Topic: Hard Drive Prices Going Up Up Up...

[H₂O]

Is it just me or have hard drive prices increased dramatically in the last 2 weeks (like 50% or something).

[page]

Is it just me or have hard drive prices increased dramatically in the last 2 weeks (like 50% or something).

yeah, it's a supply issue.

[it-goes-to-eleven]

Won't someone please mop the clean rooms?

http://imgur.com/a/1Zttl/noscript

[adrianf74]

Won't someone please mop the clean rooms?

http://imgur.com/a/1Zttl/noscript

Thanks for the pictures.   I just noticed prices were jumping pretty quickly, too, as I was in need of picking up another 8TB of storage.  Guess I'll be waiting a while.

[H₂O]

I thought it only affected WD - I guess WD supplies enough to drive up costs 50%

[Gordon]

damn!  my go to storage drive has gone up $10 ($69.99) with $8 shipping.  non sale price is usually $59.99 with free shipping

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185

[adrianf74]

damn!  my go to storage drive has gone up $10 ($69.99) with $8 shipping.  non sale price is usually $59.99 with free shipping

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185

That's nothing.  Check the price on the F4 2TB.  A few weeks back, it was around US$60-65 and is now double that.

[rastasean]

The drive I was eyeing was right about $70-75 and now about $120.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136284

Funny how its not mentioned the negative effects of a "global economy market" crap until after things like this happy. i hope the people of Thailand are okay but recovering from something as bad as this will take a long, long time.

[Gordon]

damn!  my go to storage drive has gone up $10 ($69.99) with $8 shipping.  non sale price is usually $59.99 with free shipping

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185

That's nothing.  Check the price on the F4 2TB.  A few weeks back, it was around US$60-65 and is now double that.

that is insane!!  glad I'm set on drives for a while.

[Fatah Ruark (aka MIKE B)]

Right when I was about to move all of my data to 3TB drives (I'd just need 2. 1 for data and 1 for backup).

Still have plenty of room on my existing drives. Sure would have made backups a lot easier.

Oh well. Life could be worse.

[Gordon]

what 3tb drives are you looking at?  Hitachi seems to be the big one but I don't trust Hitachi.  been reading about lots of issues with them already. 

[Fatah Ruark (aka MIKE B)]

what 3tb drives are you looking at?  Hitachi seems to be the big one but I don't trust Hitachi.  been reading about lots of issues with them already.

I've pretty much moved to using only Western Digital drives.

I don't trust the 3TB drives 100% either, but I plan on having 2 copies of everything on two 3TB drives and then I'll keep my off site backups on a variety of 1 and 2TB drives.

All that will have to wait. I was holding out to 3TB drives getting close to the $100 mark.

[adrianf74]

what 3tb drives are you looking at?  Hitachi seems to be the big one but I don't trust Hitachi.  been reading about lots of issues with them already.

I've pretty much moved to using only Western Digital drives.

I don't trust the 3TB drives 100% either, but I plan on having 2 copies of everything on two 3TB drives and then I'll keep my off site backups on a variety of 1 and 2TB drives.

All that will have to wait. I was holding out to 3TB drives getting close to the $100 mark.

At this point, I'm with you as far as trusting 3TB drives.  I wouldn't go near a Hibachi DeathStar if you paid me to take the drive. I have one that's been RMA'd twice and still died the third time (drive health is 81% at present with a whack of bad sectors and runs REALLY hot... in fact, I could use it as a Hibachi - I'm not making this up).

As far as WD drives go... well, I've had two WD20EADS drives go back for RMA's out of 5 that I use in my setup.  I find they run relatively warm (about 34-38c) under moderate useage.   I have 1 Seagate LP drive which runs around 32c and then I have the two Samsung HD204UI's which run between 29c and 32c under moderate useage.   I had been hoping to pick up (6) of those drives and replace the rest in my storage boxes but I'm not interested in paying $120 a pop at the moment.

The sad part is that Seagate recently purchased Samsung's Hard Drive division so, I'm guessing, we'll be seeing these drives phased out (which is really unfortunate).  They run the coolest, quiest and have offered me the least number of headaches.

[Gordon]

The sad part is that Seagate recently purchased Samsung's Hard Drive division so, I'm guessing, we'll be seeing these drives phased out (which is really unfortunate).  They run the coolest, quiest and have offered me the least number of headaches.

yea I'm not happy about this!  I doubt they'll phase them out but they will be shitty seagates with a samsung logo on them.  I use to swear by seagate and still have a few 500gb's that are rock solid.  their quality control has gone to shit over the last few years.

[Brian E.]

yeah I was just looking at some 3TB drives, thinking about upgrading to them - but at $180 each for WD, it's hard to swallow.

