Will Hard Drive Prices Drop?

After the sharp price rise in hard drives late last year, it seems that things are finially turning around. It would seem that prices will once again start dropping after the end of the Chinese New Year or will they?

World output of hard drives fell as much as 30 percent in the final three months of 2011 and manufacturers that needed them scrambled to snap up existing inventories. Although hard drive supplies did not dry up completely, prices ended up rising by as much as 100 percent.

Australian Distributors may keep the prices up and drop prices slowly to make some much needed profits. After years of the dropping prices on all computer hard ware, they may be able to make their shareholders happier this year by dragging their feet and not dropping the hard drive prices as quickly as they might.

Coupled with this is that from the 1st of Jan this year, warranties on hard drives have dropped dramatically in answer to larger then normal failure rates amongst drives. Segate has dropped to one year and Western Digital to two years. With this in mind, CSCS will be trying to only use Western Digital drives for the longer warranties and customers who still want Seagate hard drives will have to have them ordered in which can add a day to time of supply.

Below is a picture of the WD factory in Thailand during the floods of late last year.