Due to flooding in Thailand the prices of hard drives has shot up by around 120+%.
Last Thursday I was paying £30 for a 500gb sata 3.5", now the same supplier is asking £80 for them.
Luckily I got hold of the news as was breaking and ordered £150 worth for my existing advanced orders on Monday, I am now panicking I won't receive them. Managed to find a supplier who haven't updated the prices today, so if they send them out I am paying just 30% over what I have been. If they deliver I have enough supplies for either a week or a couple of months (I tend to find hard drive replacement jobs all come at once, you do several in a week and then none for a couple of months).
I am worried because if a 320gb laptop drive costs £100 people are not going to pay £160-180or so to have it replaced. Although the increase of hard drive costs will have a massive impact of the lower spec PC market, so now I people may not choose to replace the motherboard at £150 say because a new basic PC costs £230, if that PC costs £350 new then the £150 repair becomes viable.
The problem seems to be that many hard drive factories in Thailand are flooded, so there is simply not enough supply to meet demand.
For some people SSDs may be an option especially on laptops and this is something I am going to have to push once my stocks of hard drives have ran out. I could order more drives, but there is a chance I won't be able to sell them for a while and by then the situation may be resolved but if there is another price increase tomorrow, and no evidence of any new stocks I may order some more.
That said drives are still cheap, when you think I paid £200 for a 2GB drive in early 1997!
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Related reading for you: www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/26/lenovo-idUSL3E7LQ1FA20111026
Demand is also supposedly low so you can use this argument with your supplier, in Hong Kong the price of SSD is making it increasingly attractive although still way higher than spinny disks.
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I suspect places are just cashing in on it at the moment, and there will be enough alternative stocks to meet the demand as sales of drives will fall (e.g people may not buy settop boxes or delay buying a PC etc).
This is one reason I am reluctant to buy a load, because I will be stuck with them and when the prices crash loose a fortune.
I am amazed there is not more on the news about this, because hard drives are in so many devices. The last time I remember anything like this was during the mid 90's when the price of RAM shot up. I remember having to make do with 4MB of RAM for months as I could not afford another 8MB SIMM.
I cannot argue anything with the supplier, they must know they can sell 500gbs at £100 or so I have no bargaining power with any supplier.
SSDs will work well for laptops and netbooks where storage is often not required, but not for the main PC (or laptop) as large ones are still far too expensive.
Got three drives in stock but they are allocated to jobs, waiting for another four but two of them are allocated.
Last edited by: RattleandSmoke on Thu 27 Oct 11 at 02:59
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Well a 500GB 2.5" SATA 7200 RPM was about $HK500 in Wanchai computer centre yesterday, that's 40 of your GBP.
My concern with SSD is still paging / frequent I/O degrading parts of it, however with enough memory you can avoid it and a colleague pointed out that we're talking the loss of maybe 8GB of a 128GB or 256GB device so what does it really matter ?
I'd configure a spinny disk for data storage and SSD for stuff you want to load where you'll see the performance benefits, no substitute for plenty of memory though.
Last edited by: idle_chatterer on Thu 27 Oct 11 at 03:11
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Wow - I paid just over £40 at Christmas for a 1TB internal drive from ebuyer; their cheapest is now £100!
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>> My concern with SSD is still paging / frequent I/O degrading parts of it,
Problem more or less resolved now, by automatically moving the most frequently used memory segments around, averaging the wear across the whole assembly.
They are still too expensive tho.
Last edited by: Zero on Thu 27 Oct 11 at 09:48
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>>
>> I am amazed there is not more on the news about this, because hard drives
>> are in so many devices. The last time I remember anything like this was during
>> the mid 90's when the price of RAM shot up. I remember having to make
>> do with 4MB of RAM for months as I could not afford another 8MB SIMM.
>>
I agree, there are a huge range of consumer electronics & suchlike factories in Thailand (upwards of 5000 are affected I believe), most of the camera companies for starters, plus suppliers all the way down the food chain. Many of these factories are actually underwater, which is not good for most hi-tech machinery; it will take years to recover. Yet little in the mainstream media about the flooding and its impact.
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The problems of supply are probably not a shortage in the next few weeks as this kit is either in the country or on a containership heading this way. The real problems are January onwards
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Cuurys/PCW still have 2TB for 70 quid, fill yer boots:-
www.hotukdeals.com/deals/hitachi-coolspin-5k3000-2tb-internal-3-5-sata-iii-hard-drive-3yr-wty-69-99-delivered-1045630#comments
Agree with FB the real problems will start after the Xmas shopping frenzy has flushed out the supply chain.
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I ordered two 500gb drives for a job from PCWORLD on Monday, then they sent me an email saying they cannot do my order.
I did buy a 1TB for £60 on Tuesday for a job.
I am hoping other factories can increase supply which then might reduce some of the effects.
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wow yes! just checked my supplier, prices through the roof.
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Wow indeed. Bought 1TB Samsung Spinpoint 7200RPM SATA drives earlier in the year for £42 a piece. Same supplier now asking £110!
