannot buy one several weeks after they being announced. The biggest change is the colour of the label. Maybe the label manufacturer got hit by floods and WD cannot afford to buy them.

Prices for 2TB drives are not back to the £54 I paid just before the floods.

I'm sure there is plenty in common with the black drives, though as I said before I'm sure I read that it has the dual bearing motors. Mind you, I think all Samsung drives had that which would help explain why they were so whisper quiet and came with a decent warranty. Perhaps the black drives have that too.
The red data sheets do mention vibration control, which is what raid drives are all about. Thin on details though

I'm sure when the drives came out I saw them available straight away, but went to have a look now and you are right they are quite scarce now. Scan and Ebuyer only had the 1TB drive, though that was cheaper than the WD black version so perhaps they are just popular.

It could also be that the platters are going into SAS drives as that is the latest WD thing.

http://semiaccurate.com/2012/09/27/w...es-affordable/

[Funkstar]

I'm sure when the drives came out I saw them available straight away, but went to have a look now and you are right they are quite scarce now. Scan and Ebuyer only had the 1TB drive, though that was cheaper than the WD black version so perhaps they are just popular.

Could be they are just more popular than WD were expecting. they may also be produced in batches, so one month a factory make Green drives, the next it's Black, after that it's Red. Just a possibility, this does happen in some factories for some things. Or it could be that a large OEM has gobbled up a chunk of production to include them in their NAS or RAID boxes. Perhaps Netgear are filling their NAS boxes with Red drives. Only WD really know