yep, that flood in Thailand messed everything up. before that happened 2tb was around 70$. I hoping the end of this year they will go back down. But its kinda like gas and shipping prices, once they go up they like to keep them up there for profit
Although I don't doubt they are keeping them up there for profit, a lot of it has to do with supplies. Most companies had a "backstock" of harddrives so they would not run out, when the flood hit they suddenly had to use them, thus throwing the supply and demand seriously out of wack. Now that the big 3(2 now I suppose) are back up and running, probably not at full capacity yet, companies are selling harddrives AND trying to build their stock back up. So its shifted from being a supply shortage on the manufacturers part to a sharp demand increase on resellers part. Us, the lowly consumers, just want fair prices. Which doesn't help things because so many of us that have storage to spare, atleast for the moment, are sitting on our hands until prices come down, lowering demand thus keeping prices high.
WD has reported they do not expect being at full capacity until March at the very earliest, so if all things went well, they are a month into full output. If the other companies are the same, we should hopefully see prices coming down more in the next couple months.
Prices have already fallen pretty far, on average we're about $30 over the lowest price point on most drives. Now we're just waiting on the equilibrium to balance back out, the people waiting won't need them anymore, companies will have backstock of drives, and manufacturers will be at full capacity.
