Visualization of Hard Drive Price Inflation Due to Thailand’s Flood Induced Shortage
Thailand is under water and hard drive manufacturers are closed down. Prices for everyone across the board, from suppliers to end users shooting skyward.
EVERY device that uses a hard drive (HDD) will ultimately go up in price, if it has not already. DVR manufacturers have contacted us telling of surcharges for hard drives, in addition to the “market price”. Computer manufacturers have told us there may be delays in getting computers out the door, and system builders have limited their quotes to only 7 days before they must be requoted due to the volatility of the market.
Below are a few typical drives and how much they cost currently, with a historical look back… This information comes courtesy of www.camelcamelcamel.com.
Western Digital Caviar Black 2 TB Bulk/OEM
Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB Bulk/OEM
Western Digital Caviar Blue 500 GB Bulk/OEM
You got the information and charts from them but you can’t even link to their site? Poor manners
Joe,
You are absolutely correct in calling me on that! I listed the camelcamelcamel.com site and incorrectly thought WordPress would convert the text to the link. Maybe I have done a few like that =(
Thanks,
John
I fixed the original post btw =)
Why list the lowest price and the highest? That doesn’t really show a price increase… There is always a large price difference for the same products on amazon depending on the vendor..
Sean,
The graph represents what has happened as a result of the flooding and subsequent hard drive shortage. You can see that weeks prior to the announcement of the potential shortage, that drive prices were much lower.
We have personally witnessed our most common drive, the 1 TB drive, go from 60 dollars to 150 in one month’s time.
John
Four months into this and the same WD Caviar Black 1TB SATA drive that we purchased for less than 70 dollars is 130 dollars, depending on the vendor.
Some vendors are now starting to show stock when they didn’t have drives before, however, the price has now gone back up a small amount in the last few weeks for unknown reasons.
SSDs have come down in price.
Another month and we have seen some stabilization in the market, but not a sharp decrease in pricing on hard drives.