What in the world!? Why do hard drives cost so much?

[adrennn]

I recently bought the spinpoint f3, and now it costs double what I bought it when it wasn't on sale!? :O

 

[christoj]

Apparently most of the HDD's in the world are made in and around Taiwan. They just had some epic proportion flooding there. HDD production has been severely limited and has driven the cost up dramatically.

It will probably take a number of months before supply and manufacturing are back to normal. Prices probably wont get back to better prices until sometime next year.

Just before the floods hit, I landed a 500gb seagate drive through NCIX for $30. Glad I got it before the prices moved up. We wont be seeing good HDD prices again for some time.

 

[Willasap43]

125$ for a 1tb cavier black drive in aust

 

[akopp21]

Flooding in Thailand...
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/thailand-it-supply-hard-disk-drive,13691.html

 

[Onus]

Not Taiwan, THAILAND! They had massive flooding, disrupting hard drive manufacturing big time. It will likely be months after full production is restored before enough new supply makes it into the channel to bring prices back down.

Edit: Of course, there was a lot of supply already in the channel, and I'm not so naive as to believe that there hasn't been and won't be gouging. Still, I'm glad I don't anticipate needing a hard drive any time soon.

 

[ubicray]

And i was planning to buy new PC nowadays :/

 

[adrennn]

Yeah, unless you have spare hard drives it does not look like a good time build a pc :/

 

[ubicray]

goin' to wait till Xmas?
I'm going to check local stores if they have stocks...

 

[cutebeans]

Seagate 1tb only $75
http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Barracuda-7200-12-Internal-ST31000524AS/dp/B004IZN3YI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320333814&sr=8-1

Faster before it's gone!!

 

[beenthere]

I recently bought the spinpoint f3, and now it costs double what I bought it when it wasn't on sale!? :O

Actually HD prices are just getting back to normal... Well before there was a glut on the market and lots of competition to move the metal. Prices will drop again after the factories in Asia recover from the typhoon damage. Some folks had predicted it would take a few months but now they are saying up to six months. By jacking prices the HD suppliers recover some profits for the quarter and slow sales so they don't exhaust their inventory so quickly. Dupply and demand still works.