HD and SSD Prices not declining - why ?

This topic was created by Bahboh .

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    HD and SSD Prices not declining - why ?

    Tech prices always naturally decline over time.

    But HD and SSD prices appear not to be declining, and are even climbing in some areas.

    Is there any explanation other than that prices are being set by a cartel ?

    The same cartel that kept prices up, long after the effects of the flooding caused a rise.

    Does The Reg fancy doing some investigative journalism for us ?!

    1. Phil W

      Re: HD and SSD Prices not declining - why ?

      "Tech prices always naturally decline over time."

      Your initial assumption is flawed. Tech prices have always fluctuated both up and down due various market forces and outside influences.

      The main ones in recents months and years being either availability of precious metals in the international markets (China has become very restrictive on who it will these to, and has a large portion of the worlds deposits of certain metals), or accidents such as fire or natural disasters like flooding destroying factories and warehouses that produce/store the products and their components resulting in low availability pushing prices up through the normal supply and demand mechanisms.

      In general though prices have declined fairly significantly. You can now easily buy a 250GB SSD under £100, where as 3-4 years ago a 120GB SSD cost £150-200 or more.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: HD and SSD Prices not declining - why ?

        The prices for all these Rare Earth Metal ( I assume that is what you mean, rather than Precious Metals ) have fallen since last July:

        http://www.frontierrareearths.com/rare-earth-prices/

        Any more excuses ?

        1. Phil W

          Re: HD and SSD Prices not declining - why ?

          Yes I did mean rare earth metals, apologies for the slight slip.

          But regardless I didn't say the prices for them were high I said availability was limited because of the Chinese limiting who they will sell to and the quantities they will trade. I also didn't say this was a current problem, this was actually a market event from circa 5 years ago which I was just quoting as an example of the factors in price fluctuation. Since then the expansion of rare earth metal mines in other countries has broken China's monopoly and brought the prices back down.

          My actual point was that I don't perceive there to be a lack of decline in prices. As I pointed out, in the last 3 years the price of SSDs of a given capacity has roughly halfed.

          Hard drive prices have also dropped though not by such significant percentage, but that's to be expected.

          Can you give some examples of an SSD or HDD product you think is currently on sale for approximately the same price as it was 3 years ago (or more even since you claim prices have also gone up in some cases)?

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: HD and SSD Prices not declining - why ?

            I am talking about the last 6 months.

            A ( typical ) graph from from Holland for a "Seagate Desktop HDD ST3000DM001, 3TB"

            ( I don't know where one can get UK price graphs )

            http://ic.tweakimg.net/ext/i/?ProduktID=297051

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: HD and SSD Prices not declining - why ?

              I would say tech prices decline for a few reasons, the biggest being demand, competition, efficiencies of production, new cheaper tech (SoCs).

              In a capitalist economy everything will generally sell for the highest price that maximises the total profit. Lots of competition will often mean that you are trying to get higher profits by larger market share which will often require lower prices. Apple don't need to lower prices so much as there is no 'direct' competition to many of their products (i.e. if someone actually wants iOS or MacOS then it's their only choice). Android devices and PCs are often more price sensitive due to the competition for equivalent devices.

              Demand can lead to prices rising or falling - high demand for a product can push prices up to profiteer (HDs during the floods) or it can lower prices due to quantities of scale. Low demand can push prices up due to limited quantity runs or lower it due to excess stock.

              Therefore there is no specific rule that tech comes down in price, especially for a single item like an HDD it just depends on the market conditions.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: HD and SSD Prices not declining - why ?

                "Therefore there is no specific rule that tech comes down in price, especially for a single item like an HDD it just depends on the market conditions."

                Except that it _has_ always come down in price, unless Cartels are operating to prevent that.

                1. Gordan

                  Re: HD and SSD Prices not declining - why ?

                  Prices drop as and when new generations of products come out. We have seen this happen with every manufacturing process change. The prices don't drop in a smooth line - it is a step function, and as process shrinkage becomes increasingly impractical, the manufacturing process improvements aren't happening as steadily as they used to.

