Any Idea When Will The HD Prices Return To Normal?

Kingy1968

Kingy1968

Kingy1968

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Does anyone have any inkling of when the hard drives prices might start to return to prices similar to before??

Theres plenty of posts on Google saying that they would start to drop in December 2011 but as yet I havnt seen any confirmation of this on prices anywhere..

Ive tried looking to see if WD are still underwater but cannot find any upto date info....


Thanks Guys
 
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chaparral said:
3TB drives now only cost about £20 more then they did before the flood
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-256-SE&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=1955

There prices have dropped big time in the last few weeks :)
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£20 more than maybe the most expensive place to get a 3tb drive before the floods, sure, £20 more than pre flood pricing, no, £105 was the best deal I saw on 3tb pre floods, and 2tb for what £55-60 depending on manufacturer

The only way the prices have "come down" is even retailers are finding people just won't pay £180+ for 3tb drives.

Pre flood 2tb £55-60, now £100-120.

pre flood 3tb £105-120, now £150-180.

Looks to me like retailers just crept the prices up £10 a time till sales dropped off too far and brought them back down a step or two.
 
I got a 3tb WD green for £125 this week but they're now out of stock where i got it. It was made 17 Aug 2011 so pre flood stock.
 
drunkenmaster said:
£20 more than maybe the most expensive place to get a 3tb drive before the floods, sure, £20 more than pre flood pricing, no, £105 was the best deal I saw on 3tb pre floods, and 2tb for what £55-60 depending on manufacturer.
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You can't really compare the prices of 5400rpm drives and 7200rpm drives, £150 for a 3tb 7200rpm drive isn't bad and i don't think you'll have seen the same drive for anywhere near £105 before the floods.
 
marms said:
You can't really compare the prices of 5400rpm drives and 7200rpm drives, £150 for a 3tb 7200rpm drive isn't bad and i don't think you'll have seen the same drive for anywhere near £105 before the floods.
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drunkenmaster read my post before i edited in 7200rpm drives..
 
True though, in reality there smeg all performance difference in 7200/5400rpm drives anyway.

Sure benchmarks come out a little ahead, but in real use, most hdd's from the past 2-3 years are almost indistinguishable in performance. There's a small band of performance where hdd's are and another WAY higher band where ssd's are, and most of them are pretty close in real world scenarios where again a bunch of different benchmarks can show a world of difference bettern the best new gen and the worst last gen ssd.... real world you basically can't tell a difference.

Likewise mechanically, cost wise there isn't really a difference between 7200/5400 rpm either, you could get either in 2tb for around £60 and either around £110, the hitachi 7200 rpm ones were sub £110.

Realistically these days ssd for speed, 5400rpm for the quietest storage possible and lowest power, 7200rpm brings almost nothing to the table.
 
TBH I'm sure that they're milking it for as long as they can hoping that like the fuel prices after being so high for a while the current prices might feel cheap to people. Sounds to me like the plans of moronic corporate thinking during a recession.

Personally I'm not buying another drive until they're back to their pre-flood prices or cheaper, fortunately I have quite a few hanging around. Its screwing everyone really, I work for a company who repair laptops as a sideline, it feel like we're ripping people off the prices we have to charge when someones HDD fails.

Its increasing the price of all PCs and Laptops and generally making it harder for everyone. Surely these companies we're insured against such loss?
 
drunkenmaster said:
True though, in reality there smeg all performance difference in 7200/5400rpm drives anyway.
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7200rpm disks have a decent amount more IOPs than 5400 rpms, which are even more important given their sparsity on mechanical drives.
Multitasking or any kind of randomised workload is significantly quicker on a 7200rpm disk compared to 5400 rpm as a result.
Not to mention the typically lower average seek times, which makes handling masses of tiny files quicker. True facts!
 
drunkenmaster said:
£20 more than maybe the most expensive place to get a 3tb drive before the floods, sure, £20 more than pre flood pricing, no, £105 was the best deal I saw on 3tb pre floods, and 2tb for what £55-60 depending on manufacturer

The only way the prices have "come down" is even retailers are finding people just won't pay £180+ for 3tb drives.

Pre flood 2tb £55-60, now £100-120.

pre flood 3tb £105-120, now £150-180.

Looks to me like retailers just crept the prices up £10 a time till sales dropped off too far and brought them back down a step or two.
Click to expand...

ya I guess not too bad considering - I remember looking at 2 2tb seagates before all this hoopla and ya they were around 53~ ... now Im eyeing the 3 tb seagates; could really care less thou they are 7200 rpm (although I know this is seagates new model and will only be 7200).

question - if I want to run these off a sata 2 connection will I notice much of a speed decrease compared to a sata 3 connection?
 
I am borrowing a friends HDD at the moment. (Have been for 3 months now), built my PC under a week after HDD prices sky-rocketed and have been waiting for price drops ever since, I can't wait much longer for a price drop though as my friend is wanting his HDD back unfortunately, it is people like me who will fall victim to buying these overpriced HDDs. :(
 
The 2TB Seagate Green drives are 60% more than this time last year. How much do HD prices usually drop in a year? 25%? so 85% more..
 
Well, Western Digital have stated that they won't be back up to full manufacturing capacity until September or so. I'm guessing we'll probably feel the effects of this for most of this year, but things should be better in Q3.
 
Nope, SSD prices weren't affected. I gave myself a bit more space by getting a Force GT last week, but it's 2TB drives for my NAS I'm after... it'll just have to wait, I'm afraid.
 
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