Buy your hard drive...NOW!

[Gerry]

I've been reading some tech blogs that discuss the impact of the historic floods in Thailand (just Google Hard Drive Shortage).

Most hard drive manufacturing facilities in Thailand are STILL under 5 feet of water. It seems Seagate is the only one who came through unscathed because it was not located in the flood zone (Seagate stock has more than doubled).

The bottom line is a

• world wide shortage of hard drives - ALL hard drives including solid state drives.
• increase prices in computers - ALL computers
• productivity not normal until mid 2012

If you had thought about buying a hard drive, setting up a server, buying an external drive for backup...buy it NOW! Many computer manufacturers are already reporting inability to meet demands on some of their enterprise servers.

This week and Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the ideal times to purchase a new computer, PC, tablet, laptop, hard drive (internal/external) etc.

I also predict an huge increase in price on the newer SDXC cards. These SDXC cards are now available in 64gb and 128gb and Class 10 specs (which is pretty incredible capacity for a smart card). I had been debating on getting a couple for some photography and video shoots but now will probably jump in rather than wait for prices to come down.

[south]

Sorry Gerry, it's way too late. Prices have already gone up by 200-300%. And that's if you can find what you want. Enterprise drives are nearly impossible to find.

[dcristo]

Seagate survived, aye? Funny that, its the best HDD manufacturer.

[Gerry]

Sorry Gerry, it's way too late. Prices have already gone up by 200-300%. And that's if you can find what you want. Enterprise drives are nearly impossible to find.

Yup, you are correct. I just noticed a 64gb sdxc card I had in my Amazon shopping cart for $72.00 is now $95.45 (link). That's about a 24% increase in a couple of days.

Checked Tiger Direct and New Egg and see no deals whatsoever.

I am sitting on four 2tb hard drives and I think I will hang on to them. Two are for a D-Link NAS. The other two are external drive I bought on a sale at HP. I also have several smaller (320 - 500) external drives.

All the manufacturers were competing and offering deep discounts. But now I am seeing Transcend, SanDisk, and Lexar jacking prices up significantly.

---------- Post added at 12:27 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:23 PM ----------

Seagate survived, aye? Funny that, its the best HDD manufacturer.

Absolutely. All the external and internal drive I have (except for the HP) are direct from Seagate. Even the HP cases may have Seagate drives.

I was posting Seagate Sales on the forum (one) for quite some time.

---------- Post added at 12:30 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:27 PM ----------

On a side note, I think many electronics in general are going to suffer.

I've been waiting since August on the release of a new Sony DSLR. Now they are hoping to ship late in December (maybe).

[Gerry]

I ended up finding the same SDXC card elsewhere for the $74. I bought it.

Meanwhile, looking on several sites, those that were discounting these 64gb cards are back up to the $129+ retail. The 128gb cards are very high $$$.

---------- Post added at 09:07 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:04 AM ----------

Yup, you are correct. I just noticed a 64gb sdxc card I had in my Amazon shopping cart for $72.00 is now $95.45 (link). That's about a 24% increase in a couple of days.

Crazy stuff...looks like the stock market. Today that card is $86.66.

[draggar]

You can't really go by Amazon shopping prices. One person may have it for $69.99 - another for $74.99, another for $89.99 and Amazon will sometimes show the lowest price - so when those are out they'll show the next lowest price. Then, someone else will get them in at a lower prince and that'll be reflected.

Most of the stuff you buy though Amazon now isn't sold though Amazon - they just act like an intermediary. Yes, they do stock items in a warehouse for people but I don't think "Amazon" has much inventory anymore.

[Gerry]

Most of the stuff you buy though Amazon now isn't sold though Amazon - they just act like an intermediary. Yes, they do stock items in a warehouse for people but I don't think "Amazon" has much inventory anymore.

Yeah, they will list who it is actually coming from. They are, however, a pretty good measure of prices overall.

As I mentioned, I did check other places like JRMusic, TigerDirect, NewEgg, and so on.

Prices on the high capacity cards are up 25-50% (that's on sale prices) and hard drives are not being discounted like they once were. I've also noticed higher prices on the SDHC which were being replaced by the SDXC.