When will hard drive prices come down significantly?

Anyone any thoughts, or even knowledge, when HDD prices will fall to near where they were before the floods in Thailand last November? I heard anything from mid-2012 to 2014 suggested.

They've started dropping a bit already. I would expect by the end of this year they may be close to what they were.

End of April, I heard. As to 'significantly', not sure. They will not drop as much as they have risen imo.

I saw a 1TB for £60 & a 3TB for £120 yesterday on Aria, which is not bad as I paid around £80 for a 2TB disk pre-flood..

Not bad. The problem I, and perhaps many others, face is which brand/model to go for, e.g. in 1TB and 1.5TB capacities.

WD Caviar Black seem to get a reasonable write up. But what about the others?

[Edit: spelling]

Edited by cheshire_man (Wed 18-Apr-12 18:56:21)

I can't comment on WD.

I bought 4x2TB disks last year. 2 Seagate and 2 Samsung. 5400rpm variety.

Performance wise absolutely no difference. 120MB/sec on both (sequential, naturally), however, both samsungs have become very noisy and vibrate a bit, the 2 seagates have remained quiet.

Edited by Pipexer (Wed 18-Apr-12 19:16:48)

I will admit, I like Seagate drives. The 2TB unit I mentioned (was actually 4 of them for my NAS) are running smooth & quiet (RAID 5).

Currently my PC has 6 Seagate drives (JBOD) of varying sizes (2x2TB, 2x1TB, 1x640GB, 1x500GB).

i be shocked if they come down that much now, with only two big names in the game, no competition now.

thankfully the drives I use have been taken over by a company I can just about cope with , Hitachi took over by Weston digital. i would not be impressed if Hitachi went to seagate

I have one 7-year old external Maxtor (bought as an external drive), and two 4-year old Maxtor external drives (bought as internal drives and mounted in external enclosures), all 250GB. And a 1TB internal Seagate Barracuda 14 months old. To be fair the external drives are not switched on all the time the PC is on which will undoubtedly help their lives.

So far so good. Would like to change the external drives for 1TB versions, but unsure what to go for.

Edit:

Performance is of no significant importance, dependability is the primary factor.

A point of, possible, note is that the drive bought as an external drive powers down after a while of non-use. The other two external drives do not. There are good and bad points about both approaches.

Not sure if there are external drive housings that power down the drives after a bit of non-use.

Edited by cheshire_man (Fri 20-Apr-12 09:21:26)

I got a 250GB hitachi, which been working fine, love the drive, ok a bit slow now compared to others which is why it is only a over spill drive.

A 120GB corsair Force 3 SSD drive

A seagate/maxtor 120GB drive which is what my Linux is on

A 500GB Seagate XT Hybrid drive.

I also got a couple of old Maxtors now being used as external drives and a hitachi 1TB external unit


the Seagate XT is a pain in the neck or it was, now used as a storage drive as it is stable like that, the maxtor/Seagate is ok, but then I think it is still mostly Maxtor.

Never going to buy another seagate, i should have known not to buy the XT.

I am going to get a 1TB at some point when the prices comes down, it will have to be WD or Hitachi, eveything else belongs to seagate.