OT: Hard Drive Sticker Shock

wwaag wrote on 11/17/2011, 1:11 PM
Looking for a hard drive? Don't!! After reading, I looked on Newegg to confirm. Wow!

http://windowssecrets.com/newsletter/what-you-can-do-about-soaring-hard-drive-prices/

AKA the HappyOtter at https://tools4vegas.com/. System 1: Intel i7-8700k with HD 630 graphics plus an Nvidia RTX4070 graphics card. System 2: Intel i7-3770k with HD 4000 graphics plus an AMD RX550 graphics card. System 3: Laptop. Dell Inspiron Plus 16. Intel i7-11800H, Intel Graphics. Current cameras include Panasonic FZ2500, GoPro Hero11 and Hero8 Black plus a myriad of smartPhone, pocket cameras, video cameras and film cameras going back to the original Nikon S.

Comments

Former user wrote on 11/17/2011, 1:22 PM
Yep. I was looking at buying an external drive the other day and found prices at least twice what I was expecting to see. Good old supply-and-demand -- good for business, awful for consumers...
Wadro65 wrote on 11/17/2011, 1:24 PM
best buy still has cheap ones.. 1.5 tb for $79.99
farss wrote on 11/17/2011, 2:03 PM
Spare a thought for the people who are under water.
My inlaws in Bangkok haven't been hit too badly but they've been very lucky compared to millions of others. The worst part is the duration of the floods.

Bob.
monoparadox wrote on 11/17/2011, 2:17 PM
I paid $379.00 for my first 40meg drive. Who's complaining?

and btw, $379 is probably worth $1000 in today's dollars.
Former user wrote on 11/17/2011, 3:01 PM
I know what you mean about prices. I had a Tandy Model 4P TRS-DOS system and an 8 meg hard was $1,800 and was bigger than the computer (the computer actually set on top of it).

Needless to say, I didn't buy one ;-)

But then again when I bought my first NLE system (a DEC alpha running Speed Razor) it had 3 x 2gig SCSI Baracuda drives that cost $1,200 each. So, I guess it's all relative.
DSCalef wrote on 11/17/2011, 3:42 PM
Aw, you guys are all just kids.....

In the early 80's at the dawn of personal computing, I paid $7,000 for an 80 mb 15" platter SMD Kennedy hard drive that I put on a Cromemco System Three. We had been using the four built-in floppy drives. They were 8-inch. Yes, eight inch floppies. I still have that system in my garage. I should sell it to a collector.

David
Barry W. Hull wrote on 11/17/2011, 4:00 PM
Wow, and I thought I was old.

Way back when, I paid $6,500 for the latest and greatest 386/33 with a 150 meg hard drive, Northgate I believe. My friends told me I was showing off. I told them to get out of my way.

I can complain as good as anybody.

Barry
ushere wrote on 11/17/2011, 4:09 PM
guys, don't get me started on the cost of clay tablets.......
Birk Binnard wrote on 11/17/2011, 4:24 PM
David:

I expect no one will pay you for that old Cromemco system, but I bet the guys at the COmputer Museum at Bletchley Park in the UK would love to have it. They have a lot of old systems like that on display, and most of them work. I saw a mate to my original Northstar Horizon there, compete with two 5 1/4" floppy disks and wood case.
Zulqar-Cheema wrote on 11/17/2011, 4:45 PM
I managed to get a 3TB one only to find Windows XP 32 bit cannot see it's full capacity, needs win 7 64 bit

Have noticed drives in cases are cheaper then raw drives
B.Verlik wrote on 11/17/2011, 8:41 PM
Prices seemed to go up just in time for Black Friday and Christmas. WD 5600rpm 'green' 2TB drives that were available for $89 just a few weeks ago. are now $199. at New Egg. They seem to be shooting for the dumb gift givers, who don't know how much anything is worth. Most of us will have to wait until even after the "after Christmas sales", when prices really go back to normal.
Chienworks wrote on 11/17/2011, 9:22 PM
No, not that. Prices normally go down for Black Friday.

This is due to all the flooding in the parts of the world where the drives are manufactured, i think Thailand in particular. Production has come to a near halt and there's just not many drives available now, so the prices on the few that are still left is skyrocketing.
Mikeof7 wrote on 11/17/2011, 9:53 PM
Hard drive? Who needs one?
My Mac 512 is a "Maseratti" and it's floppy drive is enough!
DGates wrote on 11/17/2011, 10:28 PM
The only place I see hard drives and their prices on a consistent basis is at Costco. I haven't seem any increases at all, only a notice on limiting 2 drives to a customer because of supply.

In fact, they just had a instant rebate on a 3TB drive I bought last month. It was 20 bucks CHEAPER.

A Western Digital 3TB USB 3.0 drive for a measly $109. So I grabbed me two more.
UlfLaursen wrote on 11/17/2011, 10:58 PM
Spare a thought for the people who are under water.

Horrible...for sure!! Hope the best for them - thai people are so nice and friendly.

/Ulf
riredale wrote on 11/20/2011, 6:33 PM
Western Digital hard drive factory in Thailand:


http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2011/11/1/photo-horrific-images-of-flooded-western-digital-factory.aspx
TheHappyFriar wrote on 11/20/2011, 7:48 PM
According to every computer company out there we don't NEED hard drive, just use the cloud!
John_Cline wrote on 11/20/2011, 8:07 PM
Too bad that it isn't yet practical speed-wise to store a 500 GB project in the cloud somewhere...
Steve Mann wrote on 11/20/2011, 10:48 PM
"The only place I see hard drives and their prices on a consistent basis is at Costco."

Big retailers don't have the luxury of re-marking their existing stock based on what the replacement stock costs them. While they are in stock, go to Costco and stock up on your expected requirements for the next 12-months. This is the estimated time the market will recover. But note, the drives affected are considered "mature" technology and there's no guarantee that all of the component manufacturers wiped out in the flood will rebuild to what is now, old technology. When they rebuild they will be likely making their investment in the next technology. I just don't know what that will be since there are a few that are "in development" that will double or quadruple the areal density (bits per square-inch) of current technology. (Currently up to 200 gigabits per square inch). The next production of hard-disks will probably have an areal density of 1tbit per square-inch. In the next few years we will see drives with densities up to 50 terabits per square-inch.

But the next year or two will be one of tighter supplies.