                  Even so, the SSD prices HAVE been dropping quite obviously over the past few years. A 1TB SATA SSD can be had for around £290, which is approximately 10% less than it cost 6 months ago. Back then Crucial M550 was the cheapest. That changed with the introduction of the Samsung EVO 840. So manufacturers are competing and undercutting each other.

                  You should also consider that prices of specific models rarely change (other than due to currency exchange rates). It is when new models come out that the price per TB reduces. This still holds true.

                  I don't see any evidence in the prices that might indicate anything like conspiracy going on.

                2. d3vy

                  Re: HD and SSD Prices not declining - why ?

                  "Except that it _has_ always come down in price, unless Cartels are operating to prevent that."

                  Just because something has happened in the past does not mean that it will definitely continue to occur.

                  I would however argue the opposite of your point using my own experience, I bought several £80 128GB SSDs a few years ago to put in to my various Pcs and laptops to extend their lives a bit - I have just replaced two of those with £70 256GB drives... So I'd argue that the price is coming down.

    2. phuzz Silver badge

      Re: HD and SSD Prices not declining - why ?

      Brexit and/or Trump.

  2. Phil W

    "prices of specific models rarely change (other than due to currency exchange rates)"

    That is a very good point, which probably explains what bahboh is seeing assuming he's in the Eurozone, based on the link he gave. The Euro has been dropping against the US Dollar quite sharply over the last 6 months.

    1. Phil W

      Also looking back at the graph in the link, the price increase shown in the last 6 months looks to be around 10% which is about how much the Euro has fallen by against USD.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So if you are correct then we can expect falls when the Euro climbs again.

    I'll be back !

    1. Phil W
      Terminator

      Come on... if you're going to say that at least use the appropriate icon!

  4. jason 7

    Checking my Amazon order list...

    ...would refute your claim for the UK at least.

    240GB V300 Kingston SSD October 2013 - £104.00

    240GB V300 Kingston SSD January 2015 - £73.00

    A price drop of £31.00 or a drop of nearly 30% in just over a year. In the past six months alone I've been picking up 240GB SSDs for under £70 and even got one for £65! Even got 64GB SSDs for under £30.

    The only tech pricing anomaly I've ever noticed is the price of DAB radios. How this clunky ancient tech isn't being sold for next to nothing mystifies me.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Checking my Amazon order list...

      I refer the honourable gentleman to my previous answer, viz:

      "I am talking about the last 6 months."

      The prices used to decline, then stopped declining and even climbed.

      But this could conceivably be due to currency fluctuations. I cannot, currently, refute that.

      1. jason 7

        Re: Checking my Amazon order list...

        I also point out I remarked on the past 6 months too.

        They are getting cheaper, but it may be that we are hitting or getting close to the lowest point they can go for. Like you don't see many decent sized HDDs below £35.00.

        You have to hit a lower limit sometime.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'll see your anecotes and raise you an average price graph which shows that Euro prices for a 4TB hard drive ( so not bottom of the market ) have been climbing for the last 6 months:

    http://tweakers.net/pricewatch/347909/wd-red-sata-6-gb-s-wd40efrx-4tb.html

  6. Aasha09

    A lot more drives have been introduced without prices than with, but the few with prices show the drives are becoming much more affordable to the mass market. Crucial introduced a new series of drives in 2.5-inch, M.2 and mSATA form factors, with the 250GB drive priced at $139.99, a 500GB drive at $249.99 and a 1TB drive at $469.99.

    1. jason 7

      Paid £45 for a 120GB SSD in early February.

      Just paid £40 for the same model SSD today.

  7. Greg J Preece

    Over across the Atlantic in Canuckland, prices are definitely declining. Beginning of last year I built a new PC and installed a 240GB Corsair MX series into it for $220. This week that same $220 got me a 500GB Samsung Evo.

    (Note that the Canadian dollar has also been nose-diving against the American dollar in the past 12-18 months. Our currency is a lot more dependent on oil prices than some folks realise.)

  8. DanceMan

    SSD's reducing, HDD's static or climbing

    Support what Greg said, but note that the same cannot be said for hdd's.

  9. palmerhunt

    Right said, Demand, competitions and pace with which new technologies are coming in the market are few determining factor behind tech prices.

  10. James5712

    How to Recover Dissertation writing Files from Storage device?

    Hello, Forum Members.

    I need some assistance in data recovery, I have some data on my USB drive that was working fine for a long time but suddenly it gave me a shocked, I have 4 GB data in it but when I plugged in it's showing nothing there is nothing in it, & now want to recover all the files I have some Dissertation assignment files in it I wrote this dissertation after a lot of research and collected data from different resources like DissertationBoss USA, please give me some suggestion how can I get my Dissertation writing Files?

    1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      Re: How to Recover Dissertation writing Files from Storage device?

      Try a data recovery utility. There are several availiable as freeware/open software. I've used RECUVA a couple of times in the past when I had problems with USB memory sticks or SD cards, and it did the job. Mind you, that were a) mostly holiday snaps, a relatively small number of files and I have no way of knowing whether all the files were restored or b) data that either wasn't important or could be recovered from backups or re-created otherwise.

      USB sticks can be tricky, there are a lot of combinations of hardware and firmware, and some of them are pretty dodgy. I've had USB sticks that had limitations regarding the number of folders you could create in the stick's root directory, and the number of folders you could create in them, and the number of files you could put in there. Problem was: the stick would let you create as many folders as you liked and also let you store as many files as you liked in whichever folder without any error or warning message. But if you exceeded any limitation, old data would be overwritten with new data without any warning whatsoever! So it took me a while to notice. Wasn't mentionend in the "manual" either, naturally.

      Also, memory modules in USB sticks (and other solid state storage devices, including SSDs) can sort of "wear out". And stop working. And they usually do so without warning. It's not like your old HDD that started making funny noises before packing in.

      Okay, back to the problem: try a data recovery tool. There is some usefull stuff availiable for free or at reasonable prices. As long as the computer can still recognise the stick as an external memory, a recovery software might find something. Beyond that lies the realm of professional forensic data recovery, and that comes with a large price tag.

    2. Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

      Re: How to Recover Dissertation writing Files from Storage device?

      It would be wise to take a block-level clone of the device, or even two, and perform any recovery attempts on a copy.

      I'd suggest SystemRescueCD + ddrescue for cloning. Windows-based utilities probably won't work, as Windows doesn't give raw access to storage devices. But if you are not familiar with device operations under Linux, get someone to help.

      www.sysresccd.org

    3. Baldy50

      Re: How to Recover Dissertation writing Files from Storage device?

      I agree with 'allthecoolshortnamesweretaken'. Great user name BTW.

      I’ve used recuva myself with success and other programs too, but usb drives are not the safest way to store by any means!

      A walk across a carpet can generate many tens of kilovolts in static, so if the device was in your pocket and you touched it you could release the charge that you hold to the device? Not sure could the device also be at the same potential of the person carrying it and only in danger when being grounded to the computer for example? They're very easy to lose as well and slow, I think the memory chips that don't make the grade are used for usb drives.

      Always eject the device and don't just yank it out of the machine in a hurry, if the copy software has been minimized and you don't notice the copy process has not finished data would not be written to it. If you try and eject the device before it has completed a task a warning will be given.

      Back up is always the best option, even the humble CD or DVD if stored correctly would outlive a usb drive.

      Portable hard drives are far better in almost every way apart from size, far faster transfer rates being my fav and as long as not playing ice hockey using it as the puck pretty robust mostly. I have had to put the casing back together many times on my media drive, it is quite easy to take apart and not the best example of portable storage, but still working and learnt my lesson to stop picking it up by the usb cable .

      I do not plug it into any TV any more as it has a great many media files on it and after an LG corrupted the file system I had to put all the files back on. I don't understand why but as 'allthecoolshortnamesweretaken' wrote.

      'USB sticks can be tricky, there are a lot of combinations of hardware and firmware, and some of them are pretty dodgy. I've had USB sticks that had limitations regarding the number of folders you could create in the stick's root directory, and the number of folders you could create in them, and the number of files you could put in there.'

      It seems portable hard drives might have a problem too, probably just too much data for whatever software is running the TV to handle. Over 1Tb of data!!!!BTW. Didn't bother trying to recover and the drive could have done with some house cleaning so a re format was done.

