they've been this price for a couple of years, nothing to do with brexit.

Regardless of inflation, compared to 4 years ago, most computer parts are either substantially better for the same money, or much cheaper for the same spec. Hard drives are the main exception and that's a con (price fixing).

There are a lot of contributing factors but the main reason is the 3 giants gobbled up all the competition, below is a list of all the HDD manufacturers in the world today.

Seagate Technology, including its subsidiary brands Maxtor and Samsung
Toshiba
Western Digital, including its subsidiary brand HGST

Things started looking like a pseudo monopoly when hitachi was acquired by WD in 2012. Meanwhile flash memory has about 11 global manufacturers who own fabs and make the memory actual chips. Enterprise flash storage is still an emerging business with lots competition while companies grab for slices of the market and this is why you see such huge drops in the cost of flash memory. Meanwhile spinning rust has it's days numbered so I imagine they want to squeeze what revenue is left out the market before they have to shut the mechanical HDD arm of their company down.

Tomato Tomato. Color or Colour. "Wether" or Whether. Lag time, time lag, lead time You really didn't like my graph did you?

Begin rant - where you attempt to exert some God-like foresight to quieten down the plebs. You should use that to prevent future collapses in the global markets. Instead you show us a graph of the value of the Euro.......? Nothing to do with Brexit........? I would have thought you'd show me a graph of HDD prices in GBP NOT increasing since Brexit?!

Keep to point. Pound fell 20%, immediately this product started climbing 15%, we've had inflation of 3%, hard disk prices generally fall over time too. Yeah that's one hell of a coincidence.

I won't be buying any of your hedges. As a tax payer I probably own one of them already.

Been picking these up from CCL for just shy of £94 so this works out a bit cheaper and I get a case,

Why'd hard drives get so expensive? I picked up two of these for my raid1 nas back in 2013 for just shy of 100 each.

This is just a drive, not the whole NAS, right?

Price fixing - there it is

I'm looking for 8tb-10tb
Might be worth it at 250/drive they currently for (8tb)

Ok so thias isnt a NAS drive and even if it was you would need something to put it in. What's the best value up and running NAS drive just now?

I can vote hot for the price absolutely .but WD UK store run by digital river is horrible , their customer support is the worst ever , . they give scripted answers and will keep repeating the same thing over and over again without actually giving you the answer to your question. one wonders if they actually understand english.
no problems if they ship the items as they say they do but if not go straight to pay pal,yes make sure you use pay pal.
otherwise you'll have a whole lot of grief if the order goes wrong.

The exchange rate bombed after the Brexit vote making all imports (eg most computer kit is priced in US Dollars ) more expensive.

For those who don't know NAS is network access storage usually used for storing media for access on tvs or for saving CCTV footage. They are designed to be on all the time so have a good endurance

they've been this price for a couple of years, nothing to do with brexit.

This is a NAS drive. not sure what you mean by an up and running NAS drive? this is an empty hard drive, you'll need something to put it in whether that's a PC, USB caddy, little desktop NAS or a server is your call.

Wrong!

You should work for the government, you would fit right in with your logic..

I think he's implying he paid £100 for a pair of them, so £50 each.

Probably a very long shot, but if you're in Tesco worth checking if they have any WD Mybook MAC 3TB's in stock:

http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/book-mac-3tb-50-book-3tb-53-instore-tesco-birmingham-2664746?page=2#comments

I managed to get 5 of them a few weeks back. All of them had WD Reds inside. Saved me a bundle populating two NAS's @ £50 each. Apparently if you manage to find one now, they've been further reduced to £23 :O

Before anyone buys from the WD store you'll want to read through the horror stories of recent threads like this one: http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/4tb-wd-book-recertified-66-99-delivered-wd-store-2675220?page=3#comments

Regardless of inflation, compared to 4 years ago, most computer parts are either substantially better for the same money, or much cheaper for the same spec. Hard drives are the main exception and that's a con (price fixing).

hmm
PRw-hP_cWW9MVmtTZThNMmM/view?usp=sharing]hmmm
Just a coincidence then it falling as soon as markets opened and it staying down, down, down.

2 for £160, not bad but 3TB isn't enough for me (due to raid only one is useable) if only i could afford them 10TB drives on the landing page, ha!

Hi, I got one too, any chance to know if it is red or not without opening it? Thanks

a lot of the drives in hte WD stock are reds, but not labeled as normal reds would be, i have 4x 4tbs off WD, the serials are for reds but the drives have the standard black labels

Not that I know of. If its a 3TB MAC version Im pretty sure it will be a RED, all 5 of mine were.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQa0QaK36j0&vl=no

This was by far the simplest technique I found for opening it. **** around with some of the other guides and scratched up the first one. Then spotted this guide and had it open in a minute. Opened all the others following this without any sign of damage.

