HDD price hike

[dumpystig]

Fuck me, I've just spotted a used Spinpoint F3 1TB on eBay for £60 and still running. I got mine new earlier in the year for £43 from Amazon and now they're over £100. What justification is there for such a hike? And please don't tell me it's because of some natural disaster in Japan....

[ratdude747]

Re: HDD price hike

the Thailand flood?

[Scenic]

Re: HDD price hike

And please don't tell me it's because of some natural disaster in Japan....

It's because of a natural disaster in Thailand.

http://imgur.com/a/p3cHA
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-57...sk-production/

WD produces/produced more than half of their drives there. When their production stopped, the customers tried to get alternatives, driving the prices through the roof.

[Topcat]

Re: HDD price hike

Does this feel reminiscent of the fire that destroyed a memory factory in Taiwan in the late 90's and what that did to memory prices?! Can we say gouging?! They're on par with the oil companies these days.

[dumpystig]

Re: HDD price hike

Thanks. I was taking the piss. Just like the bastards who hike their prices because of an 'apparent' shortage of whatever it is they produce. Yet again the consumer gets screwed...
what an absolute crock of shit

[mockingbird]

Re: HDD price hike

When you buy a harddrive, you're paying for the shipping. Normally (Except for now when there is no supply), the harddrive cost is negligible. What you do pay for is to have the harddrive shipped reliably. This wasn't always the case, but today, shipping methods have a sharp correlation with failure rates. That's why I never buy harddrives from a 3rd party, no matter how good the deal is.

[Uranium-235]

Re: HDD price hike

I think the price hike is cause they're trying to curb the amount of drives purchased, shipping less drives to end stores, trying to keep the OEM shipments constant, and keep a good stock, cause from what I hear...the world will run short of (new) hard drives, by February. calculate in failure rates, having to be replaced by new drives under warranty, and of course they're trying to keep regular consumers from buying drives by rising prices. It isn't about the cost of the drive, but simple supply and demand. this is also why many places have limited drives to 1-3 per person/day/purchase. Frys says you can't buy more then one a day, but leave, put the drive in the car, come back in, wait for someone who didn't help you before (required for OEM drives in the 'cage'), give them a different phone number, you can get away with it. I was told some frys employees got written up for selling more then one, and my boss told me one got fired, but the head pc dpt guy said that he just got written up.

my boss predicts, if the prices continue to go up, we might just be buying cheap acer and other computers just for the hard drives, then selling the rest of the computer for parts, which might make the hard drive cheaper in the end then buying it straight OEM

[dumpystig]

Re: HDD price hike

And all that is just a sure sign the worlds gone mad. But it's still a simple fact that we're all getting ripped off left, right and centre, regardless of whether it's something we want to buy or something we need to buy.
This supply-and-demand is a load of toss too, created by those-who-have-but-also-want-more (of our money) and it's getting worse by the day. It's just a hard drive FFS.

[Uranium-235]

Re: HDD price hike

its not load of...'toss'? oh, you're from the uk, never heard that one

as demand stays steady, and supply goes down, price goes up

you are getting ripped off, but for this economic principle, its common

think of the price hike as a way to pay for all the cleanup of the HD factories...and maybe this time, maybe building some irrigation systems, dams, huge umbrellas..whatever

or maybe they should buy some huge helicopters, and lift the damn factories from the valleys and maybe move them up above sea level. anyways, your statement kind of implied that we *NEED* hard drives. We do not. Hard drives and in the end all electronics will become irrelevant for a while if a massive EM field hit the earth cause of a solar flare. We need food, shelter, not computers

youre bitching about the price of hard drives, and people have died from this flood, and many don't have the basic need...shelter, food

[dumpystig]

Re: HDD price hike

Actually I'm bitching about getting ripped off with almost everything I buy, whether it be a 'need' or a 'want' - read my previous post again.
And you're right about 'this economic principle' being common, which makes it all the more wrong.
As for the clean-up/rebuilding of factories etc., surely that's where the insurance companies should be stepping in? Oh, hang on, Insurance companies....