[Fried Chicken Boy]

damn!  my go to storage drive has gone up $10 ($69.99) with $8 shipping.  non sale price is usually $59.99 with free shipping

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185

Yeah, that's considerable!  I just bought a few 1.5TB Samsung drives a couple months ago for $50 a pop.

IMHO, I'd be a little weary of 3TB drives, especially until the prices fall in line with the smaller sized offerings.  And I'd stay away from the Hitachi's; I've had more of those go teats-up on me than any other HDD I've used.  When Lacie began using them in their external drives, I heard a lot more drive failure stories from disgruntled buyers/users.

[Gordon]

And I'd stay away from the Hitachi's; I've had more of those go teats-up on me than any other HDD I've used.  When Lacie began using them in their external drives, I heard a lot more drive failure stories from disgruntled buyers/users.

I had a lacie 750 with a Hitachi in it.  when it failed it was still under warranty. they sent me a 1tb with a samsung in it!

[Gordon]

damn!  my go to storage drive has gone up $10 ($69.99) with $8 shipping.  non sale price is usually $59.99 with free shipping

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185

make that     $79.99 w/ $7.28 Shipping

the 2tb      $159.99 w/  $7.28 Shipping  I paid $69 in may for it!

[H₂O]

It's ridiculous! - Prices are almost triple what they where a month ago for 2TB internal drives at newegg now.  You can still get deals on external drives as they haven't been hit yet by the shortage I guess.

I bet they won't go down anytime soon (esp with all of Taiwan under water - and supply and demand logic "once price goes up it takes a very long time for it to go back down even after normal supply levels are reached")

[Fatah Ruark (aka MIKE B)]

You would think these companies would have distributed their manufacturing to avoid situations like this.

Just read that Western Digital is completely dead in the water, and many distributors are nearly out of stock.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/28/us-thai-floods-drives-idUSTRE79R66220111028

While, I will personally be fine without buying another drive for a year or so, I would think that companies like Apple and Dell could be in trouble. I wonder if they have an action plan for shortages like this.

[rastasean]

You would think these companies would have distributed their manufacturing to avoid situations like this.

Just read that Western Digital is completely dead in the water, and many distributors are nearly out of stock.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/28/us-thai-floods-drives-idUSTRE79R66220111028

While, I will personally be fine without buying another drive for a year or so, I would think that companies like Apple and Dell could be in trouble. I wonder if they have an action plan for shortages like this.

They BETTER!  thanks for the link

[rastasean]

It's ridiculous! - Prices are almost triple what they where a month ago for 2TB internal drives at newegg now.  You can still get deals on external drives as they haven't been hit yet by the shortage I guess.

I bet they won't go down anytime soon (esp with all of Taiwan under water - and supply and demand logic "once price goes up it takes a very long time for it to go back down even after normal supply levels are reached")

The WD facility is actually in Thailand but yes, most of the Asian area is flooded severely.

[Rob D.]

I finally bought a 2TB Seagate expansion drive two weeks ago at Fry's and it was only $69. There was no shipping option so I had to drive about 25 mile each way to pick it up but now thinking I should've picked up two 

[Gordon]

damn!  my go to storage drive has gone up $10 ($69.99) with $8 shipping.  non sale price is usually $59.99 with free shipping

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185

make that     $79.99 w/ $7.28 Shipping

the 2tb      $159.99 w/  $7.28 Shipping  I paid $69 in may for it!

the 1tb is $139.99 now!  damn I'm glad I'm set for a little while.

edit:  just noticed this 

In stock. Limit 1 per customer.

[George]

damn!  my go to storage drive has gone up $10 ($69.99) with $8 shipping.  non sale price is usually $59.99 with free shipping

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185

make that     $79.99 w/ $7.28 Shipping

the 2tb      $159.99 w/  $7.28 Shipping  I paid $69 in may for it!

the 1tb is $139.99 now!  damn I'm glad I'm set for a little while.

edit:  just noticed this 

In stock. Limit 1 per customer.

Ouch...I guess I'll wait a while to buy more drives.

[H₂O]

now there over 3x as much won't be long till they are almost 4x the price they where 1 month ago.

1 month ago $69 for a 2TB was not uncommon - now they sell for around $229 - or 3.3x the price

Pretty soon SSD's will look cheap

[justink]

damn!  my go to storage drive has gone up $10 ($69.99) with $8 shipping.  non sale price is usually $59.99 with free shipping

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185

it's $140 now!  :lol

[Gordon]

damn!  my go to storage drive has gone up $10 ($69.99) with $8 shipping.  non sale price is usually $59.99 with free shipping

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185

it's $140 now!  :lol

look a few post up



the home server I built my buddy I used five of these on sale for $50 and a $30 ish WD 120gb for OS.  total price for drives was less than $300.  total for server was less than $600.  new prices it would be over  $800 just for the drives! 

