Hard Drive Prices Up 150% In Less Than Two Months

zyzko writes "The Register reports that hard drive prices (lowest average unit prices) have rocketed 151% from October 1 to November 14th. The worst days have seen over 5% daily price increases. This is commonly attributed to the floods in Thailand, but there are concerns of artificial price fixing and suspicion that retailers or members of the supply channel are taking advantage of the situation." The number varies when you break it down to individual drives, but it seems to be in the right ballpark. Anecdotally, the drive I picked up on Oct. 14th would cost me 135% more today. The flood waters in Thailand have partially receded, but aren't expected to be completely gone until early December. The damage to the country's economy and property is measured in the tens of billions.

Comments

Re:No, no, no

[Anonymous Coward]

I read an article last week about how they are on average, 25% more expensive. Looking at many of the online retailers and some local vendors, most are 3x more expensive.

I bought a 2TB WD20EARS in September for $69, they are $299 at every local store now. The WD RE4 and Seagate ES drives are $399 for 2TB, which is only about 2x.

Here in Germany

[maweki]

prices are up 300%. I work at a B2B-reseller and the 1TB Western Digital Caviar Green which was 0.05€/GB in September is now up to 0.16€/GB. Other drives are similar. Some drives have even seen 400%.

Re:What a crock.

[tlhIngan]

Well, hard drives are commodities, like orange juice, gas, oil, etc.

Prices are inflated now simply because everyone's got the "OMG I NEED A DRIVE NOW!!!" fever. Then again, drives today aren't any more expensive than they were just a year ago.

So if you have no need for a spare hard drive, don't be a sucker and buy now. If you find a sale, great, if not, hold off.

And yes, drive supplies will rebound because of one fact - a 2TB spinning rust costs way less than a 2TB SSD, and since drives are going 3TB+, I don't see SSDs catching up until drive size expansion slows below Moore's law. (SSD's fundamental capacity is driven by Moore's law - double the transistors in 18 months - double the capacity - SLC or MLC).

I'm guessing everyone's in a frenzy, but they'll recover in a few months and if it's been sitting on the shelf the whole time while you "stocked up", you'll look silly.

In short - buy if you really need it (and take notice in that drive prices really aren't sky high - they're just where they were last year or the year before). If you don't, just wait it out.

We thought we'd be stuck with $150 barrels of oil. They dropped under half that a year later.

Surely you mean "by the end of 2011"?

[denzacar]

Or by March 2012, tops.

Personally, I'd rather take the estimates of people doing their best to fix the problem...

Plant managers at Nidec Corp. (6594), which makes motors for disk drives and also has a factory at Rajana, decided not to wait for the water to subside at its seven flooded factories. According to company spokesman Masashiro Nagayasu, they cut a hole in the roof of the Rajana factory, sent divers into the toxin-laden waters to unbolt some heavy equipment, and lifted it onto waiting boats. Some of the equipment is now being used in Nidec factories in China and the Philippines.

...than of CEOs like Seagate's Stephen Luczo who are gleefully rubbing their hands together at the price hike, predicting a year-long shortage of hard-drives.

"People are going to appreciate the complexity of this business," he says.