Since the Thailand flooding disaster that really put the hard drive suppliers in a pickle, hard drive prices have gone up. Way up.
How far up?
More than double.
In this article I wrote back in July 2011 (8 months ago), the 1TB 7200 RPM hard drive mentioned was $55. The price of the same drive now is $120, so if you were ever wondering how high prices of HDDs went, now you know.
Will things get better concerning HDD prices? Not in the short term. The market probably won’t stabilize until very-late 2012 or even as far down the road as early 2013.
Should you buy used HDDs in the interim until the big-drive HDDs go down in price again?
No, don’t do that. If you need the space with the big drives, you’re going to have to bite the bullet and pay the money for the new stuff. It is not worth it to save a buck with a used drive when your data is at stake.
What’s the best way to buy big HDDs now?
Bigger saves you more, but only for a very specific capacity. The lowest price for a 1TB is about $100 (or $0.10 per GB put in simple terms). A 2TB drive on the low end is $130, so you can immediately see why the 2TB is the better deal compared to the 1TB. And bear in mind this is like-to-like brands I’m talking about here.
On the 3TB super-big side of things, you’re looking at $200-and-up range from that point presently, so again, the 2TB is the best deal going right now.
Obviously, shop wisely and mind the RPM speed for what you get. If you don’t care about slower drives, the 5900 RPM is priced lower than a 7200.
Here’s all the 1TB-and-up drives starting from the lowest price. Even if you don’t buy from that vendor specifically, you’ll get a very good idea of what you’re going to spend either now or in the near future.
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There is a Chrome and Firefox application called The Camelizer that tracks price history for items sold on Newegg, Amazon, Best Buy and a few other retailers.
With this application you can look up the price history of any hard drive, which would be helpful in making a purchasing decision. If the price is coming down quickly then it might benefit you to wait.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/the-camelizer-price-history-ch/
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ghnomdcacenbmilgjigehppbamfndblo
Additionally, there is also camelegg.com–pretty much the same thing, but as a website, rather than a plugin.
That’s a very cool resource; I’ll make a mention of that next Monday.
try InvisibleHand (Automatically get the lowest price on whatever you’re buying. )https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lghjfnfolmcikomdjmoiemllfnlmmoko
On the 3TB super-big side of things, you’re looking at $200-and-up range
from that point presently, so again, the 2TB is the best deal going
right now.
You can get a Seagate Barracuda 3 TB (7200RPM) with free shipping at Amazon.com for $164.99.
Post a link! That’s a good deal!
http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Barracuda-3-5-Inch-Internal-ST3000DM001/dp/B005T3GRLY/
How does this affect the $/GB comparison between conventional hard drives and solid state hard drives?
The SSD market is to the best of my knowledge unaffected, meaning the prices for SSD are still significantly higher compared to traditional HDDs. I don’t have the exact per-GB cost comparison figures, but for large storage, HDD is still your best value even with the price increases. On the low end, an internal SSD of 240GB (which is nowhere near 1TB) will still cost you well over $200.
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“The lowest price for a 1TB is about a dollar a GB, or $100 put in simple terms.” Don’t you mean $0.10 a GB? There’s a thousand GB in a TB. (Actually there should be 1,024, but don’t get me started on that…)
Oops.. yes, you’re right. Will make the corrections.
Ran across this price hike myself last week, when searching for HDDs at the office. Replacement HDDs were more than twice what I paid last time, a few years back.
Are all HDDs made in Thailand? Or are some just using this as an easy excuse to hike.
The electronics industry in general has a very nasty habit of “putting all their eggs into one basket”. The ‘basket’ is a country where most-if-not-all of a particular thing is made because it makes it much easier and cheaper for global distribution if everything is supplied out of one place. When that basket breaks however (as it always does), everyone suffers, starting with the consumer.
Welcome to the world of global distribution. Now you know why there are so many angry people saying we don’t make enough stuff on a local level.
There is price gouging here. Seagate does not make HD in Thailand and their prices are way up. Also note that suddenly their profit is way up , from a loss no less.
Not all HDD are made in Thailand, some came from Malaysia or Philippinies. That was a very good article. Thanks. Just bought 2.5″ 750GB Toshiba for my lovely laptop. Its a modern AF version. Apple uses that same one. My laptop has now 320GB Seagate and there´s a place for 2´nd HDD ! Wow!
Compare the the Hard Drive before purchasing them online. This will help you in buying hard drives online at cheap prices.