I have one spare and unused. Perhaps I should stick it on Fleabay for £80. ;-)
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Some snaps of the WD plant over on theregister:-
www.channelregister.co.uk/2011/10/27/wd_flooded_factory/
Plenty of tales of woe on HDD pricing in the comments.
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Wow thanks for the tip I may have a pop in tomorrow. I had the idea of stripping them out too. The only major issue is they may be 5200rpm drives and not 7200rpm but beggars can't be choosers.
I did have the same idea, but I checked places like Argos and Maplin, and Argos did have some but all sold out.
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Can you actually find them on the site though? I can't.
EDIT: ah sorry - in store only
Last edited by: Focus on Sat 29 Oct 11 at 17:32
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The major issue I have is am building a system for a client, I ordered two 500gb drives on Monday from play.com (the cheapest source at the time) and only one has turned up. It seems the other may have gone missing.
So am a 500GB Western Digital short of a RAID :( Explained the situation to the client and he is happy to do without the RAID until prices come down if I don't receive the other drive but it is still a worry.
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Argos still have a few of these 2TB 80 quid jobs here and there:-
www.hotukdeals.com/deals/hitachi-life-studio-desktop-plus-2tb-4gb-stick-usb-2-79-99-argos-free-10-voucher-1047386#comments
One left in Southampton if you fancy giving the Panda a run :-)
Use this tool to check stock nationwide:-
www.icheckstock.co.uk/Default.aspx
Last edited by: spamcan61 on Sat 29 Oct 11 at 18:51
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For me most my drives I need are 500gb and below, as most my customers only have around 20gb of data.
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>> For me most my drives I need are 500gb and below, as most my customers
>> only have around 20gb of data.
>>
True, but presumably 2TB you can actually buy (OK from about 5% of Argos stores) is better than 500GB that is out of stock.
Blackpool still have a couple available for reservation if the Panda wants a shorter run that Southampton!
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So if they only have 20Gb data then what about getting a few of these?
www.microdirect.co.uk/Home/Product/49638/Samsung-160GB-Spinpoint-F1-SATA-II-300-7200rpm
Okay at the start of the year you'd have got 1Tb for that but what if the shortage went on for a few weeks?
Last edited by: rtj70 on Sat 29 Oct 11 at 22:43
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I will certainly buy one, but I am not sure if the smaller capacity drives will increase much in price as the demand will be for repairs rather than new builds, having said that I assume pretty much all 2.5" drives sold are for repairs but perhaps a lot were for upgrades? so maybe even though they are £40 they may still be a good buy.
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>> Cuurys/PCW still have 2TB for 70 quid, fill yer boots:-
>>
>> www.hotukdeals.com/deals/hitachi-coolspin-5k3000-2tb-internal-3-5-sata-iii-hard-drive-3yr-wty-69-99-delivered-1045630#comments
>>
>> Agree with FB the real problems will start after the Xmas shopping frenzy has flushed
>> out the supply chain.
The supply chain is flushed out.
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Don't forget, if you bought them in at £40 and the market price is now £120 that you should be selling them for £120.
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Don't rub it in, I am still waiting for one which appears to have gone missing in the post.
Also noticed the prices seems to have stabilised now, I can get 500gbs for £70 at CCL and that £38 160gb drive at Microsoft is a worthwhile purchase.
The general feeling on the technicians forums is not to stock up too much though, because we could be left with a lot of worthless drives should there turn out to be 100,000 of spare drives in a warehouse waiting to hit UK shores. Plus all the drives which have just been bought will probably end up on the market soon bringing prices down.
Do wonder if this could have an effect on the price of data storage though, e.g cloud services and hosting. I know the hard drive is a very small percentage of the costs, but it will cost these companies more to operate. I will ask my mate who has a few servers in a data farm.
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>> Do wonder if this could have an effect on the price of data storage though,
>> e.g cloud services and hosting. I know the hard drive is a very small percentage
>> of the costs, but it will cost these companies more to operate. I will ask
>> my mate who has a few servers in a data farm.
No effect, They buy storage at a price fixed for a period. Usually they buy it at a variable price, per megabyte, but going DOWN over a period of contract.
IE year one 10 cents per megabyte, Year 5 two cents per megabyte.
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Any opinions on Verbatim 2TB USB 3.0 external hard drive at €89 (GBP77). Seemed good value.
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All as bad as good as each other, is it a portable or full size one? I have no idea what brand of drive will be in there, Verbatim won't make the drive itself.
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I'd say that was good value anyway, even before the recent price hikes on bare drives.
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Indeed, if they were that price here I would buy one. I am picking up a 320gb drive at £39 tomorrow though hopefully :).
Prices seem to be more stable now too.
Last edited by: RattleandSmoke on Mon 31 Oct 11 at 19:29
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>>
>> Prices seem to be more stable now too.
>>
Presumably the panic buying has subsided. Asus reckon they'll run out of HDDs for new production by the end of the month (presumably November) though.
