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Disk Prices on Amazon

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Re: Disk Prices on Amazon

#141
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a big thread about Fry’s a few weeks ago. Apparently the story behind the empty shelves is they’re having contract issues with suppliers.

That's the line they're giving out, anyway. I'm curious to see if it's just a ruse to keep some employees around and keep customers coming in paying full price as they clear the shelves before something else like complete shutdown.

It's weird, the shelves are as empty as you could hope for in a liquidation scenario and there's just crap left. Continuing to pay rent to try get rid of a few hard to sell pieces of old tech or low value items like phone cases is definitely past the point of being sensible.

So I think someone in management genuinely believes suppliers will come around to supplying them goods with payment on sale, despite all evidence to the contrary

Re: Disk Prices on Amazon

#142

Wow, SSD prices bounced back after December. I think most people were (and still are) expecting $100/TB to be the new baseline. https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B078DPCY3T?context=searc...

From a Gamers Nexus news video near the start of the year - apparently some of these companies shifted some production to RAM due to high demand from new consoles and high end phones.

Re: Disk Prices on Amazon

#143
post #99
post #81

Anecdote. I swore off spinning disks for my PC years ago, but I've been a bit cheap and recently got fed up with my 500GB "storage" drive always being near full and my work VM as well :/ So I finally went onto Google to look into storage and was absolutely, postively, shocked that I somehow missed the whole m.2 nvme surge. So much so that I got a 1TB 970 EVO for just $170. Nearly 500k random IOPS with qd32, and 3.5GB…

FYI, at this point, hardware-based drive encryption is considered utterly broken and you shouldn't use it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18382975

Which is a real shame, because 'in the hardware, with no software complexity or overhead' is exactly where encryption should live.

I wish some SSD manufacturers would get third party audits of their firmware which can say "We believe data stored on this SSD is not decryptable without an externally provided key". It ought to be pretty trivial to inspect the source to verify all keys which can derive the master key are never written to persistent storage.

Re: Disk Prices on Amazon

#144
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why anyone still buys anything at Amazon. Their Fulfilled-by-Amazon (FBA) idea was quite a game changer, but the implementation with the inventory co-mingling is something that I'd much rather stay away from as a consumer. There's been oh-so-many reports that even if you're buying from the official store of any known brand, with FBA, then you might as well still receive a knock-off, due to the inve…

>>I don't understand why anyone still buys anything at Amazon. Their Fulfilled-by-Amazon (FBA) idea was quite a game changer, but the implementation with the inventory co-mingling is something that I'd much rather stay away from as a consumer. As far as I know it doesn't happen in the UK at all. I have placed 200+ orders with Amazon in last year alone and haven't had any issues except for a couple deliveries which we…

Just to add one more data point, I received a fake i7-8700k from Amazon UK, in addition to a couple other fake items over the years. Amazon is my last choice nowadays.

In case anyone's wondering, the fake i7 was some sort of Celeron with an i7 sticker on top - the real one is engraved/printed and has a different shape.

Re: Disk Prices on Amazon

#145

I find it interesting how stable HDDs are in terms of price. I just cross-checked with german "Geizhals"[1], and the 4 TB Seagate IronWolf (ST4000VN008) started at ~160€ in Sep. 2016, quickly fell to 140€ a few days later, and then slowly descended to 105€ in Jan. 2018 - and that's the region it's been sitting there for two years now. The UK price chart looks almost the same.[2] [1]: https://geizhals.de/seagate-ironw…

Nobody puts any R&D into new drive technologies. If demand drops, factories close since they are producing at near zero margin. All R&D costs are already amortized or written off.

End result: Static prices.

The only time prices will change is when only one manufacturer is left and they jack the prices as a monopoly on antique tech that a few big companies still need. We're a long way from that tho.

Re: Disk Prices on Amazon

#146
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, at this point, hardware-based drive encryption is considered utterly broken and you shouldn't use it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18382975

Which is a real shame, because 'in the hardware, with no software complexity or overhead' is exactly where encryption should live. I wish some SSD manufacturers would get third party audits of their firmware which can say "We believe data stored on this SSD is not decryptable without an externally provided key". It ought to be pretty trivial to inspect the source to verify all keys which can derive the master key are…

Audit-based security is ok, but the ideal solution is open hardware and firmware.

Re: Disk Prices on Amazon

#147
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is a real shame, because 'in the hardware, with no software complexity or overhead' is exactly where encryption should live. I wish some SSD manufacturers would get third party audits of their firmware which can say "We believe data stored on this SSD is not decryptable without an externally provided key". It ought to be pretty trivial to inspect the source to verify all keys which can derive the master key are…

Audit-based security is ok, but the ideal solution is open hardware and firmware.

My ranking of security:

"It's secure because we say so"

"It's secure, and we have a published design and audit"

"It's open source"

"We're offering a reward to anyone who can break it"

"Our company would go under if anyone found a flaw in it"

SSD's are currently at the first stage.

Re: Disk Prices on Amazon

#148
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why anyone still buys anything at Amazon. Their Fulfilled-by-Amazon (FBA) idea was quite a game changer, but the implementation with the inventory co-mingling is something that I'd much rather stay away from as a consumer. There's been oh-so-many reports that even if you're buying from the official store of any known brand, with FBA, then you might as well still receive a knock-off, due to the inve…

>>I don't understand why anyone still buys anything at Amazon. Their Fulfilled-by-Amazon (FBA) idea was quite a game changer, but the implementation with the inventory co-mingling is something that I'd much rather stay away from as a consumer. As far as I know it doesn't happen in the UK at all. I have placed 200+ orders with Amazon in last year alone and haven't had any issues except for a couple deliveries which we…

On a counter point, I regularly order from smaller shops because they offer the same service (next day delivery for 99% of orders) for a lower price (usually about 5-20€ per item). Amazon is quite pricey for some product categories.

Re: Disk Prices on Amazon

#149
post #81

Anecdote. I swore off spinning disks for my PC years ago, but I've been a bit cheap and recently got fed up with my 500GB "storage" drive always being near full and my work VM as well :/ So I finally went onto Google to look into storage and was absolutely, postively, shocked that I somehow missed the whole m.2 nvme surge. So much so that I got a 1TB 970 EVO for just $170. Nearly 500k random IOPS with qd32, and 3.5GB…

Does NVMe make a difference over SATA2? Isn't the latter plenty fast anyway? I've been holding off on upgrading because it doesn't seem like I'd see a benefit.

Re: Disk Prices on Amazon

#150
post #32

We stopped buying drives from Amazon when we got drives for "the wrong region" and couldn't RMA them. NewEgg is a bit better, but don't buy refurbished drives. Provantage is another reputable vendor that usually has decent prices. If you're local to the SF bay area, check out Central Computers. King Star USA also works if you're a business customer making a large purchase.

Well, Amazon is the place you bought them from, they are liable for your warrany, not the manufacturer, so it should not be your problem, Amazon will have to take care of it.

My experiences with Amazon have been amazing; I bought two 1TB 970 pro's when they just came out (hella expensive), and one of them was faulty. After explaining my troubleshoot, they were like: ok, sounds like you know what you are doing, we'll send you a new one, be sure to return the one that's faulty in the next few days. I was blown away, amazing experience for me and certainly a reason for me to look at Amazon first when I need something else.

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