Hard disk supply could take two years to recover
The floods in Thailand have caused hard disk prices to soar as component production grinds to a halt.
The site's sources claim that Japan-based HDD motor supplier Nidec had over 2,000 pieces of equipment damaged by the floods, most of which will be beyond repair. The site also claims that companies have turned to grey markets in attempts to find suppliers for parts.
Prices of hard disks have sky-rocketed in recent weeks due to lack of supply, with old stocks quickly running dry. Models with 2TB capacities have doubled in price to around £140, and the once bargain-tastic 1TB Samsung F3 now retails from anywhere between £80 and £100 - just a few weeks ago the same hard disk could be had for around £30.
One industry that could come out of the crisis better-off is that of SSDs. Largely unaffected by the Thai floods, the sit's sources suggest that SSD-equipped PCs and laptops, in particular ultrabooks, could see a boost in sales with the supply of hard disks proving to be non-existent. With most component suppliers potentially out of action for months, if not years, it's possible hard disk prices won't drop to pre-flood levels for some time.
Are you planning a storage upgrade? Have you had to spend over the odds to purchase replacement hardware? Let us know in the forum.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyAs I am also thinking of a new build and update my HTPC with a NAS drive before I go to uni.
However Amazon chose to sell 2TB Seagate drives for £78 last week so there are still some drives at more reasonably prices.
Most if not all of them have well and truly jumped on this bandwagon.
I believe the word for it is "Profiteering".
Should we put up with this? Should we name and shame these retailers?
EG: Before the floods this retailer had 50plus stock of the segate momentus xt 500gb at below £100
Now the same drive. And the same stock £269.99....They must have been to the same schoool of pricing as the petrol companies.
I say everyone stop buying mechanical hard drives and buy ssd's only. Then watch the prices move down.
People Power is a great voice.So lets not just be sheep!
Your missing the point. We as consumers are not wholesalers nor are we "nerds". We are the people that keep these companies in business. We can make a difference. But only if you have a can do attitude.
Dell will use many times that in a day. As the end consumer we have basically no buying power over a product that is predominantly sold to OEMs. Simple economics.
EDIT: oh, and a retailer won't care if you just buy SSDs either, they're still making a profit. Bar some very early price jumps, the increased HD prices will be from the channel, not retailers deciding upon a 200% jump - their profit margins may well remain static.
Well I guess I've woken someone up? My point!
Stop buying them. And see what happens.You never know....
Hopefully the replacement manufacturing process will be on the second floor?
Uhm, nothing will happen. That is his point. 180 million hard drives made per quarter, probably 130 million of those sold to big computer manufacturers, maybe 30-40 million sold to local small computer manufacturers, maybe 10 million directly to customers worldwide. Now if you get 110 million of hard drives produced instead of 180 million, you got a shortage. What will happen if those 10 million refuse to buy the drives ? More drives for the remaining channels, but the price will not change.
PS: My numbers are of course wrong, i just pulled them from my hat (except the 110m and 180m numbers, those are from manufacturers and expected production drop), but you can bet that end user market percentage is in single digits compared to total production.
Not trying to defend said retailer here but you will find that a lot of the large web stores list the real time stock levels from there suppliers and not what they have in stock themselves.
As such as soon as there suplier puts the price up they need to raise theres as they havn't actually paid for those 50 plus drives yet.
Have Externals not gone up as far or as fast, just because there's still loads of them around?
http://forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=655&pictureid=23571
Looks like I will be using an old 400GB IDE drive. No way am I going to pay such extortionate prices!
It would prompt a much needed clearout too - there's around 200GB of movies on it that I just don't watch all that often. If I get an itch to watch a particular movie, it's only a trip up to the loft to fish out the DVD.
I think I can hold out until prices start to come down.
The F3 really does seem to have it's problems, not a harddrive for long life!
Cost per GB bluray discs are a little more than half the price of hard drives. Would be good for making backups
I'm assuming the fact that stores are stocked up for Christmas explains why externals haven't gone up as much (yet) if they already cost a little more for the enclosure. Anyone that needs a new drive, that might be the way round it - until those stocks also dwindle.
Let that be a lesson to you. Never ever do what I advise :(
just better to wait until they get it straitened out.. spinpoint is around 150
Edit: Just had a peak at completed listings on ebay, and lots of drives 1TB and up are still going for as little as $50 + ship on this side of the pond.
I imagine in 2 years there will be 5 or even 10tb drives by then anyway.
