Storage Solutions Why are mechanical HDD prices increasing instead of decreasing?

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If you are referring to the mechanical ones, manufacturing is going down as demand for hdds is getting replaced with that for ssds. So there is less and less of them being available in the market. Moreover a large portion gets used in the external drives. One could even argue companies want you to move to SSDs and hence driving up prices of HDDs.
 
But even prices of SSDs are increasing. Unless 4TB ssd price is cheaper to buy than a similar 4TB mechanical drive I don't understand why the mechanical drive is so costly. Even the external mechanical drive prices are increasing every month. Maybe they dont want people buying hdd or ssd for storage and just use online storage?
 
I've been noticing this for some time now. I remember buying WD 4TB Ext. HDD 2 years ago for little less than 7k. Now they are 8.5k or more.

I don't think the reason is that they want consumers to move onto SSDs.
There are so many applications where HDD is more than adequate and SSD would be a waste in those places.

Online storage cannot be used for everything, even on 300Mbps connection, it would still be faster to copy something from an Ext. HDD or local NAS over gigabit ethernet.

There is a real usage scenario which can be fulfilled only by hard disks.
 
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HDD manufacturers are moving more towards higher capacity drives where they will continue to have an enterprise market and away from smaller capacity drives aimed at consumers.

SSD drive prices are falling like anything but there is not much of a market here for these still expensive drives and hence there is some price gouging going on locally.
 
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Everywhere - SSDs are taking over. Even recently, there was a deal on primeABGB for 2TB EVM SSD for around 6K. At that price point, its better to take that vs a normal HDD!

Almost all my servers with the exception of backups are SSD driven. Planning to make a media server with SSD storage!
 
I have been noticing the same trend as well... got a WD 4TB My Book for 7.8k in 2020 but now it's priced at 9.9k

Another Seagate 4TB Backup Plus I got in 2021 for 7k is now unavailable but a similar model is priced at 8.7k

Also, deals on onlines sites are now-a-days largely on SSD's. Price drops on external HDD's have all but evaporated.
 
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6pack said:
But even prices of SSDs are increasing. Unless 4TB ssd price is cheaper to buy than a similar 4TB mechanical drive I don't understand why the mechanical drive is so costly. Even the external mechanical drive prices are increasing every month. Maybe they dont want people buying hdd or ssd for storage and just use online storage?
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High capacity SSDs like 4 TB remain costly as not much stock gets sent here anyways. Costs for the more general consumer and prosumer category of 1-2 TBs have come down drastically.
 
vivek.krishnan said:
Everywhere - SSDs are taking over. Even recently, there was a deal on primeABGB for 2TB EVM SSD for around 6K. At that price point, its better to take that vs a normal HDD!

Almost all my servers with the exception of backups are SSD driven. Planning to make a media server with SSD storage!
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But reliability-wise, a good branded hdd like WD/Seagate/Toshiba will last longer and more reliable than such cheaper unknown brand SSDs right?
 
ibose said:
High capacity SSDs like 4 TB remain costly as not much stock gets sent here anyways. Costs for the more general consumer and prosumer category of 1-2 TBs have come down drastically.
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Ditto for 2230(all)/2242(some) SSDs - still expensive here. Only things which are imported in mass volume remain affordable.
 
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ibose said:
High capacity SSDs like 4 TB remain costly as not much stock gets sent here anyways. Costs for the more general consumer and prosumer category of 1-2 TBs have come down drastically.
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But even with increased prices of 4TB drives, the per GB cost is still less in 4TB drives when compared to 1-2TB drives.

But even with increased prices of 4TB HDDs, the per GB cost is still less in 4TB drives when compared to 1-2TB HDDs.
 
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...during a fourth quarter and fiscal year 2023 conference call... Seagate's chief executive, Dave Mosley, also revealed that higher capacity HAMR-based nearline hard drives have been sent out for testing in the field. He boasts that this was achieved during corporate cost cutting initiatives: "We reduced production output by approximately 25% compared with peak volume in order to drive better supply/demand dynamics and enhance profitability as the markets recover.
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Source
 
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6pack said:
All the prices of 1/2TB have touched almost 5k and 4/5TB has gone from 7k to 9k in 2-3 months ⊙⁠﹏⁠⊙

Has there been a flood in some mfg facility in Taiwan or something else?
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China put cap on base mineral/material that need to use/mfg. Micro Chips
 
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I think the storage manufacturing companies like seagate , western digital have merged so their is less of competition.
 
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