HDD Prices are Increasing Rapidly; 50% in One Week

Oh wells, just wait until they rebuild and restock, prices will fall again within a few weeks.

Until then, the price gouging will continue!

I noticed this on Newegg, though it wasn't all that high. I remember seeing a few $60 HDDs jump to $70 and all the way up to $100.

I went on newegg this morning and noticed a 2tb went from 65 to 99 i was shocked. Oh well Just have to wait till the market chills again

Also an example of the hidden costs of outsourcing. Risk of supply disruptions are rarely factored in when a company makes the decision to outsource, but they can be very expensive, as they are in this case.

Luckily I buy HDD's once every few years and can afford to wait this one out.

right about now would be a good time to move manufacturing back to the USofA for once

bought three hitachi 2TB drives from my fav parts shop couple months ago for $100/ea, now listing as $130.

It's going to take more like 6 months to get back to normal.

This is because of the worst flooding in Thailand in 50 years. 60% of all WD drives are made there. Seagate has factories there too but not as much of their production is based there. The biggest problem is a lot of the hard drive component manufacturers are their too. These are the ones the make the drive motors the the other parts that go in to hard drives. It could be 6 months before production is back to normal. Right now its a sellers market, and there is no end in sight right now to the price increases and shortages. Thank god global warming doesn't exisit!

Hopefully they will learn from this unfortunate natural disaster and be prepared for the next rainy season.

It's funny how there's not going to be a shortage in supplies, as manufacturers and vendors keep inventory on hand. And what incentive does anyone have for the manufacturing to resume quickly? Since there's now a "shortage", manufactuers can jack up their prices and make a killing. Now, resellers can jack their prices up even more, and who gets screwed? The consumer. They'll drag out production delays as long as possible until the cash cow is milked dry first.

This is *just* great since I need to build two PCs for the office... guess they'll have to be delayed.

Gotta love how the prices on HDDs already in stock and in their warehouse goes up when something happens somewhere else

Buy an SSD. Prices are getting better and the performance is doubling. The overall value is there.

I wonder if we are going to have more problems like this. Most companies manufacturing is located in third world countries, and climate change is going to have a big impact on the world and really hard on these third world countries. Big business usually want to deny that climate change is real, but once it starts affecting their profit margins they're going to change their tune. Thailand is located at the coast and sea levels will continue to rise (only by a few inches, but that is enough). Hard Disk manufactures will have to face the hard choice of staying where they are and face more flooding on a regular basis (Cut into profits) or move to another location that doesn't cause as much investment problems. I'm sorry for the people of Thailand, but the cost analysis might come into favor the USA; by moving production back to the States

Well, mechanical drives are still better for capacity and data storage. Plus I can't build a budget machine for someone with an SSD. This is unfortunate, but I do agree that like others I can ride this out for now.

A few weeks? Anyone who understands how industry works in this part of the world is laughing quite uncontrollably. A few weeks from now (after any inventory in the pipe from these plants is completely gone) they will be several MONTHS away from seeing the pipeline full of inventory again. The shortage and high prices, unless demand slumps due to protracted economic issues, will last for at least 6 months, if not a year.

What I find disgusting is the time it takes for prices to change. Once something triggers the price hike, online stores skyrocket their prices over night. Then, when things rectify themselves, it takes months for the prices to eventually trickle back down to the pre-event prices.

And yes, most of the stock that is inflated is already in the warehouse, immune to whatever raised prices, so why so quick to raise them? Price gouging, since retailers can get away with it, and blame current events?

Hey I'm all for American jobs but national disasters happen in the USA too. The only difference between the two coutries is that it probably takes a little longer to rebuild in these third world countries.

Whoah, this isn't funny! I hope this doesn't effect the R&D of drives and the pursuit of density increase.

Build the factory here in the USA. No floods here if you pick the right spot.

The price increase is either for the rare earths in the drive or for the hiring of now deceased workers. /snide.

Our supplier is out of stock on all drives. Anyone else use Maxgroup Corp?

Price increase would be permanent if these are manufactured here in the US due to higher labor costs. Not that these are manufactured manually, but the process still requires people.

People keep calling it price gouging to raise prices when supply dramatically shrinks, but the alternative is worse. It is an important balancing of market-prices. If you charge far less for a product of limited supply than people are willing to pay, you end up with a true shortage, where retail availability vanishes. I might be willing to buy a drive for $50 for an HD to expand my dvr, but unwilling to pay $100; someone else may be willing to pay $100 for a drive for a mission-critical machine. If supply is limited, and price restricted to $50, I may get it for my "less important" purpose while someone else cannot get it for a critical need. Without raising prices, the only way to prevent a true shortage is to monitor the reasons a customer is purchasing a drive and deny those "less important" purchases(I don't think anyone wants to have a "Department of Purchase Reasoning" validating every transaction). As for increasing the price of stock on-hand that should be "immune" to supply shocks from a future shortage: Prices work by expectation, sometimes over a long time. If I know I will need an HD sometime in the next month, and I see that prices will increase two weeks from now, I will buy now rather than later. Demand will increase immediately. Just as before, prices must increase to allow the market to prioritize purchases, because the stock on-hand is limited. Retailers may benefit temporarily from a sudden increase in the value of their inventory, but this is just a reality of the market.

+1 for plwww, you have an idea about how a market works.

please read the article more carefully:


There is a real supply problem in the HDD market.

In addition, of course the producer has incentive to get production back and prices back down. When prices go up, demand go down. People will wait until they feel they can get deal for their hard drives. In the meantime the HDD companies have smaller inventories to work with, and therefore less income, even with the increased profit margin from a higher price. The decrease in volume goes for manufacturers and every middle-man involved. It is inaccurate to say just the consumer is getting screwed, everybody is. A worse situation, as plwww pointed out, is where an authority institutes price-fixing. With that, the demand would remain the same and inventories would quickly disappear, causing a true shortage. The higher price, on the other hand, means that people that need HDD can get them, but those that can wait will, well, wait.
Put succinctly, the "price jacking", although inconvenient, causes a more efficient allocation of resources for a smaller supply. Eventually, the supply will be up, meaning sellers will have more volume to sell. Competition will once again make the prices fall back down, making demand for the product increase until we see an equilibrium similar to that before the floods.

If we follow mavroxur's reasoning to its logical end, why would the prices for HDD be low in the first place, they could have been making a killing before this natural disaster. The reality is that this is merely market prices adjusting to a new equilibrium due to less supply.

Newegg is also limiting customers to 1 HDD of each model. That didn't stop me from buying 4 for my RAID array, I just can't have 4 of the same kind. Thank goodness Linux fake-RAID couldn't care less what model/size/etc... the hard drives are.

Morons. Did you ever think of the risk of that?
Benefits of outsourcing: More profit
Downsides: Fewer jobs in the US, where we need them. We're helping China even though we're sorta in a cold war with them.

Well, I'm glad I just bought a new hard drive last week. It wouldn't be worth it today. The Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB is now going for $80 on Newegg.

Well guess who is not buying right now.

Quarter = 3 months
several quarters = ~4-7 quarterse

4*3 = 12 months or 1 year.

It's going to take 1-2 years for the prices to go back to normal.