Richie Waves

Am I imagining things or have they gone through the roof?

I got a BSOD two weeks ago right after the tuesday update and my hard drive never recovered, but looking at prices now they seem a hell of a lot more expensive than the last time I purchased one

Joshua Nightshade

There were serious floods in Thailand, where most manufacturing takes place. As such the prices rose, and even though production is back to pre-flood levels, manufacturers haven't reduced prices. I think there's a justice department investigation into collusion over it, if memory serves.

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Richie Waves

Ah, I vaguely remember that story, alright. God dam gougers!

DanielRavenNest

They did spike due to the Thailand floods, and the fact that big business users had already locked in their orders in advance, leaving relatively few for consumers. I expect them to drop later this year and have been holding off getting another external drive until then.



You have to remember that PC manufacturers and big data users like Google and Amazon put in big orders under contract ahead of time. Consumers who want to add a drive get what's left. The blue line on the graph shows shipments are still below year earlier numbers until late this year. I'm starting to see prices almost back to what I paid in May 2011 for my last drive ($47/TB), but only on special, and with worse warranties (2 yr instead of 5 yr).

Darien Caldwell

Prices seem cheap as ever. I remember when 300 meg cost 300 dollars.
(Yes I mean Meg, not gig)

Of course the price above is in line what what I remember from around 2010, I stocked up on half a dozen so I didn't have to go to the store so often. Still have a couple left in the closet. If they ever went to 50 bucks a Tetrabyte, I must have missed it.

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[H]arsh Styles

DanielRavenNest

April 25, 2011, I bought a 1.5 TB WD Elements External HD, $70 from NewEgg.

And today you have a 3TB Seagate Barracuda Internal HD for $150:

Newegg.com - Seagate Barracuda ST3000DM001 3TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive