Thailand Flooding Threatens Hard Drive Supply
- Thread starter Newtun
- Start date
Stereodude
Not really a
Yikes...
time
Storage? I am Storage!
Stereodude
Not really a
I should start selling used drives at these prices.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Sometime in the next month I should be retiring around 60 1TB drives. Given the number of power on hours they have, I was thinking I'd use them for non-critical functions but at this point I bet they'd fetch a ridiculous price on Ebay.
CougTek
Hairy Aussie
Some good news for us. I didn't think the production would resume that quickly. Hopefully, it also means that the situation is getting better for Bangkok's residents.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Dammit, my quest for getting the purchase price out of all those drives that haven't been turned off in three years might be thwarted.
Holy crap. The price of the 3TB Hibachi is crazy. :bibber:
ddrueding
Fixture
That is for the Ultrastar, which has always been a premium product, but wow.
CougTek
Hairy Aussie
I'd like to see pictures of how the flooded zones are today. While the HDD prices hike is a small issue for us, the flood was a disaster for them. I'd like to know how the people there fare.
Bozo
Storage? I am Storage!
The people in Thailand seem to take the flooding in stride.
That was also my impression based on the images. I imagine they don't tell nearly the whole story.
Some production has restarted, but it will be a while before capacity returns to normal. I guess prices will be high for quite some time yet. 
CougTek
Hairy Aussie
The hard drives' prices have been declining more significantly during the past two weeks. They are still far above what they were before the flooding, but it's getting there. The higher volume drives are the most inflated. 500GB drives are still 50$ above their August price. The 1TB and 2TB models are ~40$ above their former price and I don't know or care about the 3TB (none of my customers buy those).
I guess it means it's going better for the people in Thailand.
I guess it means it's going better for the people in Thailand.
Bozo
Storage? I am Storage!
In July I was paying ~ $75.00 for a WD RE4 250GB drive. The last price I got for these was in December and it was $159.00. Now, they are listed as 'not available'. :crap:
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
I've basically been telling people who need drives replaced that now is the time to move to an SSD.
ddrueding
Fixture
A friend just paid $175 for a 3TB external.
Bozo
Storage? I am Storage!
CougTek
Hairy Aussie
It's becoming worse and worse.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
I'm finding that right now it's cheaper for me to buy 2.5" 7200rpm drives rather than 3.5" models. So that's what I've been doing. I don't really like doing that because not many desktops really fit a 2.5" drive well, but works and keeps costs lower.
Damn, taxes are high in Quebec! is it over 13%?
Damn, that must be the government price. :jokecolor:
CougTek
Hairy Aussie
That store isn't in Québec, it's in Brutus Columbia, I think. Our taxes, freaking phucking damn taxes, are at 14.975% combined.
ddrueding
Fixture
And lower power consumption/heat and lower noise. Any time I'm not doing an SSD I'm doing 2.5"; it isn't a bad play.
ddrueding
Fixture
Desktop machines. All my servers are SSDs, with the exception of storage servers which have large arrays of 3TB 7200RPM drives backed with large amounts of RAM.
ddrueding
Fixture
In my experience HDD speed only impacts boot time and AV scans if you have enough RAM in Win7 for normal users. Anything above my bare-bones boxes get an SSD anyway.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Desktops. I'm not really all that keen on the idea, because I wind up having to half-ass the mounting. I actually think 2.5" drives are more reliable than 3.5" drives anyway; they're designed to be moved and I've certainly replaced fewer of them, but it bothers me quite a lot when my best mounting option involves velcro tape.
I was able to get a dozen 2.5" 250GB 7200rpm drives for $53 each (vs. around $75 each for 3.5") earlier in the week. That's still high, but at least it's somewhat offset by low RAM prices at the moment.
Bozo
Storage? I am Storage!
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
If I bought a bracket like that for every drive I use, that would entirely negate the savings from buying the 2.5" drives in the first place.
My biggest needs right now are for low-cost builds (~$350 desktops) and to replace ailing 5-year-old drives in my classroom machines. In either case, low-cost is a bigger demand than anything else.
As an off-topic aside, I don't see any reason to upgrade my five year old classroom computers. They're completely fine all the way around, and I expect that they'll continue to be fine if my company makes it to the point where we start dealing with Windows 8. Two cores and 2GB RAM are just fine for day-to-day work, even when the classes use virtual machines.
My biggest needs right now are for low-cost builds (~$350 desktops) and to replace ailing 5-year-old drives in my classroom machines. In either case, low-cost is a bigger demand than anything else.
As an off-topic aside, I don't see any reason to upgrade my five year old classroom computers. They're completely fine all the way around, and I expect that they'll continue to be fine if my company makes it to the point where we start dealing with Windows 8. Two cores and 2GB RAM are just fine for day-to-day work, even when the classes use virtual machines.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
I've managed to find a few cheapies. Even $5 seems excessive for a flat piece of aluminum with a few strategically placed holes in it.
This is just one of those things like companies that want $3 for a molex to SATA converter. It's not a big deal for a one off but if you need to buy lots of them it's a real kick in the teeth.
This is just one of those things like companies that want $3 for a molex to SATA converter. It's not a big deal for a one off but if you need to buy lots of them it's a real kick in the teeth.
Bozo
Storage? I am Storage!
Those are a good deal. The only drawback I can see is the drive is not off to the side. Therefore it can't be used in hot swap devices.
CougTek
Hairy Aussie
Mooner, click on the link you've just posted, then please post back.