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Why are HDD prices rocketing?


Scott

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As above, I've been keeping an eye on the price of large capacity HDDs and they seem to be rocketing. Not THAT long ago I got a 1tb Samsung F1 drive for £55 and a 2TB F2(iirc) for £85. Not long after that I got a (again IIRC) F3 1TB for around £50. I can't find anything even remotely near these prices.

 

I had a quick browse on Ebuyer and I'm finding 2TB external drives for under £100 yet I can't get an OEM 2TB drive for less than £150.

 

I'm now wishing I had bought 10 of them, could have sold them on :D

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That is indeed true. The flooding is the problem.

 

Apparently, if you search the likes of ebay and other places, some people haven't updated their prices to reflect the hike. If you buy them now, you can sell them on for a good profit. :)

 

Not that I've found :D

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Thailand Floods To Lead To 30 Percent Shortfall Of Hard Drive Supply

 

 

By Joseph F. Kovar, CRN 5:58 PM EST Fri. Nov. 04, 2011

One-third or more of the expected hard drive demand in the fourth quarter is in jeopardy of going unfulfilled due to the Thailand floods which have put much of that country, including a large part of its hard drive industry, under water.

 

That sober assessment comes from a Thursday SEC filing from Seagate Technology.

 

The assessment follows by a week Western Digital's SEC filing in which it states that about 60 percent of its hard drive production is shut down because of the floods.

 

In its filing, Seagate wrote that the component supply chain for the hard drive industry was disrupted by the severe floods in Thailand, and that the impact on the hard drive industry is " expected to be substantial and to extend over several quarters."

 

Hard drive demand for the fourth quarter of 2011 had been predicted to be about 180 million drives, but industry projections now show supply to be limited to between 110 million and 120 million drives, and that demand will "significantly" exceed supply through at least the March 2012 quarter, Seagate wrote.

 

Seagate's hard drive and component assembly factories in Thailand were spared from the flood, but manufacturing at those facilities has been curtailed due to "external component constraints," Seagate wrote, referring to components from third-party suppliers in Thailand were impacted by the flood.

 

Seagate now expects to report a total production of 41 million to 45 million hard drives for its December 2011 quarter, compared to the 48.9 million drives it shipped in the fourth calendar quarter of 2010, according to the filing.

 

Steve Luczo, chairman and CEO of Seagate, said Thursday at the Needham & Company HDD and Memory Conference that Seagate had been expecting a relatively flat total hard drive market of about 180 million to 200 million units per quarter through 2012, but that will no longer be possible, according to a transcript of his conversation provided by Seagate.

 

"When you look at the structural issues in the industry, it's hard to see a path beyond [a] kind of incremental growth over the course of the year that goes something like 120, 130, 150, 170 (million units in the four quarters)," Luczo said. "And it says even by the end of the calendar year, you've got pretty significant shortfalls in the 50 (million) to 70 million (units per quarter) range still."

 

Western Digital, in its October 28 SEC filing, painted a more dismal picture of the flood's impact.

 

All Western Digital's hard drive and component manufacturing facilities in Thailand have been shut down since the week of October 10 due to the flooding. The company also wrote that about 60 percent of its entire hard drive production is done in Thailand.

 

Western Digital "expects the suspension of its operations in Thailand and that of some of its suppliers will continue into the March quarter and possibly beyond," and that it is exploring alternatives "to maximize existing capacity in other locations, including its Malaysian hard drive assembly facility and a third-party slider fabrication facility in the Philippines," it wrote in the filing.

 

As a result, Western Digital wrote, it "expects that its hard drive shipments during the December quarter will be between 22 million and 26 million units in contrast to the 58 million units shipped in the September quarter and that the overall hard drive industry unit shipments in the December quarter will also be supply constrained due to the flooding."

 

Next: The Coming Ripple Effect

 

The expected shortage of hard drives was a big topic of conversation among VARs at D&H Distributing's fall conference in Hershey, Pa., said Dan Schwab, co-president of the Harrisburg, Pa.-based distributor.

 

"It's going to have a ripple effect from mass appliances to consumer electronics to notebooks. A lot of vendors have already modified prices, changed delivery expectations or expressed concern," Schwab said.

 

Some vendors said constraints could reach 90 to 180 days for availability for some niche drive products.

 

"Products will be flowing but there will be some constraints. Some vendors are slightly better off than others based on size and their pipeline but anything that takes a hard drive will be effected," Schwab said.

 

D&H expects to see demand in competing drive technology, such as SSD, pick up as vendors and customers look to avoid constraints in hard drives. "That will drive new opportunities. It'll be a dynamic market for the next few months," he said.

 

Spokespeople from Seagate and Western Digital were unable to provide updates beyond their companies' most recent SEC filings.

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My son is after a portable ext HD (1TB). Other than the usual suspects of Dabs and Ebuyer, is there anywhere else he should be looking?

 

The portable 1tb on ebuyer was the cheapest I seen. It was also £30 less than a stand alone HDD which I thought was mental lol.

 

Not a good time to be in the market for one unfortunately CJ.

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  • 1 month later...

We just brought some SAN storage at work & all the vendors we went through said disk prices will certainly be going up in 2012. Stocks will dry out (see what I did there), supply & demand will push the cost up. The world's data consumption has spiked massively in the recent years, fuelled by high quality tech which commands disk space, like high end pictures, Blue Ray & HD quality video's etc etc.

 

I was hoping to get a nice SSD this year too :(

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The portable 1tb on ebuyer was the cheapest I seen. It was also £30 less than a stand alone HDD which I thought was mental lol.

 

Not a good time to be in the market for one unfortunately CJ.

 

I'd completely missed this.

 

We ended up buying a 1TB from the Maplin store on ebay for about 50.00 delivered. To be honest, I didnt expect much but so far so good.

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We just brought some SAN storage at work & all the vendors we went through said disk prices will certainly be going up in 2012. Stocks will dry out (see what I did there), supply & demand will push the cost up. The world's data consumption has spiked massively in the recent years, fuelled by high quality tech which commands disk space, like high end pictures, Blue Ray & HD quality video's etc etc.

 

I was hoping to get a nice SSD this year too :(

 

HP or EMC? Not all array vendors have put their prices up yet. FC 15k drives haven't gone up for us yet.

 

I still think online de-duplication with large SATA is going to keep cost/Gb down, or ramp up density tbh.

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HP or EMC? Not all array vendors have put their prices up yet. FC 15k drives haven't gone up for us yet.

 

I still think online de-duplication with large SATA is going to keep cost/Gb down, or ramp up density tbh.

We went with HP, they didn't increase the prices but did warn us disk prices will go up depending on supply.

 

Also in the process of bringing our backups In-house with DCG who also wanted us to fast track the process as soon as possible as they advised it is likely disk prices will jump after the first quarter of the new year. We aren't paying for the kit, they are so were keen to order the disks we needed.

 

Lets hope your right mate :)

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I'd completely missed this.

 

We ended up buying a 1TB from the Maplin store on ebay for about 50.00 delivered. To be honest, I didnt expect much but so far so good.

 

You did well there mate, there was virtually nothing available for reasonable money when I was looking. I can wait though :D

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