The world wide hard disk shortage

Paul_HDLover

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I couldn't believe it when my friend pointed out to me the enormous increase in the price of internal and external storage devices.

Take a look at Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 1TB Hard Drive SATAII.. | Ebuyer.com for an example of what I mean. A 1tb HD had come down to just over £30 a few months ago. I have never seen increases like it.

All caused by the flooding in Thailand as detailed in the following article.

Hard disk shortage to last six months after Thai floods | thinq_

The word on the street is that this is only the start, Hard Drive prices are to continue increasing into next year and expected to double on the prices we are seeing just now.

This will also impact prices for off the shelf PC's at major retailers, not to mention big computer manufacturers bracing themselves for dire Q4 results due to this unavoidable scenario.

Its just not the kind of thing you expect to see.
 
Distribution prices in the UK are up by 75% for those distributors that actually have them in stock....
 
I thought it was just me! The main family PC hard drive failed the other day and I was looking around for a new one and seeing these silly prices. For now Ive stuck in an 80GB Hard Drive that was laying around. Should do the job for a while.
 
My mate has 6 2TB sata HD's which he bought for £400. He could probably sell then for £1500 now - make some extra xmas cash.
 
heh there was a story on the BBC website saying that HDD prices were expected to rise by 10% because of the floods! Perhaps they missed the '2' before the 10?

Thankfully SSD prices have been insulated from these rises. I still have over half the space on my 1TB drive left and could easily delete a couple of 100 MB off that if I had to.
 
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I bought a 2TB Samsung drive a couple of weeks ago for £55 and it's now £120 from the same place I see.
 
i have 5 of those drives, time to get them on ebay i think.
 
Damn, I need a 2tb soon . I was assuming I'd get one for around £50-60

Got 7 already, if I didn't need them I'd flog them for some spare cash :)
 
In my experience HDDs are the least reliable component in a PC - I have RMA'd more of them than anything else - probably four in the last few years - the only other thing is one power supply.

So I'll be praying none break in the next few months or who knows - if in warranty it might take ages to replace, if out, burn the wallet to replace.

Looks like SSDs are cheaper than ever though :) £1 per GB on Dabs having a quick look.
 
It's not surprising given how many parts and drives are made there. They've gone up by over 150% and that was only the first week.

SSDs haven't budged in price but it does, unfortunately, make them sound cheap.
 
The Spinpoint F3's are quality. Chuffed I got my 1tb for £43 delivered a couple of months back. I should have trusted my instinct and got another at the time..

If you don't mind waiting amazon have them for £50.
 
In my experience HDDs are the least reliable component in a PC - I have RMA'd more of them than anything else - probably four in the last few years - the only other thing is one power supply.

So I'll be praying none break in the next few months or who knows - if in warranty it might take ages to replace, if out, burn the wallet to replace.

Looks like SSDs are cheaper than ever though :) £1 per GB on Dabs having a quick look.

Touch wood I have been fairly lucky. I have only ever had two go wrong. I am currently running 22 in various devices, fingers crossed none go kaput.
 
Touch wood I have been fairly lucky. I have only ever had two go wrong. I am currently running 22 in various devices, fingers crossed none go kaput.

Other than fans, they are the only moving part in a PC, so are almost certainly going to be the first "likely" failure for most people (obviously not all).

The MTBF on a hard disk is meant to be a very long time, but I have had dozens of disks die on me over the 10-12 years since I started building machines.

Deathstars (snigger) were the main culprit, but I have found at least one disk from all brands die at some point.

On the flip side, I've noticed RMAs (knock wood also) have been less prominent for myself and immediate family/friends over the last 3-4 years - like overall quality has increased and heads fail far less often.

One of my "Freecom" external drives (Samsung inside) has physically been running 24/7 about 99.9% of the time over the last 3 years and (I know I have jinxed it) it's been perfect.
 
The only drives I had which persistently failed were Maxtor Externals they were only 200gb (c.2003). I must have RMA'd at least five of them.
 
The only drives I had which persistently failed were Maxtor Externals they were only 200gb (c.2003). I must have RMA'd at least five of them.

Externals are a different kettle of fish entirely - susceptible to poor power units and so fort (when compared to typically more reliable and consistent power inside a PC for example).

I have vague recollections of a time when external drives were a bit of a dodgy option, due to constant failures from power related issues - never really because of the drives (well, that's a given - the drive inside the box, is the same as one inside the PC in 99.9% of cases).
 
The only drives I had which persistently failed were Maxtor Externals they were only 200gb (c.2003). I must have RMA'd at least five of them.

That's because Maxtor are crap.

Although saying that I have two 120GB Maxtors which I'm using at the moment.

Not had much luck with USB hard drives, found IO USB controller a bit dodgy. I stick to slot in removable hard drives that connect to internal SATA bus now.
 
That's because Maxtor are crap.

:rolleyes:

Really? Is that how you're rolling with this one? There's always a point in ALL hard disk discussions when a comment like this completely changes the discussion.

ALL disks have a failure rate to some extent. Some are slightly more prevalent than others (often the brand to be cheapest per GB first, as large volumes of sales of a given batch etc ... ).
 
ALL disks have a failure rate to some extent.

In my experience, Maxtor had a higher ratio of failures. Used to have Maxtor, Seagate, Western Digital dotted around the site and Maxtors died more often...
 
In my experience, Maxtor had a higher ratio of failures. Used to have Maxtor, Seagate, Western Digital dotted around the site and Maxtors died more often...

Your experience. Yours. Not mine, or for that matter, is it representative of the populous. It's anecdotal and has very little meaning.

Even if you had 10 Maxtor disks and they all failed, it's not statistically sound to suggest "all Maxtors are crap". In your opinion, fine - and you won't buy them again. But hundreds of millions will be just perfect apart from your hypothetical 10.
 
The trading moderators over in computer classifieds have been keeping a very close eye on this. Couple of times I have asked people to provide a receipt or show proof of purchase price - needless to say, they went off to ebay in the huff.
 
I've just noticed the WD Essentials 2tb, which normally goes at Amazon for c.£75-£80 is now double that.

I wonder though if this isn't just temporary panic and/or profiteering after a news story which, when read in detail, doesn't paint a particularly bleak picture.

Steve W
 
ouch, didnt realise they had gone up so much, i know the flooding has hit honda in swindon, and there staff are doing a 3 day week, due to lack of car components to build there cars
 
Other than fans, they are the only moving part in a PC, so are almost certainly going to be the first "likely" failure for most people (obviously not all).

And optical drives. These are used many orders of magnitude less of course, and are far from the precision devices that HDDs are.
 

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