Hi, thanks a lot, I just not feel confident to do like the video show (I am a very clumsy person). Big thanks to your help.

(I get one with Model no: WDBYCC0030HBK_EESN (P/NWDBYCC0030HBK-04) product of Thailand)

Got any links which show the price of Hard Drives rocketing up at that time? Guessing not, as they didn't, hence the poster was "wrong".

Whilst sterling may have tanked against the USD, most prices didn't shift as manufacturers/retailers/etc tend to hedge well into the future. Moreover a significant portion of the cost for many products is not affected by the change in the USD/GBP rate. Local costs such as Taxes/Delivery/Staff Wages/Business Rates/etc make up a significant proportion of the price we pay and those will obviously not change.

Do you recall prices suddenly dropping through the floor when you could get $2 for your £? The Euro's been all over the place since its inception, have prices followed that volatility?

BTW I earn in USD so keep track of the exchange rate daily. I've seen plenty of wild variance but not once been able to directly correlate those to general prices as some seem to be able to.

Sorry the boxes are all stored away now. Only kept them incase I need to make a warranty claim. As I said if its a 3TB Mac version, all 5 of mine were RED's. Not a guarantee, but a good clue I would think.

how about an easy 20% increase on this very item?
I'm sure you're familiar with the concept of 'lag time' and have noticed the daily news events where seemingly EVERYTHING is becoming more expensive than it was a year ag....sorry preBrexit.

Thanks so much for all your kind replies. It is alright, I just hope I could find the way as I need to shop a NAS enclosure this weekend (a project have to start on next week for me). If I know ahead then I don't need to shop around for another wd red. Thanks very much indeed.

'Lag time", yes I'm familiar with the concept of a delay between two events, but i've usually read the concept referred to as time lag? I believe I mentioned Currency Hedges in my previous post, I would think that would indicate quite clearly I understand the possibility of there being a lag. I further went on to mention historic fluctuations in GBP and the Euro which didn't generate the direct correlation you allude to.

But since you're fond of graphs:





Thats one hell of a 'lag time' between the Euro tanking 15% against the USD and the price of the WD RED shifting, we're still waiting 3 years later.

Perhaps the GBP/USD pairing is special? But then why didn't I see a 20% price drop when sterling strengthened by 20% and I could get ~$2/£?

WRT news reports, yes I 've seen plenty that state the sky is falling and everything is getting more expensive. But I seem to recall plenty of similar reports before "brexit" vote. We had warnings of food price inflation, inflation possibly overtaking stagnant wages, etc, etc, etc.

What matters is comparative advantage. The strength of your economy. What your market will bare in terms of prices. If you're a big/strong market then manufacturers will find a way to sell to you at the prices you will bare. Wether that means taking a cut in profit margins, shifting parts of the cost chain locally so it matches your own currency, etc.

Obviously the closer a product is to the raw commodity price, food for example, the greater the hit the exchange rate will eventually have. But where a significant part of the cost is not tied directly to the raw commodity's which make up the product, the less impact (if any, as per my example graphs) the exchange rate will have.

As I said before, I'm not a fly by night watcher of the GBP/USD rate. I didn't just start watching it because of brexit and the furore that followed. I've been watching it for well over a decade as I live here but predominantly earn in USD.

Tomato Tomato. Color or Colour. "Wether" or Whether. Lag time, time lag, lead time You really didn't like my graph did you?

Begin rant - where you attempt to exert some God-like foresight to quieten down the plebs. You should use that to prevent future collapses in the global markets. Instead you show us a graph of the value of the Euro.......? Nothing to do with Brexit........? I would have thought you'd show me a graph of HDD prices in GBP NOT increasing since Brexit?!

Keep to point. Pound fell 20%, immediately this product started climbing 15%, we've had inflation of 3%, hard disk prices generally fall over time too. Yeah that's one hell of a coincidence.

I won't be buying any of your hedges. As a tax payer I probably own one of them already.

I don't sell hedges, I don't work in the financial markets. I simply follow GBP/USD as I earn in USD.

I see you've side stepped the glaring hole in your argument. You're simplistic hypothesis: currency drops, prices rise proportionally. Yet I've shown you an example of a currency dropping significantly and prices not following suite. Why does the fact its the Euro and not GBP make a difference?

There's a nailed on correlation between exchange rate and prices according to you. Yet the Euro drops 15% and theres barely a blip on the price of this very HDD. Odd that :/ Or perhaps its not quite the simple correlation you suggest.

