Building a new system for Vegas? Buy your hard drive now.
 

If the powers that be decide this post is not relevant or that it is out of place, go ahead and move or delete it, no worries.

For those considering building a new system, prices on hard drives, both internal and external, are skyrocketing.

The 600GB hard drives that I purchased a couple of weeks ago cost me $399, and are now priced on Newegg at $672. All hard drives are expected to be hit by price increases, and it will get worse through March. The manufacturing plants have been flooded, and the situation is very bad. Just a word to the wise.

Re: Building a new system for Vegas? Buy your hard drive now.
 

Jeff, to pick up on your post which is relevant ot all editing forums, I don't think that the situation is going to be bad for long.
HDD prices are being hiked by vendors at the moment:
a) because of the news about floods in Thailand restricting component supplies
and
b) because there is still high demand meeting the 4th quarter Christmas rush which creates a panic market for other buyers anyway.
The total deliveries scheduled for Q4 was 180 million. It is expected that the floods will knock that back by about 10 million. Hardly a large amount, so the ridiculous prices are there for the unfortunates who MUST buy now (probably not that many) and the mugs who are whipped-up in the panic and don't mind being ripped off.

This is mainly affecting WD output. Samsung, Seagate and Hitachi will see this as a market opportunity. HDD manufacturers are global outfits and will already be seeking alternative component supplies and rebalancing their assembly site production in countires such as China, Malaysia and the Phillipines. The floods will probably subside when the dry season really kicks in and with the infrastructure investments promised by the Thai government, rebuilding on the same industrial sites will restore local output.

Steve

Re: Building a new system for Vegas? Buy your hard drive now.
 

It's too late prices have already sky-rocketed, some of it is due to flooding but if you ask me most of it has to do with making an easy profit, playing on the fears of customers. There was enough stock but panic buying cause the current shortage like most things in life people suck at managing a crisis - best to wait out the situation.

Re: Building a new system for Vegas? Buy your hard drive now.
 

Thanks Jeff for the heads up.

Something to consider for sure. Tomorrow the new flyers (circulars for Americans?) come out and I'll have to see if the big box stores have already increased prices here.

Re: Building a new system for Vegas? Buy your hard drive now.
 

I went to purchase a drive last night and saw the price increase, couldn't figure out what was happening.

Then I saw the article below:

http://www.crn.com/news/client-devic...-pc-makers.htm

A 3TB hard drive by Hitachi that was on sale at MicroCenter last week for $120, is now $279. So regardless of the reasons, the price increase is real and will not abate for awhile.

Re: Building a new system for Vegas? Buy your hard drive now.
 

I just looked and the 1 TB. external I bought a few months ago for $80 is now $190 :(

Re: Building a new system for Vegas? Buy your hard drive now.
 

I bought 2 hd 2tb 7200rpm WD black drive for $139 each and bought 2 2tb green drive for $79 each a month ago. Now all of them went over $249 each. I am so glad I got them drives last month.

Re: Building a new system for Vegas? Buy your hard drive now.
 

I just purchased a Western Digital 2.5", 'Scorpio Black' 500GB (WD5000BEKT), 7200RPM for $97.99. Other World Computing's, sales brochure v11.928, which I just received in the mail yesterday, advertises the same HDD for $77.99. Me thinks they are gouging, but, I went ahead and made my purchase before it gets worse or inventories run low.

Hang on folks, the rides going to get a little bumpy.

JMHO, YMMV.

J.

Re: Building a new system for Vegas? Buy your hard drive now.
 

The article that Jeff posted a link to says that average HDD prices are expected to rise by about 10%. So the current advertised prices are pure opportunism aimed at capitalising on buyers' panics. If most buyers ignore them for a few weeks the rip-off vendors (both distributor and retail) climb down, along with their prices, to something representing the true supply and demand situation.

Steve

Re: Building a new system for Vegas? Buy your hard drive now.
 

And this surprises us?

Thailand Floods will Impact Hard Disk Drive Components - Forbes is another article on the same problem.
The last few lines in the article reinforce what you just said :(

This could lead to greater than normal HDD profitability even though the available volume of HDDs will be constrained. This is a common pattern for the HDD industry. HDD companies often experience their greatest profit when their production is constrained.

Re: Building a new system for Vegas? Buy your hard drive now.
 

Got my 2 x 1 TB this morning before my vendor jacked the prices ...Thank goodness .....

Re: Building a new system for Vegas? Buy your hard drive now.
 

Right Mike. It's just a matter of supply and demand. We can call it whatever we want, but the fact is we've been enjoying ridiculously low prices for years for PC components due to high supply and stiff competition among vendors.

I got lucky two weeks ago and purchased a Cheetah 15.7K 300GB SAS open box special for $100 dollars for my OS. They are now $350.