Hard Drive Prices rant.

OP

Prices are down a lot, itll not get lower any time soon. Atleast end of Q3 before we see better pricing and even then it will not be "pre flood".

Thats how it is, if the price of a HDD is now too much then your only bet is to wither make do with what you have or source a second hand part unfortunately.

Moaning about prices that was caused by a flood that left near millions without clean water or food for months, destroyed businesses and ruined lives is a little poor show really.

This doesnt just affect the price of your hard drive, it also affects jobs of those transporting drives as there are fewer to transport and those who sell them as in cases they are struggling to make the money they once were regardless of whether or not Seagate as an example made more money that QTR that in previous years.

If you have 1000 drives in stock that cost you £30,000 to build that you would have only seen £1000 profit on it is not hard to work out that when supply and demand goes through the roof that that £1000 profit could and did soon turn into £30,000 profit.

The next issue comes with the manufacturer of new drives after said events. Components cost more and as a result that margin they once made is soon swallowed. Add to this that they are making less and the situation gets worse.

Manufacturers now make more profit per drive than they once did (app double) but when they are only making half the drives it soon evens its self out.

Simple Maths based on: - Supply and Demand - and Gross/Net profit fluctuates.
 
grabme said:
Isn't it about time for computer retailers to bite the bullet and started selling hd's at cost to try to bring the prices down significantly? I am not buying any storage at current prices and there must be thousands more like myself.
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lol, my car is dirty why don't you come and clean is for nothing?

like someone else said such a 1st world issue...

Buy 75% of the storage you were planning or save up another £30
 
daz87uk said:
As much as it sucks that harddrives have almost doubled in price, I don't think it helps when the factory's making them are under water; or that factory workers are homeless. Even If they've managed to pick themselfs back into production the last report I read said they will be a 50,000,000 units short for the next 12 months.
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Doubled in price? Hardly. The Samsung HD204UI at it's cheapest was around £55, it's now between £83-£90.

It's ridiculous people complain so much about HD prices, HD capacity is still ridiculously cheap.
 
Andrew Moore said:
Moaning about prices that was caused by a flood that left near millions without clean water or food for months, destroyed businesses and ruined lives is a little poor show really.
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Good on you for donating your increased profits you made then from the price rises, to those in need! ...oh wait.
 
BlackAle said:
Doubled in price? Hardly. The Samsung HD204UI at it's cheapest was around £55, it's now between £83-£90.

It's ridiculous people complain so much about HD prices, HD capacity is still ridiculously cheap.
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I said "almost" :rolleyes: lets not be too facetious :p; A 60% increase is still a lot and you have picked Samsung which is one of the cheaper priced units. It was just getting affordable before the floods but I personally can't afford to spend 60% more. I'm glad you think its affordable, Not that I was complaining about it anyway; It sucks is all I said.
 
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grabme said:
Isn't it about time for computer retailers to bite the bullet and started selling hd's at cost to try to bring the prices down significantly?
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Retailers are in business to make money by doing what you suggest could cause them to close their doors and make it harder to purchase drives. They are paying inflated prices so why should they foot the bill?

Yes sure drives are more expensive than they were but I remember buying one of my 1TB drives for £90 ish so I look at the prices and I think "hmm well, I paid more once".

Stoner81.
 
A2Z said:
If the HD's were back to their pre flood prices I would have bought at least 2 new ones by now, so yes the manufacturers are definately losing money by keeping prices so high, from me anyway. :)
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The only way they'd be losing more money is if they sold you HDDs at pre-flood prices.

6644kp said:
The manufacturers are at fault they should produce their products in their home nations rather than in some third world country that is easily affected, even the Japanese (Hitachi) and South Koreans (Samsung) are guilty of it all to make a little bit more profit off the low wages of the Chinese or Thai labourer.
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In which case prices would go up and never come down again. If you want cheap products, you have to accept they'll be manufactured in developing nations.
 
