The impending hard drive shortage -- and possible price hikes


Simon

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No one agreed with me when I said I really only buy drives with a 5 year warranty. For those with multiple drives out of warranty or warranties coming to an end aren't going to be in good situation. At least I'll have a couple extra years to wait out the issues and be "protected" in not having to buy drives at an inflated price right now.

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It might be time to take it easy on the array for the holidays, I think I am going to slow down on how much I am ripping to UnRaid for a while so the dust can settle from the hard drive shortage. With how much price has gone up I am betting it is going to cause a decrease in demand which should stabilize prices and give them a chance to catch up on production again.

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No one agreed with me when I said I really only buy drives with a 5 year warranty. For those with multiple drives out of warranty or warranties coming to an end aren't going to be in good situation. At least I'll have a couple extra years to wait out the issues and be "protected" in not having to buy drives at an inflated price right now.

The reason that drive prices are so high is because they are in very short supply.  If you need to replace one of your drives under warranty then I would be prepared to wait a lot longer than normal. What do you think the OEMs will do with their limited supply, use them as replacements or sell them for a larger than normal profit?
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Watch out for scams in this environment:

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-WESTERN-DIGITAL-WD-USB3-0-My-Book-Essential-External-Hard-Drive-3TB-PARCEL-/150688706687?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2315bf307f

This guy has sold a few hundred 3TB for $33.99 with free shipping and also few hundred 2TB and 1TBs and Ebay is still sleeping.

 

And then this one just outsell him as he is peddling his 3TB at $29 with FS:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-WESTERN-DIGITAL-WD-USB3-0-My-Book-Essential-External-Hard-Drive-3TB-PARCEL-/180748867613?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_2&hash=item2a1578d81d

 

Buy from trusted vendors only...

 

 

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wonder how long after the flood water is gone will prices/supply stabilize, start to go down and be at the price before the flood

 

I would assume quite a while.

 

they have to clean up a lot. possibly replace/repair expensive machinery.

 

possibly replace materials (platers, boards, motors, and chips).

 

I'll assume they lost a lot of employees due to them losing their homes.

 

Then the OEM's will start hording the drives first.

 

They will pass on the cost of lost revenue and cleanup to the consumer...

 

so.. Q2 2012?

 

 

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Yup, I would tend to agree, I'm maybe more pessimistic over pricing.  Perhaps this could be a catalyst for the manufacturers realizing their margins are too small.

 

Small margins are what allowed them to sell so many units, at current pricing you an bet that demand will drop, sure the oem's will still need drives to ship new computers, but the number of drives alone sold retail will drop. Drive manufacturers have adopted a Walmart philosophy, let me make a litle bit of money on a lot of people rather than trying to make it all on each customer.

 

If manufacturers decide to diversify supply chains after this fiasco we might see a small sustained price increase which would be acceptable.

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Yup, I would tend to agree, I'm maybe more pessimistic over pricing.  Perhaps this could be a catalyst for the manufacturers realizing their margins are too small.

 

Small margins are what allowed them to sell so many units, at current pricing you an bet that demand will drop, sure the oem's will still need drives to ship new computers, but the number of drives alone sold retail will drop. Drive manufacturers have adopted a Walmart philosophy, let me make a litle bit of money on a lot of people rather than trying to make it all on each customer.

 

If manufacturers decide to diversify supply chains after this fiasco we might see a small sustained price increase which would be acceptable.

 

Yeah but if the flooding wipes out several years profits... then you can bet they will re-evaluating their margins, or diversifying their production.  Either way, we'll be paying more for drives.

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This is crazy. I purcashed 2x WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb from newegg on 9-24-2010 when they were 89.99 and free shipping and now they want $200 for them. I was lookin at getting a few more and seen the price and thought.. must be a darn good drive so they jumped the price up on em big time. (still a dam good drive)

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Here in the UK its now much cheaper to buy USB drives and then pull them apart for the bare drive inside rahter than to buy bare drives in the first place.  Quite a few mainstream retail stores still have stocks of USB drives at pre-price hike prices, but bare drives in the specialist PC parts channel have jumped very substantially.

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Here in the UK its now much cheaper to buy USB drives and then pull them apart for the bare drive inside rahter than to buy bare drives in the first place.  Quite a few mainstream retail stores still have stocks of USB drives at pre-price hike prices, but bare drives in the specialist PC parts channel have jumped very substantially.

 

Generally speaking, you void the drive's warranty by doing that.  Still might be worth it in some cases.

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Here in the UK its now much cheaper to buy USB drives and then pull them apart for the bare drive inside rahter than to buy bare drives in the first place.  Quite a few mainstream retail stores still have stocks of USB drives at pre-price hike prices, but bare drives in the specialist PC parts channel have jumped very substantially.

 

Generally speaking, you void the drive's warranty by doing that.  Still might be worth it in some cases.

 

Where's your proof of that? I've pulled WD and Seagate drives and all have had valid warranties based on the bare drive serial.

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Here in the UK its now much cheaper to buy USB drives and then pull them apart for the bare drive inside rahter than to buy bare drives in the first place.  Quite a few mainstream retail stores still have stocks of USB drives at pre-price hike prices, but bare drives in the specialist PC parts channel have jumped very substantially.

 

Generally speaking, you void the drive's warranty by doing that.  Still might be worth it in some cases.

 

Where's your proof of that? I've pulled WD and Seagate drives and all have had valid warranties based on the bare drive serial.

 

Sometimes you get lucky and the warranty is still good.  Sometimes you get unlucky and the warranty is void.  I've seen both cases personally.  It all depends on who sells the externals - if it is sold by some third party, then the warranty is handled by that third party and the drive's manufacturer often won't honor it.  The third party company will sometimes purchase huge batches of drives at a time, and the drive manufacturer will blacklist those serial numbers from their warranty service.  Some third party companies will even put their own sticker on the drive, effectively destroying the manufacturer's sticker.  For example, say you buy an Iomega external that has a Seagate drive inside.  Your warranty is good with Iomega only, Seagate has no obligation to replace the drive.  That's just an example, I have no idea if Iomega actually uses Seagate drives or some other brand.

 

It also used to be the case that installing an internal drive into an external enclosure would void the warranty since many enclosures didn't provide adequate cooling.  That policy seems to have changed since the advent of green and AV drives, which run much cooler and work well in external enclosures.

 

All that aside, with the way the market is looking today I wouldn't hesitate to buy and external drive on sale and crack it open even if that meant a voided warranty.

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All that aside, with the way the market is looking today I wouldn't hesitate to buy and external drive on sale and crack it open even if that meant a voided warranty.

 

Exactly - I bought 4 x 2TB today to allow my backup server to match the capacity of my main server, and another 2TB for the main machine as well.  I figure the prices won't come down for 3 - 6 months or so.

 

At least I can safely defer the decision regarding 3TB drives for a while....  The prices here are just ludicrous.

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I was planning on building a back up server, but I guess that will be on hold till the drive prices drop again. I picked up a couple of 2TB at best buy for 79.99, I grabbed the last two they had on the shelf. That with the two 1.5TB drives I have laying around should hold me over till prices come back down.

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