In all my time on using PC's though I've not had 1 hdd die on me so don't know if it's because I keep them well cooled or because I use diskeepper to keep them always tidy & optimal or both or just plain luck or all the above :D.
And after saying that I bet they all go & die on me :).
S*D
I'll probably get a 2nd SSD (a 128MB or so size will more then suffice for my personal Steam/games needs) and keep the current small 64MB SSD I have just for windows instead of jamming a game or two on there as well.
The 1.5TB mechanical storage I currently use will simply have to be enough until prices come back to more realistic levels, simple as that. No way am I spending that much $$$ on a hard drive, I would rather store data online instead.
Hey Im not having a pop at anyone.And I agree that if anyone deserves the extra profit.It is the people of Thailand and not our Uk based companies. I am just saying you dont know how much you can or will change things unless you try. If we all have a "we can beat them attitude" and not a "lets give up before we start" attitude. (Glass half empty).Then how will you or anyone ever know. Facts figures and stats mean nothing. People have the power not Dell not HP and certainly not any uk based pc retailer. You and I have the last say. Stop being sheep guys and girls and stand up for youself.
128GB Crucal M4 for $218, 150GB WD VelociRaptor for $199, or for comparison 73GB Seagate Cheetah for $269. If you want speed SSDs are the place to go, the VelociRaptor can't keep on speed and now its price isn't significantly lower while drives like the Cheetah are actually less cost effective.
On the down side, I won't be getting that portable HDD I was after now.
Hey, just pay the extra for the HDDs and see it as a charity donation towards helping a disaster-stricken economy get back on its feet.
Paying the extra for HDDs will likely to go into the greedy hands of the distribution channels. Better to donate direct to Red Cross instead.
You really are living in cloud cuckoo land if you think consumers buying drives can have any effect on the price. Even if every single person who will buy one in the next six months doesn't... do you have any idea how difference that will make? It's such a tiny percentage compared to those that end up in server farms and off the shelf pcs and workstations.
The people who can really make the difference are the likes of Apple, HP & Dell. They go to the suppliers and say "If you put the prices up we'll go to your competitors as soon as they can meet our demands". In reality they are probably on fixed price supply contracts so no matter what they buy cheap for the next X months / years. Apple does that all the time, it's like the same way they book up all the available air-freight capacity for Christmas months in advance. They don't leave anything to chance - the risks are too great.
And what difference does this make?
It'll drive up the price of a raw OEM drive to anyone other than those with enough clout to strike a "Sell cheap or else" deal with the mfrs.
So expect to see drive prices stay high, some PCs will increase in price but Apple will be able to weather the storm (sorry) much longer than others.
In my NAS boxes I have 4 2TB hard drives. To achieve the same amount of storage with SSDs, I'd need to spend something like £2000.
I totally expect retailers to put their prices up - if they don't know how many of an item they'll be able to get in the future because supply has effectively stopped, then of course they'll put their prices up - it's simple supply and demand. For exactly the same reason, prices fluctuate massively week on week due to the wholesale price. I bet you weren't complaining when the memory and hard drive prices were dropping every week...
If the worldwide supply of hard drives drops by 30% (which it has been estimated to) then it won't be Dell and HP without hard drives - it'll be the standalone ones we buy.
Supply drops, price goes up.
On the grander scale though its really hard for me to justify complaining though. Here I am talking about my storage issues and bitching about price increases, when all the people in Thailand are the ones really dealing with the problem. My heart goes out to every soul who has been effected by any of the recent natural disasters. Every time I feel like I'm getting the short end of the stick these days I try to consider how trivial my bullshit is in comparison. At least my house is intact and my family is safe.
correct
high price = rationing.
everyone here is saying how they won't buy HDD's because the price is to high. that means only the people that really need them will buy hard disks everyone else will make do. This is the only way of maintaining stock during the dry spell ( bad choice of words but U know what I mean )
kinda proving Hopelessness's point.
I still p*****d off. I was going to buy 4 2tb drives and noticed the price had gone from around £50 to around £60 and thought they were raising in the run up to the holidays so thought I'd wait it out. ... look s like I've got a loooong wait on my hands.
also won't manufacturer's have long term contracts with oems they will have to honour first?
digitimes update - HDD supply gap to narrow as Nidec resumes some production
reccommended reading - IF i've read it correctly the philipines and china plants are going to increase output ( ie my guess more over time/ night shifts ) and some of the thia plants are ready to come back on line however production of motors will still be down to 100 million from 140 million. article doesn't discuss manufacturing of other hard drive components. check it our for yourself.