[Brian E.]

jeez 3TB drives just jumped from $180 to $260 on Amazon.

[it-goes-to-eleven]

jeez 3TB drives just jumped from $180 to $260 on Amazon.

That's okay- I still fear their reliability.   And the statistics are not good.

But, oh how I pine for the capacity!  But if you are good about multiple copies *AND* don't have simultaneous failures from the same lot, then it isn't such a concern.  But for those of us who lived the IBM "death star" drives, and them all basically being bad, multiple simultaneous failures are a real consideration. And these drives are far more complex, in many significant ways.... If those old drives were like "a 747 flying inches above the runway without ever touching", these drives are like "a thousand 747's, with their wings all connected, flying fractions of an inch above little cesna airplanes, which are flying fractions of an inch above the runway, in the dark"...

[Fatah Ruark (aka MIKE B)]

WD 2TB at Best Buy for $80. Better buy one now just in case. Who knows when prices will drop:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Western+Digital+-+Caviar+Green+2TB+Internal+Serial+ATA+Hard+Drive/9234465.p?id=1218064150518&skuId=9234465&slref=10&slloc=01

[bhadella]

WD 2TB at Best Buy for $80. Better buy one now just in case. Who knows when prices will drop:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Western+Digital+-+Caviar+Green+2TB+Internal+Serial+ATA+Hard+Drive/9234465.p?id=1218064150518&skuId=9234465&slref=10&slloc=01

Nice!  This is the harddrive I've been buying and desperately needed a 3rd one!   freeleech has taxed my hd space.

[it-goes-to-eleven]

Nice!  This is the harddrive I've been buying and desperately needed a 3rd one!   freeleech has taxed my hd space.

What?!  Oh - *Freeleech*.

Remember Katrina and the flooded cars.  Those could be flooded hard drives!

[H₂O]

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Seagate-HD-Stephen-Luczo-Toshiba-Western-Digital,14039.html

Not good news - 1 Year before back to normal production levels with at least 20% markup (from I would guess pre-flood prices) for the next 2-3 years afterwards

[George]

damn!  my go to storage drive has gone up $10 ($69.99) with $8 shipping.  non sale price is usually $59.99 with free shipping

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185

it's $140 now!  :lol

$159...but it comes with a free computer case.  Guess people ain't buying drives atm, lol.  I got lucky...real lucky...grabbed a 2.5TB usb HDD off of J&R for a cool hundo when they hdd shortage started.

[George]

Looks like Seagate is going to take upwards of a year to get back to normal:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Seagate-HD-Stephen-Luczo-Toshiba-Western-Digital,14039.html

[morst]

The best price around seems to be $45 per TB, when you break it down.

I got BestBuy to price-match a 3TB WD external from my receipt from 10/30/2011 yesterday. The WD Essentials (3 yr warranty) drive is currently $249.99, I got two for $129.99 each, plus sales tax. Puts it right around $46/TB.

I guess I can scan my receipt if anyone wants to try getting a match!?

Western Digital - My Book Essential 3TB External USB 3.0/2.0 Hard Drive - Black

[H₂O]

The 3TB Seagates are going to be on sale for $99 on Friday at Best Buy -> good Luck

Also 2TB seem to be listed in the $70 range for Friday.

[Fried Chicken Boy]

Good luck, indeed.  The reliability of 2TB drives in 2009 and 2010 was pretty bad; I heard of many returns and complaints.  I'd like to think that they've been improved upon since then, but 2 and 3TB drives still make me nervous.  YMMV.

[rastasean]

At least we are not seeing prices like this: http://imgur.com/gR1Hg   1.09GB hard drive for $315

[fleish]

Good luck, indeed.  The reliability of 2TB drives in 2009 and 2010 was pretty bad; I heard of many returns and complaints.  I'd like to think that they've been improved upon since then, but 2 and 3TB drives still make me nervous.  YMMV.

I think it's still hit or miss with certain product lines. I bought 2x2TB WD Green drives (WD20EARS) from Newegg in October for $80/each & free shipping. I had to return one of them immediately for replacement and noticed at the time the price had already jumped up to at least $100 if not a little more. Today they are listing for $210

[George]

At least we are not seeing prices like this: http://imgur.com/gR1Hg   1.09GB hard drive for $315

Just not a fair comparison.  I'm sure 1.09GB was a big, big, big HDD to have back then.   My first desktop (purchased in November 1996) had a 20GB HDD, a Pentium 133MHz CPU, 64MB of ram, 15" monitor, epson color printer...it was the tits and it only cost me $2800!   

