Will HDD prices ever come down?

[jft135]

Everyone know that NewEgg is the worst place to buy a PC from a manufacturer. Especially an Asus, Asus as one of the worst RMA. Why not purchase Dell directly from them ? ...A. I sell only Dell to my customers, parts are easy to get.

Well, I know now, but didn't then. I can't sell Dell direct to consumers since that is against my contract with them. I do sell Dell and Dell only to businesses though.

I've actually found that (and this may be related to the recession) I do very well selling refurbished computers that I buy from a reputable asset management company. I have far fewer problems and because I can walk into their office when I do have a problem, I am much more comfortable with them.

 

[jjb]

Prices have been dropping pretty rapidly for us in the last few months We're able to retail 500GB WD Blues for $69 CDN, 1TB Blacks around $99.

Prices are certainly not where it was a year and a half ago, but it's a LOT better than right after the floods.

 

[gunslinger]

Last Christmas I got a WD 500 gig external for $39. The exact same drive right now is $79. I refuse to buy a new drive until prices are back where they were or lower.


As a side note about Newegg. Their shipping used to be the best. I would order something on Monday night and by Tuesday morning it was on my door step using regular shipping. These days I sometimes wait weeks, not days.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Last Christmas I got a WD 500 gig external for $39. The exact same drive right now is $79. I refuse to buy a new drive until prices are back where they were or lower..

You're going to be waiting for a long...looooong time. Until then...how will you take care of HDD needs for your clients? If a clients HDD dies in a laptop, workstation, or server...what will you do to fix it? Shove a used one in there from a pile of old drives you have?

 

[jft135]

You're going to be waiting for a long...looooong time. Until then...how will you take care of HDD needs for your clients? If a clients HDD dies in a laptop, workstation, or server...what will you do to fix it? Shove a used one in there from a pile of old drives you have?

That's why I give them a choice between a used (but very well tested) HDD and a new one. I will warranty the used ones for up to a year for 30% of the price of the HDD. I used to be concerned about it, but I am very thorough with my testing and in a little under a year have never had one come back.

I used to be worried about the customer loosing data, but I inform them that they should always have a good backup regardless of whether their drive is new or used. Drives fail out of the box all the time anyway.

For the ones that opt for a new drive, I have been dropping my margin from 30 points to 20 on HDD's only. I just don't stock very many in case the price drops a ton.

 

[gunslinger]

That's why I give them a choice between a used (but very well tested) HDD and a new one. I will warranty the used ones for up to a year for 30% of the price of the HDD. I used to be concerned about it, but I am very thorough with my testing and in a little under a year have never had one come back.

I used to be worried about the customer loosing data, but I inform them that they should always have a good backup regardless of whether their drive is new or used. Drives fail out of the box all the time anyway.

For the ones that opt for a new drive, I have been dropping my margin from 30 points to 20 on HDD's only. I just don't stock very many in case the price drops a ton.

Almost exactly what I do. I was lucky to have several in stock when the prices shot up. If a business wants to pay full price far be it for me to try and talk them out of it. Most home users are tighter with money and don't mind the refurb drives.

 

[ElementalWindX]

Why people even touch HDDs are beyond me these days. SSD is at such a price point that makes it more than worth it. $100, and sometimes even $80 for a samsung or intel 120-128GB drive is perfect. Convincing the customer you can take a $300 laptop, put a ssd in it, and out perform most if not all computers twice its price will almost guarantee a sell, especially if you actually SHOW THEM that it does.

I do an insane amount of ssd hard drive upgrades and have been doing them all year long. I hope Dell and the box names continue to try and rape people on ssd options for their computers because I am making a TON of money undercutting their prices by a TON and still making a TON of money at the same time.

I charge $150 for the drive, and either $80 or $150 flat for labor to do the upgrade. $150 is for if I have to reinstall the OS from scratch. Buy a $350 laptop, put $300 into it and get the performance of a computer that equates to around $1,500 for $650. How many people would turn that down? I can tell you that 9 out of 10 people I speak to, dont turn it down

 

[gunslinger]

Why people even touch HDDs are beyond me these days. SSD is at such a price point that makes it more than worth it. $100, and sometimes even $80 for a samsung or intel 120-128GB drive is perfect. Convincing the customer you can take a $300 laptop, put a ssd in it, and out perform most if not all computers twice its price will almost guarantee a sell, especially if you actually SHOW THEM that it does.

I do an insane amount of ssd hard drive upgrades and have been doing them all year long. I hope Dell and the box names continue to try and rape people on ssd options for their computers because I am making a TON of money undercutting their prices by a TON and still making a TON of money at the same time.

I charge $150 for the drive, and either $80 or $150 flat for labor to do the upgrade. $150 is for if I have to reinstall the OS from scratch. Buy a $350 laptop, put $300 into it and get the performance of a computer that equates to around $1,500 for $650. How many people would turn that down? I can tell you that 9 out of 10 people I speak to, dont turn it down

IDK, maybe It's just my area, but most people here would not even think of spending $300 on $350 computer. They buy a $350 computer so they don't have to spend $600 or more on one...lol

I agree that upgrading to an SSD is the way to go if its speed you are looking for. Since the HDD the the bottle neck for most systems. But, I think anyone installing an SSD in their system had better keep their actual data stored on another HDD either internal or external. The simple fact of the matter is that for most businesses 120gigs is not even close to enough space. Great for a boot drive but they still need regular old one and two TB HDDs for storage. Maybe for the typical home user you can get by with just a 120gig drive but from the people I deal with I don't even see that. What I'm seeing here is people with 200 and 250 gigs of music and video files they need backed up.

