Icy News: Prices of HDDs Already Tripling for SATA 3.5-Inch Units

"Doubling for SATA 2.5-inch disk drives

Camelegg.com tracks historical price of many products including HDDs.

To evaluate the consequences of the Thailand's floods on the HDD prices, we have selected three examples of popular capacity internal units.

1/ 1TB, 3.5-inch, 7,200rpm, 3Gb SATA,
Samsung Spinpoint F3:
Price has more than tripled.

Lowest price: $49.99 on August 25, 2011

Current price: $159.99 on November 10, 2011

2/ 1TB, 2.5-inch, 5,200rpm, 3Gb SATA,
WD Scorpio Blue:
Price has more than doubled.

Lowest price: $99.99 on July 30, 2011

Current price: $229.99 on November 03, 2011

3/ 300GB, 3.5-inch, 15,000rpm, 6Gb SAS,
Seagate Cheetah 15K.7:
Up only 66%, probably because enterprise drives are not manufactured in Thailand. 

Lowest price: $209.99 on August 26, 2011

Current price: $349.99 on October 27, 2011

Per comparison, here is the evolution of the price of a popular internal SSD:
120GB, 2.5-inch, MLC, 3Gb SATA,
Intel 320:
Highest price was $239.99 in June 2011, now 20% cheaper at $190.99. The 300GB Intel 320 SSD costs now $539,99 or only 54% more than the 300GB 15,000rpm Cheetah HDD. "

-via storagenewsletter.com

This really shows how much the flood in Thailand has affected the hard drive market. All of the HDD graphs have a huge spike in price since the flood. What is interesting is that the enterprise HDD market has only increased a minimal amount. This is due to the location of the manufacturing of the enterprise drives. The SSD market seems to be unaffected by the flood and is continuing its steady decline in price. It will be interesting to see where the SSDs market will be in terms of sales by the end of the HDD crisis. Will it have a dramatic increase? Let us know how you feel about these results.