disk drives: if you need one, buy now!

[Roger Clark]

In case you haven't heard, Thailand has had a lot of flooding. WD and Seagate have major plants in Thailand and supplies are either already impacted or about to be impacted, and as a result (even the perception of supply problems), prices are rising. Some server drives increased in price about 300% in the last week. A local store manager said they usually have a lot of stock in the back, but it is depleted and all that they have is on the shelf. 4TB USB drives jumped 10 to 25% in the last week (varies by store) and other drives too (I've been mainly trying to get 4TB externals, 2 TB faster server internal, and 3 TB internals. So if you are planning to get drives, it may not pay wait, as prices may continue to climb and supplies drop. I'm not sure when prices and supplies will get better.

Roger

[Chris Ober]

Prices have already tripled on Newegg.

[Chris Poole]

Here is a great article on the increase in hard drive

Meanwhile, shortages have caused phenomenal hard drive price increases. Over the past month, I observed on Newegg:


1TB SATA hard drives went from $50/TB to $140/TB, +180%, almost triple the price
1.5TB from $47/TB to $93/TB, +100%
2TB from $40/TB to $72/TB, +80%
3TB from $67/TB to $87/TB, +30%



http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=62

SO buy now if you can find one for a good price or just buy one for future backup. Thanks for the heads up Roger

[Stan Cunningham]

If you trust them, you can still get them for the norm price on ebay.
I just bought a new 2 TB seagate for 100 with free shipping from a seller with great feedback, feel better if it was Amazon but it's very high.
Thanks Roger as I was just planning on getting one soon and would have gotten sticker shock.

[Robert Amoruso]

I guess this means the Black Friday Target ad for 2 TB WD Elements drives will be non in stock.

[Ian Cassell]

If anyone needs a portable USB drive, I got this promo from Seagate. I have one of these drives (a 350 GB) that I use for traveling (my inboard laptop drive is pretty small) and it has been working great. I just ordered a 500 with a free USB 3.0 kit to make things a bit faster.

http://app.en25.com/e/es.aspx?s=261&e=213578&elq=2e71d29e85dd49b7bdd3fd9884145ea8