Speed is great but people still need storage.

 

[Paul Rodgers]

Why people even touch HDDs are beyond me these days. SSD is at such a price point that makes it more than worth it. $100, and sometimes even $80 for a samsung or intel 120-128GB drive is perfect. Convincing the customer you can take a $300 laptop, put a ssd in it, and out perform most if not all computers twice its price will almost guarantee a sell, especially if you actually SHOW THEM that it does.

I do an insane amount of ssd hard drive upgrades and have been doing them all year long. I hope Dell and the box names continue to try and rape people on ssd options for their computers because I am making a TON of money undercutting their prices by a TON and still making a TON of money at the same time.

I charge $150 for the drive, and either $80 or $150 flat for labor to do the upgrade. $150 is for if I have to reinstall the OS from scratch. Buy a $350 laptop, put $300 into it and get the performance of a computer that equates to around $1,500 for $650. How many people would turn that down? I can tell you that 9 out of 10 people I speak to, dont turn it down

My two biggest issues with SSDs are their lack of space and their ability to randomly die.

I do not recommend or sell SSDs to customers.

 

[ElementalWindX]

My two biggest issues with SSDs are their lack of space and their ability to randomly die.

I do not recommend or sell SSDs to customers.

If you sell anything other than intel, yes expect them to randomly die. I will admit, I was furious with the results of SEVERAL brands (all of them except intel) as I have returned probably close to 150 drives and lost a little bit of money, but in that wake of bs, I learned what brand is the best. Of course it's intel, the brand I've always trusted to build all my computers with.

Note luckily I build 15 test beds to test each and every brand on myself and had them constantly running by stress testing them, doing automatic shut downs, and all sorts of tests, so luckily 99% of my clients didn't suffer data losses, and the 1% was somebody who didn't listen to a word I told them, and they were one of my first ssd upgrades using an adata drive.

I have never returned a single intel ssd.
I returned at least 80 ocz and sold 84 of them. (Unfortunately 2 of them that are still working are their maxiops series that are in the computer I'm typing this on )
all the other brands I only sold and returned 3-5 of each.

idk why, but ssd seems to work better when put in a raid array too.


When it comes to upgrading for a home user, what % of your home users would you say use more than 120GB of data on their computers? For me it is a very small %. Like 5%. In that case I offer the 120GB for boot and a HDD for data. Or I offer if the customer wants to spend more, for a bigger ssd, but at the same time anything over 120GB and I tell them I think it's not worth their money and they should wait for price drops.

 

[Paul Rodgers]

Have you ever had a USB flash drive randomly die on you? That is what can happen regardless of the SSD brand you use because the electron gates that are used to store data can only be opened and closed so many times. Eventually the SSD will lose space or fail to boot.

Assuming that backups are made (you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink), you could be looking at 2+ hours to rebuild the machine. Never assume that a RAID array will save you from having to rebuild a machine. One or more SSDs could be corrupting the array due to losing space.

Some home users have crazy amounts of data while others could make due with an 80 GB drive.

 

[ElementalWindX]

Have you ever had a USB flash drive randomly die on you? That is what can happen regardless of the SSD brand you use because the electron gates that are used to store data can only be opened and closed so many times. Eventually the SSD will lose space or fail to boot.

Intel includes software you can install on the persons machine that will tell you every little detail you can imagine about that drive, including it's health. They are the only manufacturer that I know of that does this. I have a few clients (who had to have the latest and greatest) that are going on I believe something close to the 3-4 year mark on intel ssd's so far.

Assuming that backups are made (you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink), you could be looking at 2+ hours to rebuild the machine. Never assume that a RAID array will save you from having to rebuild a machine. One or more SSDs could be corrupting the array due to losing space.

Very true. I knew this. Most older raid cards don't seem to be able to detect when a ssd is about to fail or has failed properly. For obvious reasons as the raid card was made for HDD not SDD

 

[jft135]

I agree that upgrading to an SSD is the way to go if its speed you are looking for. Since the HDD the the bottle neck for most systems. But, I think anyone installing an SSD in their system had better keep their actual data stored on another HDD either internal or external. The simple fact of the matter is that for most businesses 120gigs is not even close to enough space. Great for a boot drive but they still need regular old one and two TB HDDs for storage. Maybe for the typical home user you can get by with just a 120gig drive but from the people I deal with I don't even see that. What I'm seeing here is people with 200 and 250 gigs of music and video files they need backed up.

That's funny. Here I see the exact opposite. Most business computers could actually be fine with only 40-80GB, but the home users always need more thanks to Limewire and Bittorrent. In fact I often partition big drives to only 40GB on most of my business machines. It encourages them to save stuff on the network drive where they are supposed to. There are exceptions of course.

Selling an SSD upgrade after a failure is a great idea. I'll have to start quoting them for my customers, but most just want to fix it for as cheap as possible. We'll see how it goes.