Drive Wars (Hard drive prices)

Azrael · Post by **Azrael** » 2006-08-17 06:33pm

I didn't think this belonged in N&P, so move if necessary.

daily tech wrote:According to reports, we may witness a price war in the hard drive business industry. At least this is what Seagate Technology CEO Bill Watkins said on Wednesday. Seagate is currently the world's largest hard drive manufacturer and competes with such companies as Western Digital, Hitachi, Samsung and Toshiba. According to Watkins "If pricing doesn't drop for us, it'll be an upside." Seagate is expecting stiff price cutting from its competitors through into 2007.

Seagate believes that despite the aggressive price cutting from competitors, the only gains they are receiving are minor. Watkins indicated that "[our competitors] are getting volume units and share, but it's lousy share." Watkins said that Seagate gains more share because of product quality, reliability and support rather than heavy price cutting. Watkins also noted that Seagate's competitors are cutting prices so much, it erodes into the profitability of its competitors.

Seagate acquired its largest competitor, Maxtor, earlier this year and announced that it would cut the company in half. Seagate mentioned that despite the job cuts, it would keep many of Maxtor's enterprise level product lines and services. Seagate also made several announcements of its own so far this year, including a 300GB, 15,000 RPM, perpendicular Cheetah and 1TB NAS products under the Maxtor brand name.

At the moment, Seagate is one of the few companies that are not under investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC is currently investigating more than 80 companies for stock-option manipulations and back-dating practices that give huge financial gains to executive level employees. Watkins indicated that he was confident about his company's business practices, saying "we have a very rigorous stock-option grant program. It's such a rigorous process. We feel confident."

Price wars are awesome.

White Haven · Post by **White Haven** » 2006-08-17 07:02pm

Meh. Pardon me if I don't get giddy, but hard drive are already cheap as hell under the 300GB+ mark. All a price war will do at this point is have some manufacturers cutting corners to shave a few percentage points, and then I'll have half the customers who buy said drives in my store making my life hell inside of a year. Video cards...there I could dig a price war. RAM, with the recent skyrocketting costs? Hell yeah. You know...a part of the industry where things are actually in some way expensive. Not said part of the industry where I can get a 250GB 16MB cache SATA300 drive for like...a hundred and twenty bucks, if not less.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-08-17 07:31pm

Hell, Newegg already has a 250GB drive from WD for $70... that's better than 3.5GB/$1! IMO if you aren't getting at least 3GB/$1 it's not worth it, unless you absolutely have to have as much storage as possible in a single drive.

I'd be more interested in seeing a 1TB drive... not that I'd go out and buy one right away, but it'd still be cool that there was one out there.

White Haven · Post by **White Haven** » 2006-08-17 08:13pm

Meh. Newegg and all web-ordering can fuck off. Brick and mortar saves so much trouble if you can dig up a reputable shop

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-08-17 08:26pm

I don't have any trouble with web-ordering. Brick-and-mortar would be more trouble for me because I'd have to burn a couple hours of my day going to the shop, finding the part, hoping they have what I want, and coming back.

Dominus Atheos · Post by **Dominus Atheos** » 2006-08-17 11:04pm

400GB HDD for $110 with free shipping.

Price Wars are fucking awesome.

Netko · Post by **Netko** » 2006-08-19 07:15am

Uraniun235 wrote:I don't have any trouble with web-ordering. Brick-and-mortar would be more trouble for me because I'd have to burn a couple hours of my day going to the shop, finding the part, hoping they have what I want, and coming back.

Most decent brick and mortar have an online presence which, among other things, lists availability. Most of those also have web ordering available with free shipping (at least for the relativly expensive things like HDs and up) which allows you to get the best of both worlds, delivery to your doorstep plus local support you can go pester if anything doesn't work (which tends to get much better results then e-mail exchanges).

Or you can decide online what you want and go up to the counter and tell the guy. Or decide in the shop. Or ...

