pizen: I need to upgrade the drive capacity in my file server but unless I totally run out of space I'll wait until prices come back down. I just hope I don't have any drive failures which would require an immediate replacement.

^THIS. My question is that as a warranty repair technician, how will replacement drives be affected? And what to tell my users when their drives fail... um...yeah, sorry, (insert name of any of our vendors here) etc don't have any drives to send us right now.

Yes, a swapped drive from spare is fine and all, but most vendors know which drives came with which of their PC assets they shipped us. And our company has a policy that we can't send back broken drives due to the sensitve and confidential data that may be on them.

Mike_LowELL: That settles whether I'm getting a Mac for Christmas. I wanted a gaming machine, anyway.

...wha?

Lower quality as well, even if you're going all out for higher-end stuff.

I wish they'd stop repeating this crap. It's called a self fulfilling prophecy. The channels have 3-6 months of HDD supplies and the skyrocketing prices are nothing more than price gouging, and articles like this are just softening us up so we find it "Acceptable".

I guess I had good timing when I bought a 2TB external HDD for $60 couple months ago.. haven't seen any deals nearly as good as that since then.

Smagma: good timing when I bought a 2TB external HDD for $60 couple months ago.. haven't seen any deals nearly as good as that since then.

wanted to buy two 2tb, planned on 2x WD green but had my eye on the 89.99 samsungs

waited a week too long, ended up getting 1x WD green for $130 ($20 above the week before) and 1x Samsung for $120. I couldn't have bought two WD green if I wanted to (without multiple orders) due to the already in place NewEgg order restrictions.

A week later they were both well over $200 a pop.

There was no two ways about it, I was running out of space and the drives were a must. Almost screwed myself, I'd be pissed if I'd waited another week.

Dude, I buy old used ones on Amazon and they don't cost shiat.

That's just how I roll.

Dude, I'm not buying a new pc (or much of anything else besides bare necessities) anytime soon.

weird last month they were raging about how TB drives would be the supercheap deals for black friday this year. i guess none really showed up though.

We were supposed to have 5TB drives by now, dammit.

/I'd really love a 10TB drive.
//Stupid slow technology advancements.

Mike_LowELL: That settles whether I'm getting a Mac for Christmas. I wanted a gaming machine, anyway.

LOL.

Oh noes! I might have to stick with my five year old computer for another six to twelve months! The horror!

Actually, it was pretty state of the art back then, so it's only a little below average now. Wait. THE HORROR! ;)

farkin Taiwan, get your shiat in order, I'm trying to get a new hard drive here!

neilbradley: I wish they'd stop repeating this crap. It's called a self fulfilling prophecy. The channels have 3-6 months of HDD supplies and the skyrocketing prices are nothing more than price gouging, and articles like this are just softening us up so we find it "Acceptable".

Nope. I can tell you for a fact that the major factories here in Thailand (that once produced about 25% of the world's hard drives) are, in fact, completely flooded. Even if the supply channels contained 3-6 months of back-stock (which I would argue they do not), there is no way the manufacturing capacity here will be restored in that time. And there is also no way that kind of capacity could be relocated in such a short time-frame, not gonna happen.

So yeah, prices are going to go up. This flood is going to be here a while, and the aftermath even longer - and still nobody knows when its going to stop. I see it for myself every day.

You're just going to have to pay a little more if you want to archive all that porn. If you know a way to drain billions of cubic meters of water into the Gulf of Thailand - then repair, retool, re-hire, and restore production to pre-flood capacity, then please go submit your resume to WD, Seagate, Sony, Toyota, Honda, and many others, I'm sure they will give you the appropriate response.

MurphyMurphy: Smagma: good timing when I bought a 2TB external HDD for $60 couple months ago.. haven't seen any deals nearly as good as that since then.

wanted to buy two 2tb, planned on 2x WD green but had my eye on the 89.99 samsungs

waited a week too long, ended up getting 1x WD green for $130 ($20 above the week before) and 1x Samsung for $120. I couldn't have bought two WD green if I wanted to (without multiple orders) due to the already in place NewEgg order restrictions.

