MatthewL Posted October 27, 2011 Posted October 27, 2011 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?
featured_spectre Posted October 27, 2011 Posted October 27, 2011 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
robknowles Posted October 27, 2011 Posted October 27, 2011 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.
SYNACK Posted October 28, 2011 Posted October 28, 2011 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. 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. 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.
Arthur Posted October 28, 2011 Posted October 28, 2011 But not every HD factory on the planet is affected, some are still happily cranking out hard drives. 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)
MatthewL Posted October 28, 2011 Author Posted October 28, 2011 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. 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.
Dos_Box Posted October 28, 2011 Posted October 28, 2011 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?
localzuk Posted October 28, 2011 Posted October 28, 2011 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.
Dos_Box Posted October 28, 2011 Posted October 28, 2011 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!!
localzuk Posted October 28, 2011 Posted October 28, 2011 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.
featured_spectre Posted October 28, 2011 Posted October 28, 2011 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!
Dos_Box Posted October 28, 2011 Posted October 28, 2011 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!!
localzuk Posted October 28, 2011 Posted October 28, 2011 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. However, I already have the disk and its sat nicely in my Fog server.
Arthur Posted October 28, 2011 Posted October 28, 2011 The likelihood of seeing much cheaper 3TB HDDs within the next 12 months (due to the introduction of 4TB drives) is almost non-existent now.
localzuk Posted October 28, 2011 Posted October 28, 2011 The likelihood of seeing much cheaper 3TB HDDs within the next 12 months (due to the introduction of 4TB drives) is almost non-existent now. I don't think it'll last 12 months, 6 months at most I reckon. So, if you are wanting 3TB drives, wait until next summer.
sted Posted October 28, 2011 Posted October 28, 2011 Yup, as I said earlier - time to buy SSDs. However, I already have the disk and its sat nicely in my Fog server. Thats what i looking at for my laptop. Looking at 128gb to replace its 110gb boot drive was going to replace the 2nd drive as well bought a 300ish for 32 ish a few weeks back to fix a mates pc and now they are well expensive Anyone any idea which is better ocz vertex 3 or crucial m4 leaning towards m4 but ccl have vertex in so i could colect and ghost later
jamesfed Posted October 28, 2011 Posted October 28, 2011 Going SSD now in our servers/PCs for everything except large data storage (e.g. Shared drives/pupil work). At least now I have more reason to justify it other than 'it’ll be faster'. Either way only a few months ago I bought one of the new Seagate Momentus XT drives (500GB HDD with 4GB of SSD on board) for £80 – prices on all the big names are now to the order of £120+
Arthur Posted October 28, 2011 Posted October 28, 2011 Anyone any idea which is better OCZ Vertex 3 or Crucial M4 leaning towards M4 Depends on whether you value reliability and customer support. If you don't, get the Vertex 3. OCZ claims to have finally fixed been fixed"]the BSOD issue[/url], but that doesn't excuse the way they have treated their customers previously. 1
mac_shinobi Posted October 28, 2011 Posted October 28, 2011 (edited) Won't be building a NAS or doing much of anything else at least for another 2 years or so. Sold my computer stuff to pay for a car so just a mac mini now with a slow slow 5400 RPM drive, sigh Just checked aria.co.uk and there samsung F4 drive used to be aprox £50 or £55 plus delivery. Now £120 , yikes Edited October 28, 2011 by mac_shinobi
Arthur Posted October 28, 2011 Posted October 28, 2011 Now £120, yikes I'm glad I bought the hard drives for my NAS earlier this year. There's absolutely no way I would build a NAS now. I'll just have to make do with 12TBs. Won't be building a NAS or doing much of anything else at least for another 2 years or so. I imagine 5TB HDDs will be out by then. Probably a good idea to wait. 1
crc-ict Posted October 28, 2011 Posted October 28, 2011 I've been looking at parts recently for a new build for my Dad. Tail end of last week, a 500GB WD Caviar Blue was around £40. Monday this week, price has risen to £50 and was at £65 by Tuesday afternoon! Eventually got one of the last 10 Caviar Black drives that eBuyer had in stock for £55ish Crazy times!
eejit Posted October 28, 2011 Posted October 28, 2011 Anyone know a decent price tracker website that you can track how the price of an item has gone over the last few months? computerprices used to do that but seems to just be a web portal now. Are SSD's definitely not affected? I see that Mitsubishi Motors are also predicting being able to only make half their usual output due to the floods, so it must be a huge industrial area.
SYNACK Posted October 28, 2011 Posted October 28, 2011 (edited) Anyone know a decent price tracker website that you can track how the price of an item has gone over the last few months? computerprices used to do that but seems to just be a web portal now. Are SSD's definitely not affected? I see that Mitsubishi Motors are also predicting being able to only make half their usual output due to the floods, so it must be a huge industrial area. This site does it in NZ prices so take 30-40% (after exchange rate conversion x/2) off them and you'll have UK prices. Just hover over the item to bring up the little graph: 3.5 inch S-ATA hard disk drives - Find the best prices, information and user reviews you can also go into the product and then go to the stats tab for a bigger graph. Edited October 28, 2011 by SYNACK 1
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