      I'm sorry you may have lost some very important work but I don't know many people that haven't fell foul of a data loss at some time in their computing exploits, backups are the only way to be sure.

      'allthecoolshortnamesweretaken' is correct usb drives can just die on you although an indication of failure is being able to read but no longer write to a device and getting hideously slow maybe as well or a re format is needed badly?

      What is the safest format for a usb drive?

      My main machine and it's drives are all XT4 and are invisible without extra software to Windows. So my portable devices are FAT or NTFS so I can use them on other OS's.

      I use NTFS on a couple of usb drives as some of the files I have are bigger than 4Gb, so FAT won't work.

      I don't know if any of this is useful to you or others but the only rule I strictly adhere to is to never ever store anything on a portable device if it is not backed up somewhere safe, it is a rather 'Techie' sort of forum after all.

      Ian.

    4. TeeCee Gold badge

      Re: How to Recover Dissertation writing Files from Storage device?

      EaseUS Data Recovery has always managed to reconstruct as much as possible from thoroughly cacked flash storage for me (quite often producing several versions of anything updated thereon)[1].

      As others have said, vital to keep a copy on less volatile storage. Also consider formatting your USB stick as NTFS rather than one of the FAT derivatives before use, as that way you have some error tolerance in there.

    5. Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

      Re: How to Recover Dissertation writing Files from Storage device?

      On the second thought, usage is not too complicated. Biggest concern is to identify devices properly and not to overwrite wrong disk or stick.

      - boot from rescue CD

      - connect your preciousss to USB port

      - connect empty disk/stick to another USB port, same size would be preferred

      - use sginfo /dev/sda (then sdb, sdc etc) to read device information - that helps to identify them

      - use command dmesg ¦ grep sd ¦ more to see what devices and partitions were detected

      - if your preciousss was found as /dev/sdb, dmesg may report some partitions on it, like /dev/sdb1 or /dev/sdb4

      - in addition, ls /dev/sd* shows all disks/partitions that are present

      - less -f /dev/sdb then gives a peek at the raw data on sdb (if it's readable at all). q for quitting the viewer.

      - and now for the dangerous part. It is absolutely necessary to know which device is which. Double-check, triple-check, make no assumptions here.

      - ddrescue /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 will clone a first partition on sdb to a first partition on sdc. Obviously overwriting sdc1. May warn about the dangers and ask for --force parameter.

      - ddrescue /dev/sdb /dev/sdc will clone the whole device. This is quite OK for harddisks and SSDs, but not always healthy for USB sticks - some of them may keep secret areas in their logical block address space and do not like overwriting them. Heavily depends on the make and firmware.

  11. feshfen

    The prices used to decline,

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      They still do. I have an email from 2013 from EBuyer for a Kingston 120GB SSD for £95.

      A quick check on Amazon today shows I can buy a Kingston 120GB SSD for £30.92.

  12. jordandevin

    HD and SSD Prices not declining - why ?

    Sales of hard disk drives have been on the decline this year because of slow demand for personal computers and tough competition from solid-state drives. While Seagate Technology and Western Digital Corp. hope that demand of HDDs will pick up in the coming quarters, a market analyst claims that it will decline again. Moreover, in the long-term, HDD makers will have to lower the price of their products because of competition.

    Total available market of hard disk drives dropped to 125 million units in Q1 2015 and to 111 million units in Q2 2015, according to estimates by Seagate and Western Digital. By contrast, despite of dropping demand for PCs, sales of SSDs for client PCs in Q1 2015 grew by 3.5 per cent quarter-over-quarter, according to TrendFocus. Sales of all SSDs in the second quarter of 2015 increased by 2.9 per cent QoQ and totaled 23.859 million units.

  13. sagarn

    see guidelines on performing storage testing

    http://calsoftinc.com/resources/whitepapers/storage-performance-testing-guidelines/

  14. waltercarroll

    Despite of dropping demand for hard disk drives, UBS does not expect prices of such storage devices to decline any time soon because there are two big players – Seagate and Western Digital – and a considerably smaller one – Toshiba Corp. – which cannot ship more than around 22 million HDDs per quarter and thus grab a significant chunk of market share away from the big two.