Stoner81 said:
Retailers are in business to make money by doing what you suggest could cause them to close their doors and make it harder to purchase drives. They are paying inflated prices so why should they foot the bill?

Yes sure drives are more expensive than they were but I remember buying one of my 1TB drives for £90 ish so I look at the prices and I think "hmm well, I paid more once".

Stoner81.
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I don't mind paying a bit more but the rate we are expected to pay right now is enough for them to rebuild their factories, homes and stay in a 5 star hotel for the rest of the year until their new homes are ready. I know retailers are in the business to make money (obviously) BUT what I am suggesting is that they kickstart the HD economy and sell the drives near cost to get the market moving and when it does move, everyone is a winner as we would all buy a LOT more than we currently are.

The old fashioned attitude of shafting the consumer is closing a lot of UK retailers shops down right now.

I do not share in the mentality of buy now or be priced out forever, look where that got our economy with house prices for instance. I will wait this out until the prices return to sensible levels or wait until SSD's become cheaper or delete old files. No one is taking me for a ride.
 
grabme said:
BUT what I am suggesting is that they kickstart the HD economy and sell the drives near cost to get the market moving and when it does move, everyone is a winner as we would all buy a LOT more than we currently are.
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Why do they need to "kickstart the HD economy"?

It would seem they can sell all the drives they can make at the current prices.

There's nothing to kickstart.

Perhaps you should find a new topic to post about on the forum.

Over 4 months forum membership, 9 posts, all connected to HDD prices.
 
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How would it kick start the HDD economy?? Distribution are given a set price to sell at, this is set by the HDD manufacturers and based on current shortages, this is high at present.

The reseller then buys this stock and adds their margin to the end user.....by lowering to near cost, all that does is hurt the reseller.....distribution wont lower thier pricing as they arent in a price war with end users, they only run at about 2-3% margin anyway and they certainly wont do it below cost, so that minimum price would remain......in your "ideal scenario" the only people losing out would be the resellers, so that you can get a HDD for £5-10 cheaper (thats all resellers make per drive).

At the moment, its VERY difficult to get enterpise/server HDD's in the 1TB bracket.....the stock just isnt there and so prices for what is available will remain high for the forseeable future.

These guys are businesses, not charities.
 
grabme said:
I guess we should also double the price of food again as there are poor people that are homeless in a country less fortunate than us. Appears that the rich on here aren't feeling too much pain.
My point was, yes there was a disaster BUT surely doubling the price is stifling demand and its surely better to keep the costs low and ship more units and quickly recoup costs rather than the loss of revenue on all other electronics dependant on storage. Then again I'm not a vulture capitalist so what do I know?
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I have an invoice sitting next to me showing that I bought a 250GB drive in 2006 for £70 including shipping and VAT. That drive is still in my computer today, and showing very few signs of wear and tear in S.M.A.R.T. I can currently buy 8 times the amount of storage for just £30 more than that, so I think Hard drives are quite cheap tbh.
 
just before the price hike 1tb drives were as low as 35 quid !

now like 75-80 at most places. could have and i bet a lot have profitted very nicely from this :(

saying that anyone on here getting mad about prices ocuk did warn of price hikes before the price going up ;)
 
Just bought a Seagate Green 2TB drive for £69 inc delivery. So it is nice to see some downward movement on prices compared to how they were going a few months ago.
Whilst that drive would not have been at the top of my list the market is different now to how it was pre flood times.
 
Vimes said:
Just bought a Seagate Green 2TB drive for £69 inc delivery. So it is nice to see some downward movement on prices compared to how they were going a few months ago.
Whilst that drive would not have been at the top of my list the market is different now to how it was pre flood times.
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Nice to know some companys are not keeping the prices higher than they should be.
 
I think we are at the stage now where manufacturers are just artificially keeping the prices high.

My response is simple, i'm not going to buy any hard drives until the prices come down :)
 
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