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20111107PD219.html
Hopefully DVD/optical media will stay cheap. I might just have to plug in my DVD drive again it's been at least 7 months since I've used it
You really are living in cloud cuckoo land if you think consumers buying drives can have any effect on the price.
And what difference does this make?
This is what I mean (Glass half empty). So if ocuk/scan/novatech/ebuyer/aria/yoyo and many others all stopped selling hd's from now and did not sell any for the next 3 months.You think they will just look at us and say "oh well you mean nothing to use".
No my friend they will re-act. Do you think dell are paying anywhere near the prices we are being charged...No.
Really from your comment and the comments of a few others I really do think your happy to just take price rises on the chin and say nothing. Fuel/gas/electric/food/Beer/Cigs and now our past time. PC hardware!
Stop being the sheep and stand upto be counted.
Considering hard drive production of 180m per quarter the drop of 40m motors is pretty significant. On other side, it pretty much matches the drop in production of WDC hard drives (30m) plus Seagate hard drives (5-10m) in this quarter.
This would imply that there is any excess manufacturing capacity - but there is only very limited excess manufacturing capacity. And as i wrote few times before - "expanding capacity" is not a overnight thing, not even few weeks thing, more like months/years thing.
Is it the difference between a porn collection, and a porn collection! Lol
I only run 1 120gb SSD does me fine.
This is not true.
Seagate have always stated that they have the ability to increase capacity to 60 million units in Q4 2011 and 70 million units in Q1 2012 provided that there are no restraints on external component supplies. I think we will know more about the extent of the supply chains issues by December.
And Seagate also stated that they have to decrease the production due exactly those constraints to 40m from 50m. :(.
And even if they would not have those constraints, those 10-20m hard drives will sure save us when we have 70 million hard drives missing.
PS: Original Q4 Seagate production estimate was 58m. 60m is so damn far from that number, right ?
Not quite true faugusztin , Seagate said that with the current constraints on external components supply then shipment would be between 41 to 45 million units.
These figures are no longer relevant.
Seagate and Western Digital gave worldwide estimates for demand for HDDs at 170m & 180m units respectively. But these estimates were based on old prices and with the new prices we are seeing for HDDs then the demand for them would decrease as most people would wait for the prices to come down or switch to better technologies such as SSDs. Also not forgetting thst the western world's economy is broadly flat and in turn reduce demand for HDDs.
Only the desparate or the foolish, perhaps both, would be happy to pay the current hard drives prices.
And again. You mix end user market (you & me) with majority of market. Apple, Dell, HP, Lenovo and others have fixed prices until the end of the year, if not for longer. And they take large majority of those hard drives, probably even more than there will be made in Q4. And those guys are not paying 200 for 2TB drive, but they still pay the 60 price - because they have an agreement which says they have to sell it at that price. And i am sorry if you cannot understand that, but right now the hard drive manufacturers are mainly interested in guys who take millions of hard drives per month, not in the guys who take maybe 1-4 hard drives per year. Because me and you will say "oh well" and don't buy a hard drive, but if WDC/Seagate doesn't deliver then they will have to pay for not delivering according to the contract.
So sorry if you think that if you think hard drive manufacturers should try to handle situation better for me & you (very little part of the market) rather than fulfilling their agreements with the guys who are the majority of the market.
The majority of the market still has the old prices, maybe with a little increase. The reason why do you see high prices in retail market is because the manufacturers cannot supply the retail market as all their hard drives go to their main market - computer manufacturers.
Just think about it - computer sales in Q3/20112 were 91.8m according to Gartner. And that is of course the wordwide brand name guys, those numbers are not counting small local computer manufacturers. That means just the big guys eat up 50-54% of the originally predicted Q4 production of hard drives. And 83% of current prediction of Q4 hard drive production (110 millions of hard drives). So you, me and small computer manufacturers have the remaining 17% share (20 million hard drives) for our disposal. And you can bet twice who will buy up those 20 million hard drives plus the current stock for their needs. Not you and not me, but the smaller computer manufactures.
And any sane person now understands why the prices are at the current price level. But i don't expect you to understand that. For you there is nothing more than greedy shops & distributors. Because they are so damn greedy that instead of 80 million hard drives they will get only the quarter of supply (worldwide). And even from that supply, you can bet twice which market will get the majority. I give you a hint - it is not Asian, not Australian, not South American, not African and not European.
