Hard Drive Pricing going up at an alarming rate!!!!

You can buy a 2TB HD for £75 Samsung, internal, 5400rpm.
Right now.
Online.

No need to pay £100.

Some retailers are already beginning to realise that the panic buying is coming to an end or has already come to an end.

There are still many people who will swear that you should pay above the odds, because HD price will never ever come down...but my guess is that they have a vested interest in the HD industry (they are probably retailers who want to talk up the price, for their own profit). There are some people, who still say that we shall never see £30/TB ever again and some who say that we shall need to wait another 18 months.

Before the flood, 2TB drives were typically £55-£60. I know that some people are saying that they could be had for £50, but I never actually came across those deals.

I said right from the start that prices would return back to normal in late March - early April and at this point I see no reason to revise my prediction. I believe that we will see the £30/TB price, in April 2012.
 
sunama said:
You can buy a 2TB HD for £75 Samsung, internal, 5400rpm.
Right now.
Online.

No need to pay £100.

Some retailers are already beginning to realise that the panic buying is coming to an end or has already come to an end.

There are still many people who will swear that you should pay above the odds, because HD price will never ever come down...but my guess is that they have a vested interest in the HD industry (they are probably retailers who want to talk up the price, for their own profit). There are some people, who still say that we shall never see £30/TB ever again and some who say that we shall need to wait another 18 months.

Before the flood, 2TB drives were typically £55-£60. I know that some people are saying that they could be had for £50, but I never actually came across those deals.

I said right from the start that prices would return back to normal in late March - early April and at this point I see no reason to revise my prediction. I believe that we will see the £30/TB price, in April 2012.
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I was watching the prices drop patiently, waiting for the right moment to buy and one e-tailer had a 'today only' deal for the Samsung F4 2TB for £49.97. I cleverly assumed that prices would dip to that level again and didn't buy, I was saving up to buy 4 together :mad:
 
Westyfield2 said:
Lanz said:
I bought some 2TB RE4's for work last month and they were £130, today they are £430.
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Hmm, wonder how long before I'll be able to flog them and retire on the money!

Got to laugh that now they're expensive enough for <nameless competitor> to be offering finance on them! :rolleyes:
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Just looked and the same competitor is now selling them for £201.68, and has 342 in stock. So whilst prices are still more than they were originally pre-flood (£130), they're now considerably less than they were a month ago (£430). Also interesting to see that there doesn't seem to be a stock issue.
 
sunama said:
What is so special about Enterprise (RE4) drives that makes them more expensive than non-Enterprise drives?
Click to expand...

Comparing like with like (7200RPM and not a deathstar) the 2TB WD Caviar Black is currently £15 cheaper than the 2TB WD RE4... so not that much more expensive.

With regards to what makes an Enterprise drive an Enterprise drive, I believe they are meant to be optimised for RAID (don't ask me how!) and cope with vibrations better (obviously in a server/NAS you're gonna have loads of vibration from all the other drives churning away). Sometimes they have longer warranty, but both the RE4 and Caviar Black have 5yrs. MTBF on Enterprise drives is normally higher. WD list the non-recoverable read errors per bits read as better on the RE4 than the Caviar Black (<1 in 10^15 compared with <1 in 10^14).


According to Toms Hardware when comparing the RE4 with the Caviar Black:

The RE4, however, was modified and validated to be ready for the strain of intensive 24x7 operation, hence the “RAID Edition” name.

To better guard the surrounding system against drive vibration, the RE4 implements secured motor shafts. There’s also an electronic vibration surveillance system that WD characterizes as capable of significantly improving performance in high-vibration environments. An internal, multi-axis shock sensor helps the drive take appropriate action in case of shock to maximize data safety.​


From elsewhere:
The difference with the RE4 drives are MTBF and TLER. TLER is Time Limited Error Recovery, so if your drive has to stop and check for errors which occassionally happen, your drive will stop after a set amount of time. Consumer drives (the Caviar black) will just continue to check until they're done. This is fine in a desktop, but if you have a RAID array the RAID controller will dump them after a set amount of time since the drives appear unresponsive (ie it thinks they died). ​
 
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The blacks are pretty good drives but the RE's are worth the investment if 24/7 is the duty. The blacks have the same electronics and general features as the RE's (as westy says) but the RE's have far, far tighter implementations and go through far, far more & more stringent testing.
WD used to use higher quality materials in the RE versions too, I'm not sure if this is still the case but the magnets, motors, arms, heads, platters and magnetic films were of a higher grade vs the blacks.

The greens are an absolute no-no for raid. Cleaning up the mess after a 72TB raid 6 array using green 3tb disks failed due to drop/time outs was unpleasant to say the least. If you must raid consumer hdd's go Hitachi.

Have to say I found the last few pages amusing to read all things considered. :D
 
are the prices starting to fall now, just seen this on oc Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (WD1002FAEX) for £124.99 but also seen it on another site for £74.99, mmmmmmmmm, what to do :)
 
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