Hard drive supplies back to pre-flood levels, but prices aren’t

ghshephard 14 years ago |

Not only are prices up, the Major Hard drive manufactures (Seagate, Western Digital) have cut back a lot of their warrantees to only one year. Evidence suggests that the spinning disk manufacturing companies are reluctant to invest in aggressively building supply/plants because of the transition to SSDs - the market demands for Hard Drives will be met - but nobody is expecting explosive growth will continue to grow.

SSDs are finally within about a factor of 3x where they need to be before their usage in Laptops hockey sticks, and a factor of 4x before they make major inroads into desktops. In about 18-24 months, we'll start to see a natural reduction in Hard Drive shipments as people just start buying fewer of them, and a _huge_ leap in SSDs and other flash based storage.

velodrome 14 years ago | |

Just a note, consumer-grade drives had their warranty cut.

HDD manufacturers have consolidated...What exists now is a duopoly. There was no reason for Seagate to cut warranties if their facilities were not affected by the natural disaster. They are never going to lift the warranty back to 3 years like before.

philwelch 14 years ago | |

They're already moving into the datacenter as well.

beedogs 14 years ago | | |

They've been there for a few years already at the high end. EMC sold my former employer 2TB of SSD SAN back in '09.

MichaelApproved 14 years ago |

And at the same time there's a story on HN[1] about SSDs being half their price. Enjoy the record profits while they last, the world is moving to SSDs and this will only speed up that migration.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4182944

inuhj 14 years ago | |

I doubt warranty is a major consideration when choosing between HDD and SSD drives.

SSDs on the other hand have great warranties. Crucial offers 3 years while Plextor and Samsung offer 5 years.

MichaelApproved 14 years ago | | |

I didn't bring up warranty. How does that work with my comment?

tikhonj 14 years ago | | |

He doubtlessly meant to respond to ghshephard's comment [1]. Hopefully that clears up some confusion :).

[1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4183869

MichaelApproved 14 years ago | | |

Gotcha. I was reading from the comment section of my profile and didn't see all the comments.

jaachan 14 years ago |

If this is what the market is willing to pay for them, than the prices pre-flood were too low. Simple economics?

verra 14 years ago |

They are now making more profit while shipping less, loved it!