Sorry if I don't treat your words as facts considering in previous posts you've given incorrect figures and change the goalpost whenever the argument doesn't suits you.
There are plenty of nutters in the business world and for this reason alone I like to make my own judgements as a consumer rather than relying on a dishonest person on a forum. :D
Fortunately, I'm heartened by people on this forum who recognises that big businesses can be idiots at times.
No I think they'd say...
"We're selling less drives than in 2010, but that's the price and market for you, and as we only make a few quid on each one it's not hurting us too much and we're still selling drives to small companies who have no choice as their regular supplier is out of stock and their email server went down on Sunday - Lolz!. And look at the budget SSDs we're selling in their place, and tablets is where the money is at these days anyway."
Believing an internet boycott of a few UK suppliers and one small product range can make a difference to the price the manufacturers charge said suppliers is fine bit of youthful idealism. You keep that glass half full thinking cap on - but be prepared to have it knocked off and stamped on by the cold hard boot of international trade.
Then again.... maybe it would get Scan worried...
Scan: Dear Mr Samsung, we're not selling any spin-points, the interweb says the price is too high. Can we have them at 2010 prices please?
Mr Samsung: No.
Scan: Sorry?
Mr Samsung: I said no
Scan: Please...
Mr Samsung: No
Scan: We'll order a double month supply.. say 1000 units?
Mr Samsung: (Mutters) We sell that many to Google every two seconds...
Scan: And we'll stop stocking Samsung if you don't lower the price...
Mr Samsung: That's okay.
Scan: What?
Mr Samsung: That's your choice, we'd rather you didn't but we're okay with your choice, the prices will come back down again when we get production back up again.
Scan: You don't care?
Mr Samsung: We like you as a customer, you're small and cute and have those funny English accents like on Benny Hill and Faulty Towers. But your sales equate to 0.00000000000001% of our global income and 0.00000000000000000000001% of our global profit, plus my brother and his son drowned in the floods and his widow is working eighteen hours days and as her village is still underwater she's living in a tent...
Scan (Feeling very small): Oh feck.
None of the Samsung's hard drives manufacturing plants have been flooded.
Thank you "another_level"
If the people of the libya had the attitude of Guinevere then where would they be.
Well they would be bowing down to their master.
Like I said sheep follow....
Wake up an be counted.. What are you a robot?"I will obey"
I love this mentality. You can't afford it so everyone else who can is a follower. You aren't the CEO of a big business so these highly successful people must surely be idiots. I'm sure all of your failings in life are the direct result of "the man" keeping you down.
You have missed the point by a mile.Did you read my first post?
Its about not getting ripped off. As I said a pc retailer I know had over 50 of the segate xt500 in stock and now have the same 50 instock. But with a price of £279.99. Same stock no flooding in their w-house!
If you accept everything in this world as it is you will never change things.We will just keeop gettign mugged off and taken for fools.
By the way Iam the CEO! I just have a different outlook than most.
So when Mr. Apple, Mr. Acer, Mr. ASUS, Mr. Dell, Mr. HP, Mr. Toshiba, Mr. Sony or Mr. Toshiba comes to Mr. Samsung and ask for extra hard drives because Mr. Western Digital for some reason cannot deliver enough hard drives, Mr. Samsung will say "No! I need to sell to retail market. You and your pity million size orders are not important to me! Go away!". Then Mr. Scan comes and asks "Hey Mr. Samsung, i need to have our original 500 drive weekly order instead of the last delivery of 150 drives. Can you do that?". And Mr. Samsung says "Sure, no problem, just kicked out Mr. Big Computer Manufacturer out of my office, i don't care for their million size order, i want to sell it to you, small guys".
This is how your logic works Another_level ?
Using Sloth's logic, he must think eating McDonalds Big Mac must be healthy because the company is big and successful.
Thanks for your kind words Sitech and I share your outlook too.
Actually Mr Samsung would say he sold his hard drives business to Seagate. Better ask Seagate for drives.
Jeez, you don't seem to know your industry very well, faugusztin.
I'm afraid I don't share your outlook. If you look at the bankers they have a herd mentality which caused havoc to the western economy.
I've quoted your last point, Sloth, as I think people are not willing to pay inflated prices for hard drives and as Sitech has said Scan stocks of hard drives have remained static recently.
BTW Sloth changing Mr Samsung to Mr Seagate in your last post has made you look foolish.