A week later they were both well over $200 a pop.

There was no two ways about it, I was running out of space and the drives were a must. Almost screwed myself, I'd be pissed if I'd waited another week.

Office max just had a 3TB external for $95. Decent prices are out there if your patient.

Of course the question I have is: how much porn do you people need?!? I've been using my 1TB drive for almost two years now and I haven't scratched the capacity.

Buying a new PC with a hard drive instead of putting an SSD drive in a current one is a waste of money. I haven't seen any upgrade in decades that makes so much difference.

farkeruk: Buying a new PC with a hard drive instead of putting an SSD drive in a current one is a waste of money.

But what if the money is from an ATM machine? And what if you had to use a PIN number to retrieve the money? Would that still be a waste of money for an SSD drive?

For additional storage, just spend $50-$60 for a year or so of unlimited online backup and wait things out.

I Am The Egg Matt Drudge Smears Upon His Body: farkeruk: Buying a new PC with a hard drive instead of putting an SSD drive in a current one is a waste of money.

But what if the money is from an ATM machine? And what if you had to use a PIN number to retrieve the money? Would that still be a waste of money for an SSD drive?

It depends on how good the GUI interface is.

The Smails Kid: I Am The Egg Matt Drudge Smears Upon His Body: farkeruk: Buying a new PC with a hard drive instead of putting an SSD drive in a current one is a waste of money.

But what if the money is from an ATM machine? And what if you had to use a PIN number to retrieve the money? Would that still be a waste of money for an SSD drive?

It depends on how good the GUI interface is.

On a IBM machine?

Bwhahahahaha

Where in the fark did you get the idea that I need to buy another computer. It will be many years before I do and I'll probably get a used one for free like I always do.

Two words for you. No sale.

Fark Me To Tears: (*sigh*) Go ahead. Raise the prices. Watch your sales drop in response.

The US economy is burning out its consumers. We're being squeezed to the point where just the announcement that prices are going to be increased on something will send its sales plummeting. If you want to screw up your sales figures for the Christmas season, just go ahead and raise your prices.

I just bought a new desktop PC earlier this year to replace a 6-year old one that can't run (hardly) any new software, and my 2007 Macbook will serve my mobile computing needs for years to come. I really don't anticipate buying ANY new computer in the next 4-5 years.

/ helps that I really don't play any PC games anymore.
// well, except for WoW....recently resubscribed....

I would just expect the majority of Farkers can build their computers from scratch and can swap out needed components at will.

skinink: I would just expect the majority of Farkers can build their computers from scratch and can swap out needed components at will.

I have so many spare parts in my basement.

I must have half a dozen replacement hard drives down there

kab: Dude, I'm not buying a new pc (or much of anything else besides bare necessities) anytime soon.



Thanks now I have that song in my head.

Bob16: skinink: I would just expect the majority of Farkers can build their computers from scratch and can swap out needed components at will.

I have so many spare parts in my basement.

I must have half a dozen replacement hard drives down there

I used to be in the same situation, but I recycled most of the drives when I realized they were so small that they were practically useless on a modern PC.

Trolljegeren: We were supposed to have 5TB drives by now, dammit.

They are right around the corner. Seagate's new 3TB dives have 1TB platters, slap 5-6 of those if a unit and there we are (the previous 3 TB drives had 5-6 500-600 GB patters).

Fark Me To Tears: (*sigh*) Go ahead. Raise the prices. Watch your sales drop in response.

Fail at being aware of the situation. The hard drive companies whose facilities are flooded don't have drives to sell, high price and less sales is what they want/need. People further down the chain like Dell and Apple are victims of this circumstance.

I've put a 320 GB hard drive into my computer first thing when I bought it, pretty much exactly five years ago. Still got 185 GB free.

I have my computers on a bigass UPS with brownout protection.

Why? Because the power company has fried two of my hard drives before, not to mention a power supply and a motherboard. Brownouts = computer death.