Looks like anyone that needs a new HDD better snap one (or twelve for your porn/flac collection) on black friday.

[it-goes-to-eleven]

I usually buy western digital but many of their externals are now shipping with something called smartware.  Some people describe it as a rootkit, that it is hard to remove from your computer, etc.  It sounds like BS.

[Gordon]

it's easy to remove smartware.  I did it for a friend.  we formatted first and then I removed it.  I recall I had to upgrade the firmware first.  it was a little bit of a pain but once it was done it performed like a external should and no longer had the virtual cddrvie, encryption etc.

[Fatah Ruark (aka MIKE B)]

IMO your better off buying OEM drives and putting them into an external enclosure. Longer warranty, easier to salvage a damaged drive, and if the electronics in the enclosure go bad, you can just get a new one (vs. sending the drive back and risk losing data).

I'll have to keep an eye peeled this weekend for Black Friday specials. It might be nice to have a couple of extra new drives in the closet in case of an emergency, especially if it's going to be a year or more before things get ironed out.

[Gordon]

IMO your better off buying OEM drives and putting them into an external enclosure. Longer warranty, easier to salvage a damaged drive, and if the electronics in the enclosure go bad, you can just get a new one (vs. sending the drive back and risk losing data).

I only buy internals.  I do have a few actual externals but mostly internals in enclosure and now a dock.

[mattmiller]

I find it pretty telling that Newegg released their Black Friday sales at midnight and, among the 5 pages of products (must be 500 or more items), there's not a single hard drive on sale.  Just 4 SSDs.  Normally there would an entire category of hard drives with at least 20 or 30 drives listed.

[willndmb]

if anyone has suggestion on "external" drives (or drives and cases) please lmk
also what WAS a good price? 3tb for under 130 seemed good to me but those are mostly sale prices in the last few weeks

looking for 2/3tb, pref fw over usb

i had nothing but trouble with WD externals a few yrs ago
have a seagate 1.5tb now that seems to be good and some older off brand ones

thanks and happy thanksgiving

[H₂O]

I find it pretty telling that Newegg released their Black Friday sales at midnight and, among the 5 pages of products (must be 500 or more items), there's not a single hard drive on sale.  Just 4 SSDs.  Normally there would an entire category of hard drives with at least 20 or 30 drives listed.

Not only this but if you go and look for Hard Drives (not on sale) they barely have any anymore. 

http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=14&name=Internal-Hard-Drives

They used to have a couple of 1000, now it's less than 200.

I went ahead and picked up a usb3.0 3tb at best buy for $99.  They are now sold out online but should have them in the stores tomorrow.

The same drive will be onsale for $89 at BJ's

[Fatah Ruark (aka MIKE B)]

3TB drive on sale at New Egg for $140.

CODE is: EMCNBNH23

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136874&nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL080212&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL080212-_-EMC-080212-Index-_-InternalHardDrives-_-22136874-L0C

I'm tempted to pick this up at this price. I think the lowest I saw these before shit hit the fan was $130. Word on the street was that prices wouldn't get back down a low as they were before.

My computer is slow reading some data now. HD's are all clean and I have everything mirrored...but you can never be to careful.

[Brian E.]

bought 5 X 3TB drives at $150 each recently for my NAS.  It hurt

[H₂O]

I got a 3tb external USB 3.0 drive for $99 shipped during the holiday season/black friday - but the prices are starting to finally come down

I have seen a few 1TB portable (2.5") externals for less then $90 shipped in the last few days
 
Here is a 3TB external WB USB 3.0 for $140

http://www.logicbuy.com/deals/western-digital-my-book-essential-3tb-usb-3-external-hard-drive/30111.aspx

[newplanet7]

I got a 3tb external USB 3.0 drive for $99 shipped during the holiday season/black friday - but the prices are starting to finally come down

I have seen a few 1TB portable (2.5") externals for less then $90 shipped in the last few days
 
Here is a 3TB external WB USB 3.0 for $140

http://www.logicbuy.com/deals/western-digital-my-book-essential-3tb-usb-3-external-hard-drive/30111.aspx

Anyone know whether or not this has an on off switch or does it just spin up when the computer is turned on.
I have been shying away from the ones that don't have a separate switches for all my bitches.

[Brian E.]

whoa.  at first I thought that was a hard drive joke LOL.  error.....

[newplanet7]

That was indeed pretty effed.

[page]

Anyone know whether or not this has an on off switch or does it just spin up when the computer is turned on.
I have been shying away from the ones that don't have a separate switches for all my bitches.

you don't unmount or use the power saver option? (I know you can eject on windows, can't remember how it handles the power saving bit)