I do miss the old days that 2TB drive is like $60-$70. Luckily I spare quiet a few.
Thailand flood is over, however the traditional HDD price remain high. Maybe manufacture try to take the chance and raise HDD price ?
I can wait and not willing to pay high price for this. Pass...

every merchant in the world will ride this out for as long as possible.
Have backups because you wouldn't want to lose 3TB of data due to failure

it was reported the flood will affect the hdd prices for another year.

Competition should push the price down, as long as the big box stores can get low wholesale prices from the manufacturers. I bought a Hitachi 3TB external(which die after 1 week) for $100 around Xmas from OfficeMax and Seagate 2TB external(hope last awhile) for $100 from Staple last week.

Hummm almost time to pop open some WD My Book enclosures and sell off some 1TB drives.

I should've jumped on that 1TB Hitachi for $60 from NCIX last week.

www.microcenter.com Microcenter, a large computer chain had a 2 hard drive limit per person per day when the disaster occurred. The Microcenter store in my area just removed that policy about a week ago. This tells me that there is more supply or less demand or possibly both. Once the factories get back going they will produce an excess because they all want to reap the benefits of higher prices. Prices dropping all this year. Just my two cents.

#3
>it was reported the flood will affect the hdd prices for another year.

Damn... I hope I could hold that long...

There has been ample supply, but the large PC manufacturers (Dell, HP) are hoarding it for the purpose of selling it with their systems and specially their servers and NAS and SANS solutions.

they will milk the flood for everything its worth. they will keep the price high as long as possible to increase their profits.

You know that sticker on hard drives that says do not cover this hole? Maybe if those holes had been covered, the floods would not have caused such a shortage.

#9 is right- For those major buyer ( Dell , HP..) HDD manufacture have contract to fulfill. Even these are different grade of HDDs, HDD manufacture will supply them 1st to avoid contract penalty. Once these major buyer are fulfilled and happy- then they will shift product more on consumer product.