Hard disk famine shaping up as predicted after floods
Flooding in Thailand is causing disk drive supplies to dry up and prices to rise. There is lots of anecdotal evidence confirming channel information about flooding-caused drive shortages. One example; blogger Zorinaq shows a chart from price-tracker Camelegg depicting a 180 per cent rise in Samsung SpinPoint 1TB SATA drive from …
"Would you steal or kill if your family needed storage?"
Seems to me a) tasteless and b) misleading. I'm not sure what you're referring to, care to explain?
The question is usually "if your family needed bread/food". It's c) a clear self-deprecating dig at the mundaneness of the IT crisis compared to the humanitarian crisis in Thailand.
I'm just wondering how often people buy 3 disk drives or more for personal use from a high street store? For that volume I'd always buy online. Seems to me a bit of cheap publicity, makes people think they'd better buy disks before they run out!
You might think this is price gouging on their part. Probably not. They have a substantial DIY gamer business. Once their HDD inventory is gone the rest of their DIY revenue will also tail off. The hard drive is an essential (yet inexpensive) part of a new build. Doubling or quadrupling the price of a HDD won't kill most builds. Not having any HDD's available from Newegg or any other component supplier probably will.
It's worse than that; a certain online supplier with an ovum-based name failed to fulfill an order I placed with them which had a fair number of drives in it. The worst part is that they took a week to do so, despite my contacting customer service to ask what was going on. Of course, in that time drive prices had risen elsewhere. It seems that right now even retailers with good histories are falling down on customer service.
-d
Flame icon, because when I complained about the price increase, I was told that they "don't do price protection," and I should re-order the items that I still needed which were available. I did so, but oddly enough, from a retailer with a large cat-based name. Who managed to get the order out their door in 1 business day, so I'll be using them as my default supplier for a while. :)
Very if my experience selling HDDs is anything to go by. The price difference is negligible and you don't have to wait two days for them to turn so you can send them back 'cause they're the wrong ones. Plus, you can deal with DOAs instantly.
What I want to know is why people buying ten or more are buying retail. Just don't know any better, I guess.
I've heard that [certain] UK distributors have marked up existing [pre-flood] large capacity SATA stock by as much as 40% to cover their anticipated shortfalls.
First hand I've noted a marked shortage of external hard disks at my local Tesco [other supermarkets are available] who's shelf is usually adorned with a mixed bag of 250GB - 2TB USB external disks. I've never seen a tech shelf in any supermarket empty out so quick. All that's left now are a few obscure 2½ capacity disks (250 & 320GB) and one overpriced Seagate Options 2½ external 1TB disk going for the bargain price of £97! A whopping £30+ more than I paid for mine four months ago.
Are the tech savvy users stocking up before we feel the real impact of this shortage, or is "Mr Average" a little wiser and buying while stocks last? Who knows, but something is motivating people to buy this kind of kit from the super stores.
Either way, someone's going to cash in on this and the clear losers are the consumer as we'll be paying more for our Laptops, PCs and DV Recorders as the demand exceeds the supply, thus escalating the price.
It's Game buying up stock off supermarket shelves and hoarding them to sell later as pre-owned at a mark up (think back to the 3DS).
Your are seeing just how short big retail run their inventory.
Dell look to be panicking. Placing a call with them for a replacement drive for a server they wanted all sorts of extra diags completed to confirm the disk was knackered before shipping out a new one.
Account managers have started mailing customers, no impact to supply so far. Equalogic and Compellent products aren't affected apparently as they are supplied by different countries.
...now I will have to save for magnetic drives too. oh noes. Glad I already bought 2TB on old prices.
And.. uh... what about Xbox360 and PS3? They have HDDs in them too right? Very few camcorders too, as well?
OTOH, if that made the flashy SSDs prices go down... hmm....
Waiting for economy of scale to kick in just sucks.
Thank you for the order. Due to flooding in Thailand which has flooded the disk manufacturers this has lead to a shortage of disks and massive price increases in disk prices. We are very sorry but we are not going to be able to do the Seagate 2TB XT disks at £ 115.95, this page on our website was missed when we removed updated the hard disks on the website. we can offer you these disk but the price is £ 230.00 + VAT
OutFingRageous.
Best buy is still selling 2 TB drives for $89. Same as Wal-Mart. There are actual units sitting on the shelves. I almost considering picking one up as a 'just in case' for next year.
I wonder if this shortage of hard drives will cause a shortage of PC's will be over just in time for the introduction of Windows 8
seagate hard drive factories were completely uneffected by the floods, but they're upping their prices - WHY?