But i guess you would rather have the "delivery time 4 to 8 months*" and original prices, so when someones drive fail, they won't have even the expensive option to replace it.
*optimistic estimate.
Well I have SSD so happy to wait eternity until the hard drives prices drop. In the meantime I'm happy to give my personal opinion where I see fit.
I think in 2012, Seagate will dominate the HDD market for at least two quarters possibly more while Western Digital struggles to regain its market share. There should be enough HDDs supplies to meet demand in q1 2012 and so prices should return to normal.
Also, have Western Digital expanded their operations to Malaysia as part of their $1.2b investment to last five years? Manufacturing and R&D facilities were meant to be completed by 3rd quarter this year.
History have shown when individuals stand up for their beliefs then change can happen.
WD ceasing production for 6 months and Seagate having issues.
Looks like my RAID array will have to wait for a good long while :(
Like others have said, we, the great unwashed public, are at the bottom of the food chain when it comes to HDD supply. So any dregs that come through the channel will cost more. If your 1TB Spinpoint or SDD boot drive fails, are you just going to refuse to buy a hard drive and be without your computer/data until the price drops to what you think you should pay?
No, I didn't think so.
Andy
You can't really take that article as fact because some analyst gave speculative opinions to a journalist about the floods in Thailand affecting hard drives productions. Good food for thoughts but not facts I'm afraid.
And in answer to your final question I've always stated that the desparates or complete idiots with more money than sense, perhaps both, would be happy to pay the current inflated prices for hard drives.
Andy
Now guys, why don't you sing baa, baa black Sheep?
I don't really care one way or the other.. if I need a drive, what are your gonna do.. have to buy one
maybe fix it with spare parts at best.. wonder if this will start a market for used drives
porn box drives maybe
An HD mediapc for television recording can quickly make a 2TB drive look small.
( read my user name and trust that I am speaking from experience )
Hopefully I should be set for a while. If not to optical media I go (never thought I'd say that)
I have ignored raid for Samsung F3 1TB drives as it's just so much less complex...
It's not because we want to fleece customers for money, it's because we need to keep enough hard drives to supply customers. Customers that include business clients, as well as our own pre-built machines. If that means some customers don't buy due to the price, then that is regrettable, as it is for the customers who actually NEED a hard drive (as opposed to just want), but can you imagine what would happen if we didn't?
Say we sold hard drives at old levels for a month. Other retailers prices are on the rise, so customers flood to us for the cheaper drives. We get a nice chunk of money from that sure, but then we have none/very little hard drive stock, with no expected re-supply in any kind of volume. This causes our entire business to grind to a halt. We can't support corporate and enterprise customers, we can't build PC's to sell to consumers, and we won't have any drives to sell to customers that really need it. More importantly we loose the trust of people who rely on us to supply them.
So keep going on about "lol sheep" if you want. It's not for the sake of profit. There are serious ramifications for retailers if they don't maintain stocks of hard drives.
/me looks at 6xWD20EARS+4xWD20EARX, checks local prices (190e for both types), puts the number in calculator, result is 1900e, /me faints :D
Edit: Fixed the 2nd hard drive type.
When I have the time I'll post what I paid and what they are worth today.
I paid 300 for 4xWD20EARX, 300 for 2xWD20EARS (year and half ago) and i'm pretty sure the remainig 4 were around 100 per piece. That is ~1000 in total. So the value pretty much doubled :D.
It makes no sense at all to keep all your eggs in one basket, it harms your business and the businesses of the people you supply with your finished product.
Thailand has cheap labour and I'm sure that none of the H&S legislation is anywhere near as stringent as ours is!
Andy
So, where in Europe exactly do you plan this. I guess you want it in EU, then your options are rather limited. Even in the least paid countries, you will have to give the workers ~300e as a minimal monthly salary. Which is i guess much much more than the guys at Thailand get. Unless of course you wish to pay a lot more for hard drives. Oh wait, that is now :). Prices you see now are probably the prices you would see for European-made hard drive due workforce costs.
I'm about to fill my 5tb's and was planning on getting a nas with another 5-6tb. That's definately not happening now, not for a couple years it sounds.
Guess I should start some cleaning... stick some old stuff on dvd-r (I have a whole stack of 50 just sitting around)
Shame.
I start to feel lucky for getting four WD20EARX drives few weeks before the price increase for 75€ each :).
I'm lucky enough to know someone who's laptop can burn BRs, worst case scenario this is my plan.