In any event you aren't going to be burning "a couple hours" unless you live in Bumfuck, Nowhere and have to drive for hours to get to civilisation.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-08-19 02:01pm

So, basically, it boils down to "pay an extra 10% of the lowest price available so that you can have same or next day warranty service". Honestly, if a web retailer offered a little checkbox where I could pay that same amount, and then be able to take the item to a local shop which would honor the web retailer's warranty, I wouldn't check it. I'd accept that in the possibility of needing warranty replacement, I'd be waiting a couple weeks for the defective unit to be shipped there, and for a replacement to arrive.

And yes, I know what a pain in the ass that can be; my motherboard burned up, I ordered a new one, had to send the new one right back, and I was basically stuck with a 200MHz laptop for two or three weeks. Having been through that, I still order parts online.

Furthermore, if, say, my hard drive dies after six months, I don't send it back to whoever sold it to me; I send it back to the manufacturer.

mmar wrote:In any event you aren't going to be burning "a couple hours" unless you live in Bumfuck, Nowhere and have to drive for hours to get to civilisation.

Unless, of course, the traffic within the city is snarled such that getting from one end of a metropolitan area to within it takes a significant amount of time. Furthermore, you seem to be neglecting that there's also the return trip to consider.

I don't care if it's two hours or if it's one hour (which itself is closer to the truth for me); it's still usually less convenient than ordering off the web, because my daily business does not take me anywhere near "reputable" computer shops with any significant selection, and it's significantly more expensive.

Netko · Post by **Netko** » 2006-08-19 06:38pm

Whatever works for you. Personaly I prefer the local shops, but then again I have the biggest computer retailer in the country less then a 5 min drive away and a speciality computer shop that caters to enthusiaists at 15 min, while trying to get a replacement directly from the manufacturer is a pain in the ass (they always hand you over to their local distributor who never seems to know what they are doing, taking literaly weeks to months to even sort out who should be giving you what in the several instances I've had the pleasure). In the end, for me, its more of a hassle to be home when the delivery guy comes over then to go to the store. So, yeah, local conditions apply when making that judgement.

Einhander Sn0m4n · Post by **Einhander Sn0m4n** » 2006-08-19 07:07pm

Dominus Atheos wrote:400GB HDD for $110 with free shipping.

Price Wars are fucking awesome.

Umm, it's $200 now.

Enigma · Post by **Enigma** » 2006-08-19 07:54pm

Einhander Sn0m4n wrote:
Dominus Atheos wrote:400GB HDD for $110 with free shipping.

Price Wars are fucking awesome.
Umm, it's $200 now.

Same website is offering a 300GB for $80. how long that special lasts I do not know.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2006-08-19 08:01pm

Remember folks: You get what you pay for. The cheapest hard drives usually suck ass.

Western Digital? They'll never get a cent from me, not after the brand-new drive that came in my computer died after eight months. It had crashed twice during that period, before finally refusing to spin.

Dominus Atheos · Post by **Dominus Atheos** » 2006-08-19 08:44pm

DPDarkPrimus wrote:Remember folks: You get what you pay for. The cheapest hard drives usually suck ass.

Western Digital? They'll never get a cent from me, not after the brand-new drive that came in my computer died after eight months. It had crashed twice during that period, before finally refusing to spin.

Uh, okay...

Both hard drives mentioned are Seagate.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2006-08-19 08:56pm

Dominus Atheos wrote:
DPDarkPrimus wrote:Remember folks: You get what you pay for. The cheapest hard drives usually suck ass.

Western Digital? They'll never get a cent from me, not after the brand-new drive that came in my computer died after eight months. It had crashed twice during that period, before finally refusing to spin.
Uh, okay...

Both hard drives mentioned are Seagate.

Wow, even the one made by Western Digital that Uraniun mentioned?!

Hell, Newegg already has a 250GB drive from WD for $70... that's better than 3.5GB/$1!