But as you seem to believe GBP/USD + Brexit = some special sauce that simply doesn't apply elsewhere. Why is it a bare HDD by this manufacturer jumped, but when they shoved one in an enclosure it didn't :/



Perhaps we should make a giant mycloud case and put the whole country in it. Clearly it has some special ability to protect its contents from suffering the Brexit effect :smiley:

The most lucid comment I have read for a long time!
Oh dear.

Nice to see someone using some decent punctuation in a post for a change but could I add a small correction?
"What your market will bare ......"
Should read "What your market will BEAR ....."

This is boring me now.
You are right, HDD prices didn't go up 15% over the last year since Brexit. My graph didn't show that at all. Of course I said that one thing going up means something else must go up by exactly the same amount, and you are right £÷$=€.

Okay so the Euro fell against the dollar, and WD didn't price up their drives. WD probably trade in dollars....you pointed out there are other factors, Europe's 500 million consumers is going to make up a significant proportion of sales, so they act to only expose that market to that which it can "bare". When the same thing happens to our piddly 65 million consumer market, WD won't apply the same good grace. They started raising prices. Slowly but surely as retailers restock they having to raise their prices. Starting June 23rd 2016 prices reverse their downward trend, increase by 15% in a year, and once stabilised to ensure WD's dollar revenue remains the same. That's the lag time thing I mentioned, and you corrected me on. "Wether" you chose to believe these things are related and significant or instead completely coincidence is up to you. Really all I wanted to do was post a hedge.

Oh dear. Our resident Friar is bored :disappointed: Lets all step back and let him post his graphs and simplistic analysis with glee. God forbid anyone posts any data/examples that challenge his sage like conclusions. At least you can take some comfort in your hedge posting hobby :smiley:


Its a comparable example. Yet the results weren't the same. Common practice to site comparable examples when questioning the validity of a hypothesis/conclusion.



Ahh some more sage like analysis from our resident friar. I guess when the INR tanked WD kept prices static, after all there are >1 Billion Indians. Direct correlation between population size and the size of the market for a particular product right? The mighty EU must therefore be a bigger market then the US with a piddly population of ~320 million?

Lets see, of those 500 million (does that include the UK?) we have ~20 million Romanians for example. With their GDP/capita of ~$8k they must be buying HDD at the same ratio as the piddly UK with a GDP/capita of $43k?


I choose to look at historic trends. Comparable trends. A wide set of data points, rather then a few selective ones. You cited an example of a price that has risen when GBP fell in value. I cited an example from the same manufacturer where the price didn't rise (after a year of time LAG). Further I cited an example where a comparable currency fell in value and the price of this very item didn't shift. From that I conclude your simplistic analysis is flawed.

I don't know what will happen to prices going forward. I can make some educated guesses.

If GBP stays at this level, as hedges expire, those products closely tied to raw commodities will rise proportionally. The price of Gold is the price of Gold for example. No one will sell it cheaper here then in another country. In the alternative arbitrage would drive out the inconsistency in price.

Where you have more complex products, with services/IP/supply chain/etc making up a large part of the cost, there is far more scope for prices not to follow GBP. The extent of this is dependent on the strength of the economy, what the market will bear (thanks for the correction pedant99) and competition.

As someone pointed out, there has been considerable consolidation in the HDD market, this could be one reason WD felt they could raise some prices. I couldn't find their market share in the UK, but again it could be higher then in the rest of the EU, resulting in them not being as comfortable raising prices in the EU.

One thing is beyond doubt. This piddly little market of 65 million people is the 5th largest economy in the world by GDP. Even measuring by GDP/Capita we rank in the top 30 (and that list is skewed by Tax havens/Oil rich countries/etc). As a market for complex/value added products such as HDD we are a significant market. Brexit or not people need to sell to us.

I didn't vote either way last year. As I'm sick of the EU hokey cokey. For two decades we've had people like you suggesting we're weak and feeble and the sky will fall if we leave the EU. And on the opposite end we've had the brexiteers claiming the EU is the source of all our ills and everything will be sweetness and sunshine if only we left. I hoped, in vein it appears, a decision one way or the other would put an end to the childish distraction. So we could concentrate on what matters, comparative advantage.

We are an extremely strong economy, with lots going for us. Or future prosperity depends on us building on that. Creating comparative advantage in new areas and staying ahead of the pack in other areas. It is that success/failure which will determine prices, NOT Brexit or reverse Brexit.



Yet you accompany every hedge with your sage like analysis dear friar? Why waste your time if you just want to post hedges?