Hard drive prices will drop soon

AberystwythLAD · 13 Dec 2011 at 00:36

Production can't be down now as shops aren't going out of stock meaning the supply must still be there.

Then there is this;

http://www.neowin.net/news/report-pc-hard-drive-prices-might-go-down-next-month

Lets face it, could some of the companies now be capitalising on the natural disaster to keep charging inflated prices and to continue blaming it on the floods? I mean, it is sensible business.

StriderX · 13 Dec 2011 at 00:45

Thread is by someone who i dont trust, hmmmmmmmmmmm.

Either way, of course they are, what corporate entity wouldn't love this position?

Hell two companies are in the process of buying out some of the competition due to it, prices will hardly budge.

AberystwythLAD · 13 Dec 2011 at 00:53

StriderX said:
Hell two companies are in the process of buying out some of the competition due to it, prices will hardly budge.

What two companies are these?

StriderX · 13 Dec 2011 at 01:08

Well heres one, forgot the other. Edit: got it.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2011/04/19/samsung-and-seagate-announce-strategic-agre/1

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/07/wd_buys_hitsachi_gst/

Surveyor · 13 Dec 2011 at 01:22

AberystwythLAD said:
What two companies are these?

Western Digital are buying the Hitachi HDD business and Seagate are buying Samsung's HDD business.

bedazzled · 13 Dec 2011 at 09:22

If Seagate buy Samsungs HDD buisness will it mean that Samsungs drives will become crap like Seagates drives are.

Loke · 13 Dec 2011 at 09:42

Luckily companies can't set their own prices and expect sales to remain constant in a free market. Soon as supply starts matching demand, we'll see price drops again.

The uncertainty here is how many of the wholesellers have signed up to long term contracts at high pricepoints.

Of course if there is no competition, and we got a monopoly situation that's different.

Purgatory · 13 Dec 2011 at 09:46

bedazzled said:
If Seagate buy Samsungs HDD buisness will it mean that Samsungs drives will become crap like Seagates drives are.

Every company that makes Hard drives has had bad drives just google it. Also IBM/Hitachi as they are now known had some disasters with their Deskstar ranges, so have Samsung, Seagate and Western Digital. There is not one company that makes drives that has not had a certain range that has been an epic fail for some reason or another.

I was always an IBM/Hitachi user and when they had drives that were bad I stayed away when I got hit by one of they deathstars and I moved to Seagate and after many years happy with them in the last year one of their drives had a massive failure on me and reading up on that drive showed it was a known problem and I had updated the firmware on that drive to stop this so called problem but seems they lied to us it was fixed and the drive failed exactly as it was not meant to. I ended up having to build a RS-232 device to connect to the drives operating system to get it to come to life again so I could recover the drive.

So now I sold all my Seagate drives and moved on to WD (never had a drive fail from them yet) and Hitachi again to give them one more chance and hoping the deathstars are a thing of the past and they have learned from that lesson... So far fingers crossed these drives are all working fine but as we know with drives most of the problems only seem to show up after a lot of use and typically when they are full of your important data...

Regarding the OPs topic of drives soon to come back at lower pricing..

Well Hitachi seem to be selling 4TB and 10,000 RPM drives now so to me looks like things are back on track but I know WD was hit the hardest in these floods so we might not see drives from them at good prices for a while.

http://www.techpowerup.com/156455/4-TB-Hitachi-desktop-hard-drive-starts-selling-in-Japan.html

http://www.techpowerup.com/156685/Hitachi-Debuts-the-Ultrastar-C10K900-10-000-RPM-Hard-Drives.html

BUT...i'm sure all the retailers and companies that make drives are going to milk the customer for a while... And just to highlight my feelings on this... I'm NOT buying any drive at the current prices... so I do hope retailers sort this problem out soon and explain this problem to the companies that make these dirves.. I'm lucky I have enough storage for another year, it was just pure luck I updated my drives just before this mess happened (one of my regular updates when drives start to show their age or they may in the future fail) or I would have been left in a situation of buying very over priced technology.

Hagar · 13 Dec 2011 at 13:23

Purgatory said:
... And just to highlight my feelings on this... I'm NOT buying any drive at the current prices... so I do hope retailers sort this problem out soon and explain this problem to the companies that make these drives...

Ditto, £45 per Gb or £30 per 500Gb, I will start buying again

Joshlad · 13 Dec 2011 at 15:39

much good news about the drops! although, i'm certain that the companies will only try and produce half quantity, since they're still getting 3x price. why wouldn't you?

IvanDobskey · 13 Dec 2011 at 15:40

nkata said:
Ditto, £45 per Gb or £30 per 500Gb, I will start buying again

£45 per gb? You mean tb?

Anyway, its simple, just dont buy while prices are too high. Prices will soon drop again.
I wont be buying another hard drive until the prices are back where they were.

panyan · 13 Dec 2011 at 15:41

nkata said:
Ditto, £45 per Gb or £30 per 500Gb, I will start buying again

£45/Gb?

EDIT: that would make a 1000GB = 1TB drive about 1000*8*45 = £ 360,000 approx.

edscdk · 13 Dec 2011 at 15:41

Joshlad said:
much good news about the drops! although, i'm certain that the companies will only try and produce half quantity, since they're still getting 3x price. why wouldn't you?

the other companies will undercut them and ramp up production... there is a reason you dont run a large company...

Joshlad · 13 Dec 2011 at 15:47

>.< probably a very good thing thinking about it

ZXSpectrum · 13 Dec 2011 at 15:54

bedazzled said:
If Seagate buy Samsungs HDD buisness will it mean that Samsungs drives will become crap like Seagates drives are.

BWBHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Thats funny.. We have integrated thousands of seagate drives from the entry level barracuda to the enterprise class cheetah and constellation es drives. Seagate have had the lowest failure rate of every single manufacturer that we have ever used.. Crap indeed... :rolleyes:

Loke · 13 Dec 2011 at 15:57

edscdk said:
the other companies will undercut them and ramp up production... there is a reason you dont run a large company...

Exactly.

High price point=means lots of production as people wants in on the action.

This drives prices down.

The largest demand for harddrives come from companies building computers and selling them. We're a niche market, a large niche market, but one nevertheless.

The huge demand is driving prices atm as supply can't deliver enough and the big sellers want to secure their chains.

You also have the HDD manufacturers who are still producing at maximum capacity, selling long term contracts to win over business from the crippled competitors.

We'll see HDD prices drop drastically once supply and demand meet again.

panyan · 13 Dec 2011 at 16:00

bedazzled said:
If Seagate buy Samsungs HDD buisness will it mean that Samsungs drives will become crap like Seagates drives are.

+1

Skyline said:
BWBHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Thats funny.. We have integrated thousands of seagate drives from the entry level barracuda to the enterprise class cheetah and constellation es drives. Seagate have had the lowest failure rate of every single manufacturer that we have ever used.. Crap indeed...

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