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-08-19 09:49pm

DPDarkPrimus wrote:Western Digital? They'll never get a cent from me, not after the brand-new drive that came in my computer died after eight months. It had crashed twice during that period, before finally refusing to spin.

Hard drives fail. This is a fact. Seagate drives fail. Maxtor drives fail. Hitachi drives fail. Western Digital drives fail. (If I remember right, hard drives tend to fail most often either very young or very old.) Hard drives, in general, should not be trusted with the only copy of important data.

That said, I would still only buy hard drives with five-year warranties, which just about all Seagate drives have. However, I stand by my "no less than 3GB/$1" stance, as there are Seagate drives which fall into that price range.

Azrael · Post by **Azrael** » 2006-08-20 01:12am

I remember my first shitbox computer wayyyy back when AMD was still nippin' at intel's heels with their K6-2 (which my comp had ....:grumble:)
It had a 6 GB (Ha!) drive in it that still works to this day.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-08-20 01:48am

Is it just me, or have computers become less reliable over the years? I had a 386 that worked for like 12 years without a hitch, and I'm currently working in a classroom that has two perfectly functional Apple IIe's that have been there since 1981. And yet, I've never owned a hard drive that's lasted more than 2 years since 1998.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-08-20 02:17am

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:Is it just me, or have computers become less reliable over the years? I had a 386 that worked for like 12 years without a hitch, and I'm currently working in a classroom that has two perfectly functional Apple IIe's that have been there since 1981. And yet, I've never owned a hard drive that's lasted more than 2 years since 1998.

I'd wager that increased amounts of electricity and heat are to blame. That 386 probably only had one single fan in the power supply, whereas today running most CPUs without any active cooling won't get you very far. High amounts of heat are also generally blamed for premature CPU and hard drive death.

Hard drives are sort of a crap shoot, the last hard drive I had that outright died was something like four years ago, and it was the only one out of around twelve hard drives I've personally owned. Some people will say that they've never had a hard drive failure ever and some people have multiple failures over the span of a year.

Netko · Post by **Netko** » 2006-08-20 03:35am

The second category would be me. Rarely a year passes without me having a harddrive faliure (I blame the carpet in my computer room for being a dust magnet - the inside of my computer always gets a lot of dust). Thankfully, those long warranties mean that getting an actual new drive is not so common.

In that not-so-nice expirience, I've come to hate Maxtor and IBM/Hitachi since their drives seem to go the fastest (Maxtor) or hardest (IBM/H.). The rest seem to be basicly a crapshoot, but Seagates and WD's seem to hold out the longest. Again, this is my personal expirience that guides my drive purchases, not some scientific anylasis.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2006-08-20 02:26pm

Uraniun235 wrote:Hard drives fail. This is a fact. Seagate drives fail. Maxtor drives fail. Hitachi drives fail. Western Digital drives fail. (If I remember right, hard drives tend to fail most often either very young or very old.) Hard drives, in general, should not be trusted with the only copy of important data.

Most computer components follow a memory-less failure function, such that their chance of failure (after the first few operations) is as great after a month as it will be in one year, given that the component has not failed in the meantime. Having said that, a 5-year warranty is a reasonable precaution, since it represents an unfalsifiable signal to consumers that their drives, in general, meet certain quality restrictions.

Dominus Atheos · Post by **Dominus Atheos** » 2006-08-20 06:07pm

Can hard drives gennerally be relied upon to not fail within their warranty?

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2006-08-20 06:21pm

Dominus Atheos wrote:Can hard drives gennerally be relied upon to not fail within their warranty?

Not necessarily, but a longer warranty guarantees that the manufacturer has confidence in their drive because of their manufacturing process, and so the population of hard drives with 5 year warranties will have a lower failure rate than the population of hard drives with 3 year warranties.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-08-20 06:32pm

Well, a warranty replacement basically amounts to giving away a perfectly good product for free, so a company isn't going to warranty it for 5 years if more than a small percentage of their drives fail before that.