Thoughts on a “HDD shortage” from an industry insider
1–10 of 134 posts
Re: Thoughts on a “HDD shortage” from an industry insider
#2Sample size 1: every 3 months I need to buy a large hard drive (14TB+). I buy external USB ones since they are the cheapest.
Since it was due, in the last couple of weeks I was scanning prices in Romania daily, in case I get lucky with a discount. In the last week, prices surged 60-100%, and stock disappeared for 4 TB+.
I panicked and after a lot of scanning I managed to buy a slightly smaller one than I needed with just a 20% surcharge.
Prices on Amazon UK are also out of control.
So now we are out of chips, CPUs, GPUs and hard drives. What a time to be alive :)
PS: I would love to hear Backblaze take on this shortage.
Re: Thoughts on a “HDD shortage” from an industry insider
#3Sample size 1: every 3 months I need to buy a large hard drive (14TB+). I buy external USB ones since they are the cheapest. Since it was due, in the last couple of weeks I was scanning prices in Romania daily, in case I get lucky with a discount. In the last week, prices surged 60-100%, and stock disappeared for 4 TB+. I panicked and after a lot of scanning I managed to buy a slightly smaller one than I needed with…
Shortages are good.
It's the perfect time to set up manufacturing capability, so nationalists can be happy.
It's a good time to push for hire wages, workers should do it.
If there is some alternative industrial process, now's the time to try it.
This is no 70s oil moment, because there's no indication fewer widgets are being produced than prepandemic.
Re: Thoughts on a “HDD shortage” from an industry insider
#4You could probably take this and replace HDD with SSD or RAM and it would be just as correct.
Re: Thoughts on a “HDD shortage” from an industry insider
#5Sample size 1: every 3 months I need to buy a large hard drive (14TB+). I buy external USB ones since they are the cheapest. Since it was due, in the last couple of weeks I was scanning prices in Romania daily, in case I get lucky with a discount. In the last week, prices surged 60-100%, and stock disappeared for 4 TB+. I panicked and after a lot of scanning I managed to buy a slightly smaller one than I needed with…
My sample size of 1 shows little to no move, although I wasn't looking at drives as large as you.
In my case I was having my eyes on 5 TB 2.5" drives. I don't need them, I'd just maybe like them, so I haven't pulled the trigger, but I have them set aside on Amazon France. The price has stayed within a few euros of 110 € for the last 2-3 months.
Re: Thoughts on a “HDD shortage” from an industry insider
#6Sample size 1: every 3 months I need to buy a large hard drive (14TB+). I buy external USB ones since they are the cheapest. Since it was due, in the last couple of weeks I was scanning prices in Romania daily, in case I get lucky with a discount. In the last week, prices surged 60-100%, and stock disappeared for 4 TB+. I panicked and after a lot of scanning I managed to buy a slightly smaller one than I needed with…
Shortages are good. It's the perfect time to set up manufacturing capability, so nationalists can be happy. It's a good time to push for hire wages, workers should do it. If there is some alternative industrial process, now's the time to try it. This is no 70s oil moment, because there's no indication fewer widgets are being produced than prepandemic.
>It's the perfect time to set up manufacturing capability, so nationalists can be happy.
>If there is some alternative industrial process, now's the time to try it.
wouldn't this take years?
>It's a good time to push for hire wages, workers should do it.
This is just speculation on my part, but I suspect hard drive manufacturing is much more labor intensive than capital intensive. Therefore I doubt this will translate into higher wages.
Re: Thoughts on a “HDD shortage” from an industry insider
#7TIL all it takes to be a reputable "industry insider" is an anonymous reddit account.
Re: Thoughts on a “HDD shortage” from an industry insider
#8Sample size 1: every 3 months I need to buy a large hard drive (14TB+). I buy external USB ones since they are the cheapest. Since it was due, in the last couple of weeks I was scanning prices in Romania daily, in case I get lucky with a discount. In the last week, prices surged 60-100%, and stock disappeared for 4 TB+. I panicked and after a lot of scanning I managed to buy a slightly smaller one than I needed with…
I'm not sure how pricing works where you live, but to get optimal pricing I usually have to wait a few months, or maybe even a year (black Friday). Given that all time lows for hard drive prices haven't budged much in the past few years, why buy every few months rather than stocking up when prices are low?
Anyways for my data point: there was some external hard drives on sale for 5-10% higher than "optimal" prices.
>and stock disappeared for 4 TB+.
That's strange because those drives have terrible TB/$ compared to 10+TB drives.
Re: Thoughts on a “HDD shortage” from an industry insider
#9You could probably take this and replace HDD with SSD or RAM and it would be just as correct.
I don't believe these terms are interchangeable, especially when this writeup is in response to Chia.
Is it possible SSD or RAM have a similar bottleneck like read/write heads? Yes, but I don't know the answer.
Re: Thoughts on a “HDD shortage” from an industry insider
#10Sample size 1: every 3 months I need to buy a large hard drive (14TB+). I buy external USB ones since they are the cheapest. Since it was due, in the last couple of weeks I was scanning prices in Romania daily, in case I get lucky with a discount. In the last week, prices surged 60-100%, and stock disappeared for 4 TB+. I panicked and after a lot of scanning I managed to buy a slightly smaller one than I needed with…
My advice is to ignore anonymous new accounts making inflammatory and fear mongering statements.