Hard Disk Drive Sharp Price Rise

[Prominence]

Recently, I was browsing various computer hardware for future upgrade when I noticed sharp rise in hard disk drive prices. One TB drives rose more than 100% and memory per dollar gets worst as you go down in storage capacity. News claims it was due to flood in Thailand that caused shortage in HDD supplies worldwide. Flood was terrible and all, but it is all too convenient of a timing for HDD price to rise when new processors, socket, and chipset are being released, and not to mention the Christmas shopping season. WD and Seagate have factories all around the world, yet they claim massive shortage for one or two factory shut down.

I was planning to buy 4 to 6 HDD for RAID, but now I will probably stick with one spare hard disk drive I have lying around with Ubuntu and/or Window 7 Professional OS until HDD price goes down.

Personally, I think this is just another price fixing since WD and Seagate had plenty of time to prepare for the flood since the flood have been occurring since July. Strange how price was low back then, and now they are coming up with the excuse.

I wonder what is the economy impact from this event in HDD, SSD, and other non volatile storage market.

[KaiserJ]

this also irritated me;

just built a new computer and used a 1TB storage i had in my old comp... it's a wierd feeling seeing that component parts have risen in price...

i'm not sure if price fixing could really be occurring on a scale like you mention, because surely WD etc. will take a big loss in the long term for a lack of produced units;

wheras distributors like newegg and tiger are likely "fixing" prices (noticed there's a 1-per-customer policy at tiger although i'm not sure if that applies as "one HD per person" or "one of each model of HD per person"

i would not be surprised if there was initially consumer panic when the flood occurred which led to more HDs shipping to customers, and then the distributors noticed this boost in sales and adjusted prices and availability accordingly.

dude at tiger figured it would be at least a year before prices were back to where they were (even though thailand only apparently needs 6 months to rebuild factories and infrastructure) so we'll see where it goes.

hopefully this is a "eggs-in-one-basket" wakeup call, and manufacturers take the cue to build plants in places other than thailand so that we as the end users don't get hit hard in the wallet by a natural disaster quite so badly ever again

[smoth]

Stop looking for conspiracies, the sleeper must awaken, a cigar is sometimes just a cigar.

[hoijui]

hehehe :D

thailand is flooded.
first though of all geeks in the world:
"shit, there will be a harddisk shortage, i need to buy them in masses ASAP! or else i will be left with my 64TB for the next 3 MONTHS! without upgradeability for a good price!!"

geeks are not wall-street guys, kaiser.

[BaNa]

Stop looking for conspiracies, the sleeper must awaken, a cigar is sometimes just a cigar.

Agreed, also think first post could be used as illustration for what first world problems are.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

solution: wait until market recovers before buying new HD

wasn't that easy

[smoth]

Stop looking for conspiracies, the sleeper must awaken, a cigar is sometimes just a cigar.

Agreed, also think first post could be used as illustration for what first world problems are.

LOL, yeah.

for those not in the know..
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/first-wor ... sEWevJJtaQ

[AF]

Just because you have massive stockpiles of drives, doesn't guarantee you can last for years, especially when there is massive demand.

Also it's arguable stockpiling enough HDs to last a year would be uneconomical considering the rampant pace of technology.

[KaiserJ]

no guys it's newegg.com in collusion with WD and the government of thailand

massive conspiracy, sunken city of atlantis, shark-fin soup banned in many places because they are oversaturated with gamma radiation, strange apelike men rising from the sea at night to snatch the children of the townspeople. north korea.

[AF]

In other news, supplies of adam and eve skyrocket as trading at the Rapture City exchange closes at record highs.

[Coresair]

Kaiser should know, he is a defender of thailand.

kekekekekeekekekekeekekeke

[Panda]

Stop looking for conspiracies, the sleeper must awaken, a cigar is sometimes just a cigar.

Agreed, also think first post could be used as illustration for what first world problems are.

LOL, yeah.

for those not in the know..
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/first-wor ... sEWevJJtaQ

ROFL.

[Forboding Angel]

WD didn't have all it's eggs in one basket. It has factories all over the world. This disaster will not affect one iota the number of harddrives coming off of the line as the other factories ramp up production to pick up the slack.

The price is being artificially inflated.

[KaiserJ]

a wild conspiracy appears!

[PicassoCT]

As always the tinfoil-industry is behind it!

[smoth]

As always the tinfoil-industry is behind it!

IT ALL MAKES SENSE!