I bought a Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB about a year ago for less than £50. Now wherever I look, I can't get the exact same HDD for less than £80.

Aren't things supposed to get cheaper and cheaper? I know my GPU and RAM sticks are cheaper now than when I bought them, why the jump in price for the HDD?

I was hoping to get one for my son's computer, but no way am I paying DOUBLE for the same HDD knowing I got one for less!!!

flooding in taiwan, there was an article about this somewhere...

Edit:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/seagate-wd-hard-disk-drive-thailand-flood,13802.html

You gotta be kidding me. Just my luck as well...

So, do you think I'd be good buying one now or waiting? The article mentions "a few quarters" so that's easily one year of inflated HDD prices, no?

I dunno, I may have to move all my stuff from my drives, and consolidate, so when I build My New System, I can format my 1TB drive, or run off a flash.

But im sure they arent gonna go down anytime soon.

One of those things that a US company could open a factory here, give some more americans jobs, and make them here, and they'll prolly be cheaper.

It's from recent flooding in Thailand.

Western Digital's factory is about 6 feet under water, as are many of the component suppliers. WD does about 50M drives per quarter and their products are mostly geared to consumers. 60% of their production comes out of their Thailand factory.


Most all of the component suppliers are in Asia, that is why you don't have the disc drive manufacturing in the United States.


WC

Lol, at the rates the HDD prices are going, I might just get my hands on a 60GB SSD for gaming purposes, and transfer my 1TB HDD to my son's PC. Better value-for-money I would think.

Bummer, seems like a new HDD is a year away then. Should've bought a new HDD a month ago. Grrr....

Wow!

Hadn't checked Hard Drive prices in a few weeks or so because I have enough HDs. Have five in my current system -- all 1.5 and 2.0TB 64MB SATA6.0. I have a few older 1TB on shelf to use in secondary or "gift" computers.

Glad I overstocked on HD. I thought I might be over doing it. Now I don't feel so silly that I was hitting the relatively recent sales like an HD addict. This is one of the few times prices dramatically increased on an IT item.

Of course, I waste so much money in other aspects of my life that saving money on HDs is insignificant -- just fun to have gotten one thing right -- even if by accident

Fry's still has very good prices on hard drives.

Looks like price jumped a third on the low price. High price stores are asking 50% more:

2TB WD as an example:

Our distributors here in Canada have clamped down on drives.

I just jacked up prices on our drives, and may increase them again because we're not getting more.

I typically buy drives in the hundreds and now I'm capped to 5 per order if I'm lucky to get any at all.