It's amazing how much longer your computer components last when you don't plug them directly into the grid.

pnjunction: Trolljegeren: We were supposed to have 5TB drives by now, dammit.

They are right around the corner. Seagate's new 3TB dives have 1TB platters, slap 5-6 of those if a unit and there we are (the previous 3 TB drives had 5-6 500-600 GB patters).

Glad to hear they are on the way.

/MythTV is getting its own dedicated 5TB drive . . . eventually.

Currently on newegg.ca

WD caviar black 1tb $230+10.74 shipping. 1 year ago $80+free shipping.

120gb 500mb/s read SSD are ~$200+free shipping
240gb SSD are ~$400. I'm hoping $350 black Friday for crucial M4 to replace my 2x60gb that cost $340 together since 2009 (first was $200, second was $140).

Not worth getting HDD right now unless you really need storage space (for me if my 3x1tb die). Otherwise get an SSD for OS+apps/games, and keep your HDD for storage (movies/music/pics/backup etc). This is the perfect time for SSD to pounce on HDD and convert people to SSD. HDD will still have purpose once shortage is over and prices drop, but they'll only be good for storage (say 2tb for $100), not OS drives. Unlikely that HDD will fully saturate SATAIII for several years if ever (they'd need huge cache or SSD/HDD hybrid like momentus XT which is still shiat compared to SSD for speed).

Definitely not worth Spending $120 on 500gb 2.5" HDD for laptop when you can spend $200 for 120gb and get anywhere from 3-5 times the speed (also less heat, noise, uses less electricity). Just put your 2.5" HDD into a $10 external enclosure to store your stuff, and put into pocket of your laptop case.

Laptop manufacturers need to be putting 60/120gb SSD into laptops now, get rid of slowest bottleneck in laptops by far.

andrewabc: Laptop manufacturers need to be putting 60/120gb SSD into laptops now, get rid of slowest bottleneck in laptops by far.

But a lot of people use their laptop as their only computer, and need more space than that. (And yes, externals, but at that point, you've just blown $200 on an SSD AND still had to pay for your external drive, plus you're dealing with all the external drive shenanigans, which kinda defeats the point of the portable laptop). And most people don't GET what an SSD means for them in terms of usability and performance.

A 60 GB drive with a 20-30 GB OS (which is about what Windows uses if you have hibernation enabled) is NOT large enough period. 120 GB is better, but still not spectacular, and most people will want more space than that. The really critical sizes are going to be 250 GB and 500 GB. 250 GB is really the absolute smallest I'd want for a drive that has to stand on it's own, and right now, those are $4-500, which turns a $1000 laptop into a $1300 laptop (because it's about $100 for the original 2.5" drive. $400 - $100 = $300).

Now of course there are exceptions to that rule (My father is using a grand total of 8 GB of space on his computer including OS), but there aren't enough of them to make this sort of thing profitable.

/love the 240 GB SSD + random 2 TB drives in my desktop.
//Have ~20 TB in this room alone, of which ~3/4 are functional.
///I really wish the Momentus XT's were more reliable, because they're great for combining size and performance. I'm on my 3rd in 9 months, and it's starting to go.

LesserEvil: andrewabc: Currently on newegg.ca

WD caviar black 1tb $230+10.74 shipping. 1 year ago $80+free shipping.

120gb 500mb/s read SSD are ~$200+free shipping
240gb SSD are ~$400. I'm hoping $350 black Friday for crucial M4 to replace my 2x60gb that cost $340 together since 2009 (first was $200, second was $140).

Not worth getting HDD right now unless you really need storage space (for me if my 3x1tb die). Otherwise get an SSD for OS+apps/games, and keep your HDD for storage (movies/music/pics/backup etc). This is the perfect time for SSD to pounce on HDD and convert people to SSD. HDD will still have purpose once shortage is over and prices drop, but they'll only be good for storage (say 2tb for $100), not OS drives. Unlikely that HDD will fully saturate SATAIII for several years if ever (they'd need huge cache or SSD/HDD hybrid like momentus XT which is still shiat compared to SSD for speed).