  15. doubstops102

    The price computer makers paid for solid-state drives (SSDs) dropped by as much as 12% over the last quarter, and the most popular drives are now within striking distance of their hard disk drive (HDD) counterparts.

  16. goubstops102

    Sales of hard disk drives have been on the decline this year because of slow demand for personal computers and tough competition from solid-state drives. While Seagate Technology and Western Digital Corp. hope that demand of HDDs will pick up in the coming quarters, a market analyst claims that it will decline again. Moreover, in the long-term, HDD makers will have to lower the price of their products because of competition.

  17. webgeek247

    SAS storage is cheaper and better than SATA

    SATA and SAS have got cheaper, and SSD is slowly getting cheaper. For storage, I use https://www.hostxnow.com/backup-hosting - not the most competitive pricing around for most people, but it supports everything like SFTP/SSH/Rsync which a lot of the other big brands don't support. The backup storage plans at HostXNow are hosted on SAS drives which is much faster than SATA. SSD is too expensive to be used for storage servers at the moment.

    1. Phil W

      Re: SAS storage is cheaper and better than SATA

      "SAS storage is cheaper and better than SATA"

      To actually buy quality drives and controllers? No, no it isn't.

      But then "better" is a subjective term.

      Do you want a huge array with lots of redundant disks, but not too bothered about performance?

      SATA is the way to go, the drives are cheaper and in some cases the motherboard you're using for it may have enough ports and onboard RAID capability to save you even buying a controller.

      Do you need a smaller array with higher performance and have some money to throw at the job?

      SAS is the way to go, hot spares in your array are good, but you can save money by just having cold spares on hand if you're willing to monitor for failures.

      "...hosted on SAS drives which is much faster than SATA"

      This statement is extremely conditional.

      What version of SAS vs what version SATA?

      What RPM of SAS disk vs what RPM of SATA disk?

      A 10K RPM SATA 3 (6Gbps) disk will be substantially faster SAS1 (3Gbps) 7.2K RPM drive.

      "SSD is too expensive to be used for storage servers at the moment"

      No it isn't. It's just too expensive to be used for ALL storage servers, there are certainly high IO use cases where it's worth spending the money. SAN storage for SQL servers for example.

      I suspect your post is in fact an advertisement for HostXNow, and that you are the proprietor. If that's the case I have only 3 things to say:

      1. Choose your handle more subtly so it's not so simple to link you back to your company and prove your post to be an advertisement.

      2. Don't post statements in your adverts that are technically incorrect or outright lies.

      3. The HostXnow pricing looks fairly reasonable on the face of it, so that's interesting. But the website is lacking any information on where the servers are located, which is important not only from a regulatory point of view but also for reassurance that they aren't just in someone's garage or garden shed, which is worryingly likely given the address for hostxnow.com domain registration appears to be either a residential address or a small shop/business premises.

  18. quxinot

    Older tech items are cheaper than newer tech items.

    The hell is wrong with you folks? Are you new?

    I paid $175USD for 128mb stick of SDR awhile ago. Sure, it was 1999. But today the same product is $3 on ebay, with shipping!!!

    Prices fluctuate. Over time, they go down. Sometimes it's fast, sometimes it's slow. This is new?

    1. Torry_Cox

      "I paid $175USD for 128mb stick of SDR awhile ago. Sure, it was 1999. But today the same product is $3 on ebay, with shipping!!!"

      I agree, prices change very quickly. With the development of technology, everything very quickly becomes obsolete and loses its relevance and price

  19. Torry_Cox

    I think that the price does not go down because they still do not lose relevance. Prices are reduced only to those areas in technologies that are very quickly obsolete.

  20. This post has been deleted by its author

  21. JacobEye

    I have recently bought Intel 512GB SSD for around $162.00 from a local shop. I usually purchase from there. Its been more than 5 months now since I started researching about SSDs and the prices are still same. This post was initiated in back in 2015, I just want to know, SSD of this size was available back then? What was the price in 2015 and 2016?

This topic is closed for new posts.