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About LinkBacksJust looking on eBuyer for some more drives, why have prices shot up to 3 or 4 times the price they were only a few weeks ago? Have I missed something?
Just looking on eBuyer for some more drives, why have prices shot up to 3 or 4 times the price they were only a few weeks ago? Have I missed something?
its a common tactic, hold back stock, ramp up prices, release more stock gradually, prices SLOWLY go down, rinse and repeat. Happens with all things IT
I think it's more to do with the floods in Thailand - Thai floods flush storage channel clean ? Channel Register
Basically WD and Seagates have had major factories shutdown because of the flooding.
Time to buy SSDs...
But not every HD factory on the planet is effected, some are still happily cranking out hard drives. I just got an email from a supplier that made out that no hard drives were being made anymore and that we'd have to order now if we wanted any. As usual with tech the whole thing has been spun out of reality so that they can push prices way high and sell more SSDs.Originally Posted by robknowles
On the pluss side with more volume of SSD sales it may eventually lower their prices a bit quicker once the HD plants have been back for 6 months or so and the BS has cleared.
True, but several of the major component manufacturers are also based in Thailand. e.g. Nidec make the motors used in 70-80% of all HDDs.
Here’s the problem. As we enter Q1, the inventory of HDDs and flood-affected components will be gone. Virtually 100% of the industry’s HDD supply hinge on the weakest link in the chain – the component in shortest supply. At this point, the #1 candidate is hard drive motors. 70-80% of the world’s supply is made by Nidec, which has been crippled by the floods and does not carry inventory in its distribution channel. The company is scrambling to divert production to its locations in other countries, but that will likely take too long to save Q1. This poses severe consequences for most of the tech sector, including:
- Large computer and storage vendors, like Apple (AAPL), Dell (DELL), EMC (EMC), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), IBM (IBM), and NetApp (NTAP). Apple admitted as much on its conference call.
- Other companies that use HDDs in their products, like Oracle (ORCL) and Tivo (TIVO). Making matters worse, every vendor I have mentioned will have to pay significantly higher prices for the HDDs they can acquire. Thus, the impact on profit margins could be even worse than the impact on revenues.
- Companies whose components go into or connect to Storage products, like Emulex (ELX), Hutchinson (HTCH) and Marvell (MVRL). These vendors face the opposite issue. There will be too much supply of their components, leading to aggressive price cuts. They will sell significantly fewer units and earn significantly less per unit.
- This will also have an impact on other tech giants like Intel (INTC) and Microsoft (MSFT), because lower production of PCs and laptops also means lower sales of INTC’s chips and MSFT’s software. Similarly, numerous other software vendors will be affected, especially those with applications that rely heavily on storage.
[...]
According to WDC, 170 million HDDs will be needed to fulfill worldwide demand in Q4; Seagate (STX) believes the number is 180 million. Yet, based on Pipeline Data’s latest estimate, only 110 million will be available. This is because many of the world’s HDD component makers are located in flooded regions. In other words, even Seagate, whose facilities were not flooded, will not be able to procure enough parts to make all the HDDs it could under normal circumstances. The company confirmed this on its call, saying that it will only produce 40-50 million HDDs in Q1, much lower than its 60 million capacity. (Source)
That would explain it. I practically fell off my chair when I looked at a drive I paid £50 for and now its 3 times that in the space of 3 months.
I was looking at the possibility of a new drive for my media PC earlier this week due to an 'issue' and noticed that the prices still were not too bad. Thankfully the problem was resolved (I'd plugged the drive into one of the motherboard RAID SATA ports by mistake), but after seeing this thread last night and thinking that the prices were not too bad I went and looked again. They've at least doubled since Monday.
Anyone remember when this happened to RAM about 8-9 years back?
Holy ****! Just looked at the WD2002FAEX, which cost me £96 about a week ago. Just looked on ebuyer, and they have it listed at £211.13!! That's scandalous.
It's £253.36 now!!!
It is this one isn't it?: WD 2TB 3.5" SATA-III 6Gb/s Caviar Black Hard.. | Ebuyer.com
Looking at the amount they have in stock I guess they have had them there a while and paid almost nothing retail compared to that. The mark-up must be fantastic!!
Yup, that's the one. £211.13 ex VAT.
They're like petrol stations, it doesn't matter that the 50,000 litres of fuel in the tank were bought when it cost 96p a litre, if the price in the market changes to 110p a litre, they'll charge that for it.
Ebuyer are profiteering IMO.
The thing is, they can put this down to a shortage if they like, we all know they have massive stocks of the stuff in their warehouse. Hell when I did temp work for Amazon they had over 500 of the same HDD.
Its ridiculous. As for the RAM, @Dos_Box its happened a few times. 3-4 years ago the RAM prices doubled then slowly come down again, just waiting for the spike in all equipment!
You could always get this lovely 120GB Revo SSD PCIe drive
OCZ 120GB RevoDrive SSD PCI Express x4 Read = 540MB/s.. | Ebuyer.com
And save £30!!
Yup, as I said earlier - time to buy SSDs.You could always get this lovely 120GB Revo SSD PCIe drive
OCZ 120GB RevoDrive SSD PCI Express x4 Read = 540MB/s.. | Ebuyer.com
And save £30!!
However, I already have the disk and its sat nicely in my Fog server.
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