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they can advertise HDD at any price they want.
The trick is actually getting one.
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Makro mailer advertising
1Tb Verbatim ext drives @ £48 inc VAT
2Tb for £60 inc VAT
1st day on sale is Wed 2nd Nov
I know there is no guarantee they will have them but a phone call is worth a shot
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Likely to be slower but more power efficient drives than you'd want in a PC... If I needed 'em I'd be interested. Still got over 900Gb free on my 2Tb NAS.
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Depends what they are going in, you wouldn't want to use them in a new build with SATA III but to replace a laptop one (if they are 2.5") they may well be fine. I was lucky I managed to purchase the last 320gb sata 2.5!" drive Maplin had today.
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Out of curiosity, how much did it cost? Maplin have always been a bit of a rip-off for hard drives.
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It was £39.99, over priced normally but was a good price compared with any where else at the time.
Noticed prices have come down a bit over the weekend with a 500gb drive now costing £57. Still over the top, but a lot better than the £100 or so some places were asking earlier this week.
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Back to £81 for 2TB (ebuyer). What were they before?
Last edited by: Focus on Thu 19 Apr 12 at 10:36
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I've been looking at PC component prices in the last week and noticed hard drive prices had come down again. Then remembered I had at least one 1Tb I don't really use so saved some money. But I am considering rebuilding the PC for other uses so still have money to spend.
I am also sorting out old files on the PC (going to rebuild it) and found some old spreadsheets working out the cost of components from 2000, 2001 and 2003.
Oct 2000 - 30Gb 7200RPM drive was £130!
Nov 2001 - 40Gb 7200RPM drive was £88
Dec 2003 - 80Gb 7200RPM drive was £55
So these 2Tb drives are a bargain today.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Thu 19 Apr 12 at 10:56
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I'm watching SSD prices carefully. Now well under £1 per GB. Starting to look attractive as a boot drive for the media centre.
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i built my pc up last year before the flooding, picked up a 1tb samsung spinpoint f3 for £35 and a western digital caviar black sata 3 for £60, at the moment the western digital are selling for way more than the £60 i paid for, there the 2 tb ones are they as fast as the 1tb hard drives?
Also the pc i built got a ssd a force 3 120gb corsair bought that one for £172, now they down to £115, in a few years the ssd will dominate, when their prices will fall.
As for speeds i had the western digital drive set up as ide mode before i got the ssd, took roughly 26 secs to load, the ssd boot time is 18 secs, so you save about 30 percent of the time it take to load, also windows and application run smoothly, and so do games
Last edited by: sajid on Thu 19 Apr 12 at 12:54
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Anyone have experience of using Intel's mSATA interfaces on the motherboard to cache disk activity. I know it's on the Z77 chipset but might have also been on the Z68 too.
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msata interface, think you referin to the gigabyte motherboard, with a ssd attached to it think it 20gb, i got a gigabyte z68 ud7 top of the range motherboard, and it got the intel cacheing thing as wellthe best is to partner it with a ssd as the main os drive and a 1tb harddrive as a secondary and plug them both in the sata 1 slot that intel driver senses, you run a utility intel irst and it caches the stuff for you ideal for placing games on the 1tb hardrive and the rest of the program on the ssd
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Ooo willy waving. :-)
I have 3 SSDs since buying a 120Gb OCZ the other week. Two are in the computer, can't think of a use for the old 60Gb one I took out, so maybe eBay, or SWMBOs laptop.
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Just built a Z68 I3 which uses a 64GB Crucial M4 and a 500GB hard drive. I moved all the user folders and temp files to the HD so essentially the SSD is just the boot medium.
I am god smacked on the boot speed, it seems to be about 4-5 seconds from the BIOS screen to the start menu. Used the bog standard I3 2010 and 8GB of RAM and of course SATA 3.0.
Really might treat myself to an SSD :).
They are still too small to the main drive but for just booting windows they are perfect.
I am a little bit weary about wear though.
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My redundant SSD has been the D drive in my computer for over a year, and the C drive has been there for almost as long. My machine gets quite a bit of use, and a couple of months ago I turned paging back on on the C drive, and still no ill effects. Don't be too concerned over wear, they are now becoming cheap enough not to worry.
They aren't too small for the main drive btw. I have Win 7/office 2010 and a whole range of programs on there. I loaded all the more greedy games to a standard 1Tb SATA drive which is in a removable caddy, and in my case I have My Docs on my D drive. C drive has about 70 Gb used but as I say there is quite a bit of unnecessary stuff on there.
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I have at least 100gb of photos and around 500gb of music, so I would still need a traditional drive. I am not worried about myself about wear, more worried about my clients as it doesn't look good if a drive fails within two years.
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The caddy was < £10 IIRC, it's a great way to go as if they have any old SATA drives you can tell them to do backups for offsite, also set up a clone of the new SSD on the SATA drive as a recovery drive. Leave in a std drive as their data drive. Easy peasy.
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Hard drive prices - idle_chatterer