[mockingbird]

Re: HDD price hike

The Thai government is corrupt. They take all the profits from corporations like WD or Seagate, and burn it in the vast twilight of the derivatives stock market, while leaving their people to their misery and their backwards religion. Not to mention the bribery that takes place between these said government corporations and Thai government officials.

The Thai people do not particularly like Americans. Foreigners are known as "Farang". It's a catastrophe, but this is their problem. We should give them help, but only if they are loyal to us.

HDDs or anything of the sort cannot be made in America because of strangling regulations. It's time for WD and Seagate to move HDD production to China. Thailand has to much political and geological instability.

[ratdude747]

Re: HDD price hike

well, there is always choice B, otherwise know as an SSD, but that has a whole differnt set of challenges.

[Scenic]

Re: HDD price hike

my boss predicts, if the prices continue to go up, we might just be buying cheap acer and other computers just for the hard drives, then selling the rest of the computer for parts, which might make the hard drive cheaper in the end then buying it straight OEM

I'd be pissed to be a customer of yours then, receiving a OEM HDD with no warranty whatsoever.
(that's illegal for shops over here btw)

[dumpystig]

Re: HDD price hike

I think my basic point may be getting missed. £220 on Amazon right now for the exact same item I purchased, also from Amazon, about 8 months ago for £43. Even at £100 I still say that's taking the piss in a big way.

And I already have my SSD ratty plus 3 of these Spinpoints. I'm not after buying another, I'm just amazed - no, shocked - at the prices I stumbled upon a few hours ago.

[Phaihn]

Re: HDD price hike

well, there is always choice B, otherwise know as an SSD, but that has a whole differnt set of challenges.

not to mention ssd,s cost way more then even the overly over priced hard drives.
take for instance this 960 gb ssd for $2,499.99

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX33589

[dumpystig]

Re: HDD price hike



That's just nuts

[Phaihn]

Re: HDD price hike

That's just nuts

:3nod:

[dumpystig]

Re: HDD price hike

Ah, but it does come with a 3-year Warranty. Then you could also purchase the "3 Year IPR Replacement Plan - only $249.99"...

WTF is that all about???

[Phaihn]

Re: HDD price hike

Ah, but it does come with a 3-year Warranty. Then you could also purchase the "3 Year IPR Replacement Plan - only $249.99"...

WTF is that all about???

that pretty much means that if it fails for any reason in that time they will replace it for free on the spot.

[mariushm]

Re: HDD price hike

http://www.infoworld.com/t/hard-driv...decline-181223

Thanks to a wee bit of engineering ingenuity and incredibly hard work by local staff, the Western Digital plant in Bang Pa-In -- which was under 6.5 feet of water in mid-October -- started running again on Nov. 30. Per Western Digital President John Coyne, "The passion, perseverance, ingenuity, and execution exhibited by the WD team has enabled us to make substantial progress in partially restoring our operations in Thailand, well in advance of our earliest expectations."

Western Digital raised its quarterly sales estimate from $1.25 billion up to $1.8 billion. The 80 percent jump was due in no small part to the huge demand for hard drives -- some would call it "panic buying" -- rock-bottom production estimates generated during the flood, and prices that would make any accountant blush.

Western Digital stock went up, and the price of hard drives went down.

linked in the article : http://www.bangkokpost.com/business/...ady-to-spin-up

The California-based firm restarted production at one of its buildings in Bang Pa-in, Ayutthaya, a week ahead of schedule.

The plant had been inundated since mid-October. Slider manufacturing equipment was removed for assessment and refurbishment, and production resumed Nov 30.

Western Digital expects to restart head slider production at the Thai facility and at its new slider fabrication plant in Penang, Malaysia, in the first quarter of next year, the company said in a release.
[..]

"The company believes that hard drive industry shipments in the December quarter will be limited to approximately 120 million units due to production and supply constraints related to the historic flooding in Thailand," it said.

WD forecasts demand of 170-180 million units for this quarter. Significant supply constraints will continue in the first three months of 2012 and beyond.

So expect cheaper drives by the end of January or so...