Definitely not worth Spending $120 on 500gb 2.5" HDD for laptop when you can spend $200 for 120gb and get anywhere from 3-5 times the speed (also less heat, noise, uses less electricity). Just put your 2.5" HDD into a $10 external enclosure to store your stuff, and put into pocket of your laptop case.

Laptop manufacturers need to be putting 60/120gb SSD into laptops now, get rid of slowest bottleneck in laptops by far.

SSDs in RAID-0 configuration FTW... heh heh.. built my current machine, erm... 2 years ago? with 2x60GB OCZ SSDs and enjoyed having a 7.9 "User Experience" rating on my drive score.

The downside is shuffling everything off to other drives, but my next system will probably be 4x240+GB SSDs in a RAID-0 configuration - a bit nicer because they'll be SATA3 and probably triple the R/W speeds of my current drives.

Not really missing Hard Drives right now... I have quite a few floating around here, mostly with misc. media on them, and I could trim that down quite a bit. At the moment, I've been consolidating all of my movies and TV shows to a single media server, which frees up a few of my bare drives (which I usually deploy in USB 3.0 docks). I'm about three quarters full on the media server, with about 12~13TB of storage available on that.


Same here. I have a couple of 1TB drives floating around here somewhere basically gathering dust. My current 256 GB SSD tablet does just fine.

/has access to something like 50TB of HDD storage space.

//right now, no need for it.

///although I won't go so far as to make a "56K is all anyone is ever going to need" comment.

andrewabc: Currently on newegg.ca

Which is funny because looking at the prices here in NZ, they are the same as ever or lower due to sales. How can it be that the floods are affecting the price in one country and not another? That's the invisible hand giving you a UFIA.

Isn't the problem with SSD that it only has a certain upper limit of writes before it fails or just won't do any more?

if_i_really_have_to: andrewabc: Currently on newegg.ca

Which is funny because looking at the prices here in NZ, they are the same as ever or lower due to sales. How can it be that the floods are affecting the price in one country and not another? That's the invisible hand giving you a UFIA.

Isn't the problem with SSD that it only has a certain upper limit of writes before it fails or just won't do any more?

The shortage actually only affects certain capacities and configurations.

Yeah, certain suppliers jumped on the gouging band wagon in less than 72 hours. CDW is one of the worst right now.

This has completely screwed my Christmas sales.

Mike_LowELL: That settles whether I'm getting a Mac for Christmas. I wanted a gaming machine, anyway.

Mac prices will probably be affected, although their margins are much higher, so they can probably take the hit without having to raise prices much.

meyerkev: But a lot of people use their laptop as their only computer, and need more space than that.

This. Mine shipped with a 50gb ssd drive / 500gb platter, and upgrading that 50gb one is the very first thing I'm going to do. I use mine as a daw / do - it - all rig, and there simply isn't enough room at times. (even with an external drive hooked up)

if_i_really_have_to: Isn't the problem with SSD that it only has a certain upper limit of writes before it fails or just won't do any more?

That's theoretical, and most likely won't happen with normal usage. You could probably write 5gb per day on a 60gb drive for 5 years and not reach the write limit.

With 120/240gb SSD you're looking at like 20gb per day for 5 years. By the time write fail happens the SSD will be obsolete anyway (it'd be like comparing a 80gb 3.5" HDD to a 2tb 3.5" HDD).

One of my 60gb SSD from 2009 has 4000gb written to it (8750 hours powered on). So I'm about 4gb per day with it since bought.

You don't have to worry about write fail, unless you are doing some type of work that involves non stop writing all day every day.

if_i_really_have_to: Which is funny because looking at the prices here in NZ, they are the same as ever or lower due to sales. How can it be that the floods are affecting the price in one country and not another? That's the invisible hand giving you a UFIA.

I remember reading an article online about how the flood hasn't hit Australia (and thus probably NZ) yet because they had shipments sent there just before the flood. Maybe take advantage of the low prices, or at least keep an eye out for as soon as it looks like they start increasing.
HDD prices have tripled in less than a month in Canada.