Will HDD prices ever come down?

[jft135]

Has anyone heard news about when supply and demand will get back to normal? I am even running out of my good sources of used and refurbished drives (my local refurbisher refuses to sell me any more since I have used up all of his surplus).

On the bright side, I have been getting lots of good laptops in for resale since people would rather sell it to me cheap than pay current prices plus my labor.

 

[James_S]

I've read anywhere from later this year till 2014

I'd bet on prices not coming down till later rather than sooner though. HDDs have become a commodity and the margins on them have kept shrinking over the years so the manufacturers are in no hurry to bring prices down now that they've had an excuse to jack them up.

The other thing is that there are now only three HDD manufacturers: WD, Seagate, and Toshiba. Less competition, so higher prices.

 

[Larry Sabo]

What prices are you paying? Locally, a WD 500GB Black is $79, which is acceptable. The problem, for me, is the labour charge to re-install windows ($100), plus drive pick-up fee of $20 brings the total to $199+tax -- too close to a new $350+tax laptop with its better hardware and warranty. If I add cost of a recovery disc (~$42), it becomes $241+tax and I lose. Guess I should be offering smaller, cheaper drives but I like the reliability of WD Blacks and don't need the grief of call-backs because the drive died an early death (a la Seagate Momentus drives). Guess it's time to revisit my charge for installing Windows.

 

[gikstar]

They have gotten the taste of the larger profit per drive... don't really expect it to go back to the price levels that drives were selling for before the floods... 2Gb hard drives on sale for $80!

Now they are reducing the warranty period. Few drives will be found with a 5yr warranty now. But lets face it, how many drives are really lasting out the 5 yr warranty period? I suspect they were fine using that length of warranty expecting the consumer to purchase a new computer before the warranty expired.

 

[Magic Miguel]

Unfortunately this is what happens when companies are allowed to buy up the competition. However the only good thing is that the FTC made WD sell the desktop portion to Toshiba.

I doubt we'll ever see the same prices pre-flooding again.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I think they've come down within 75% of where they were pre-flood....they've mostly come down. I regularly see sub 1TB drives in the 60 dollar range, and 1 to 1.5 TB drives in the 79 dollar range.

 

[ArtemusComputerTechnology]

I have seen some good deals on NewEgg and Amazon with their HDD and SSD prices. Check out the sites.

 

[HFultzjr]

Hello,

As mentioned, good deals can be found.

I think they have dropped quite a bit over the last couple of
months.

 

[tarik]

My prices are only slightly more than they were now. They seem to be crashing here at the moment.

 

[AdvancedTech]

I've gotten some good deals from Newegg lately....check them out..

 

[jft135]

I've gotten some good deals from Newegg lately....check them out..

I won't touch NewEgg with a ten foot pole after they royally screwed us back in January. Their mistake only cost us about $3000 (and loosing face with a few customers) but so far they have missed out on $15000 or so in purchases because they refused to correct it.

 

[AdvancedTech]

I'm sorry to hear that for both of you. I'm a small operation and have not had any problems with them. Good luck on your quest for lower prices on hard drives.

 

[cypress]

I won't touch NewEgg with a ten foot pole after they royally screwed us back in January. Their mistake only cost us about $3000 (and loosing face with a few customers) but so far they have missed out on $15000 or so in purchases because they refused to correct it.

Sorry to hear that. I can't say I've ever had a problem with them and I been dealing with them for years. If anything they have gone above and beyond to help me out and replace things that they really didn't have to.

 

[rudger]

I don't think hard drive prices are going to come down much more than they are now. I think that the main change will be the size of drive you get for your money, which I think is now getting to a pointless stage for the large majority of users. Nearly all of my home user wouldn't need a drive above 500 GB.

And with the cost per GB of ssd drives getting better almost every day and the drive sizes getting towards a state where platter drives are no longer needed as a storage drive. unless the platter drive prices start to drop they will lose out on a large market share

 

[Rosco]

prices have dropped a lot. 6 months ago a was paying 140 or 150 for a 1 TB desktop now i pay 90 to 100. Even bestbuy sells them for 100 or 110.

 

[pceinc]

I won't touch NewEgg with a ten foot pole after they royally screwed us back in January. Their mistake only cost us about $3000 (and loosing face with a few customers) but so far they have missed out on $15000 or so in purchases because they refused to correct it.

Can you share or point me to another thread explaining the issue in January?

 

[bertie40]

Slight diversion in thread ,
it's not a case of whether prices will come down, more a case of whether quality will go up ?

I suspect RMA' s are at an all time high..

 

[jft135]

Sorry to hear that. I can't say I've ever had a problem with them and I been dealing with them for years. If anything they have gone above and beyond to help me out and replace things that they really didn't have to.

I had been dealing with them for years as well, and that is what made the problem I had even more insulting. Essentially, I purchased 10 new desktops for sale in the shop and had 9 out of 10 with major problems right out of the box. I was able to return a few of them, but NewEgg's policy is that computers aren't returnable and have to go to the manufacturer for warranty even if they fail out of the box.

Long story short, none of my customers wanted to wait 3 weeks to get the computers they had just ordered, so I replaced them out of pocket with different models. I never was able to get ASUS to repair them because they just sent them back saying that they couldn't replicate the issue. The problem with number 10 (the one that the customer didn't return) was just that someone forgot to plug in one of the SATA cables at the factory. The rest have bad MB problems that I can't fix.

What really ****** me off is that I had spent between $5000 and $10000 a quarter for the last few quarters and they wouldn't even cut me some slack on my $3000 order. Now someone else gets my money.

Slight diversion in thread ,
it's not a case of whether prices will come down, more a case of whether quality will go up ?

I suspect RMA' s are at an all time high..

My experience would definitely confirm that. On the bright side, data recovery is becoming mighty profitable.

 

[cypress]

I had been dealing with them for years as well, and that is what made the problem I had even more insulting. Essentially, I purchased 10 new desktops for sale in the shop and had 9 out of 10 with major problems right out of the box. I was able to return a few of them, but NewEgg's policy is that computers aren't returnable and have to go to the manufacturer for warranty even if they fail out of the box.

Long story short, none of my customers wanted to wait 3 weeks to get the computers they had just ordered, so I replaced them out of pocket with different models. I never was able to get ASUS to repair them because they just sent them back saying that they couldn't replicate the issue. The problem with number 10 (the one that the customer didn't return) was just that someone forgot to plug in one of the SATA cables at the factory. The rest have bad MB problems that I can't fix.

What really ****** me off is that I had spent between $5000 and $10000 a quarter for the last few quarters and they wouldn't even cut me some slack on my $3000 order. Now someone else gets my money.



My experience would definitely confirm that. On the bright side, data recovery is becoming mighty profitable.

Wow that is absoultely horrible! I am very sorry to hear that. I'd be LIVID about that as well.

 

[pc-quebec]

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.