Seagate increases profits with 315% – thanks to keeping prices high

I think you mean 2012 profits, not 2013.
And when I look at the referenced article I see a drop in profits for Q1 2012. And I don't see anything to support the "315%" claim. I think someone might be reading that graph backwards.

1tb hard drives were $50 street price, 4tb hard drive were $170.. lowest price now?
$70 for 1tb, $249 for 4tb drives. Yes, hard drive companies have manipulated prcies even though they have cheaper thailand labor restored and are at pre-flood capacity/costs of production.

The silver lining is that the PC biz is in a down-cycle so that will keep hard drive demand limited to a range based on prices. I even doubt that we will see any pre-flood street prices restore for black friday..

Pre-flood sale during black friday? Why? As far as the mean people in the corparate world are concerned, that flood was the best thing to ever happen to them ever (or at least the best thing to happen since the last time they made a whole sh**-load of money). Perhaps they will return after SSDs have become so common, they don't even count as news.

@CDan, it's the fiscal year 2013. Another site might explain it better:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2221730/seagate-sees-300-percent-rise-in-profits-thanks-to-thai-floods

I saw 2Tb HDDs being offered for $79 after a mail-in rebate though.

I think the extremely high-priced HDDs can prop up a year's profit for one or two or three companies, but all the others are being killed by it because of those same high prices. One day, Seagate could wake up and notice their main customers are gone. "But we make huge profits if we can sell just this ONE hard drive!!" Yeah. Right. How's that future-vision paying off?

None of these companies have thown down the dough on a new factory yet which puts that HAMR technology hard drive an extra year's delay. Meanwhile, at least two companies have thrown down 5 - 7 billion dollars betting on SSD drives as a future..

The day hard drive companies wake up and see 4tb SSD drives competing with them could come sooner than they think! Samsung alone could become the new SONY in marketshare.

Well, I didn't really notice that to be honest, probably cause prices here in the Persian Gulf region are already high as it is and barely drop when it comes to technology, we take ages to import some of the new technologies while we get some others instantly at magnified prices.

I've got myself a sweet couple of storage devices last week, a 3TB Seagate Backup Plus for $143 and a 240GB Kingston HyperX 3K for $230... the 4TB is available from WD with multiports (USB3, ESATA and Thunderbolt IIRC), the last time I checked it was at a massive $735. I don't know how that measures compared to prices in the rest of the world, but for us here, that's quite expensive.

Be honest. Wouldn't you sell 2TB and 4TB HDD's at the highest prices possible after competitor's factories are destroyed by flood if you were owners of Seagate? Disasters either by humans or nature, inside or outside, are often largest opportunities to make a fortune whether in a preindustrial North American native tribes or in post-war Japan. Even deaths from suicide and cancer can be big businesses for their survivors.

There are multiple sides to this coin (3) the edge btw the two sides shows this to be a fine line between making an honest buck and profiteering.. and the Tech industry is no position to be arrogant with their pricing for too long. Tech is not an essential to daily living-- food, shelter, basic necessities (ie toilet paper), transportation are.

A shot of good news is there is going to be a predictor of 2013 street pricing since one B&M is going to have a 2tb external drive for $65, come this Black Friday. We can possibly assume that all other prices will adjust within 10% of this come 2013.

1tb drives $50, 2tb, $65, 3tb 79, 4tb, $99. Then long time coming HAMR drives or SSD hybrids.. I'm thinking they might find a way to include the SSD portion as part of a single partition and "RESERVE" it for operating system files with special software/firmware-- this kind of drive would be much more attractive to me than a separate logical drive which could run out space on an O/S drive.

Seagate.

...

HAHAHAHAHA!

Thanks for the laugh, DoMiN8ToR! That's made my day! I wouldn't touch Seagate hard drives even if you paid me.

On a less sarcastic note; if the prices of hard drives are being vastly overinflated for blatant profiteering by Seagate - People will migrate to a different brand who can offer them a better deal.

The hard drive industry has become so saturated with makes and models that there really is very little difference between them. In my own very limited experience with a few hard drive manufacturers, it has been Western Digital that has been the best (except externals - two DOAs ) as well as Maxtor.

I've had no less than three Seagate hard drives fail on me - All within the first year of use. Seagate can rot in hell, for all I care.

In fact I'm using a Western Digital now - 750GB one. I think my next upgrade will probably be a Samsung drive - hard drives are so cheap now...

Are you sure those prices are right; even on a "Black Friday"? The prices seem very low for such a huge hard drive

Spinners are history, they are relegated to data drives even now. With the current low volume of Desktop Computers being sold, SSDs are the only way to go in a laptop. So maybe if you buy a desktop, you might have a spinner, but if you build a desktop you would be silly not to have an SSD.

I'm sorry, but I disagree with you there, Alan. Though the obvious benefits SSD drives over HDD are numerous, I don't think now is the right time to be investing in an SSD drive - They're simply far too expensive over a HDD drive for what you get, and their relability seems to be mixed, from what I've read. They're too new a technology to be investing in right now. Hard Drives have been around for an eternity - and as such, reliable.

I'd invest in a hard drive right now because they're at their peak - and perhaps, in about five years time when I come to upgrade or buy a new desktop, I'll consider then to buy an SSD - when the previous SSD I would have bought now is virtually obsolete.

Thats what makes the world go around, if everyone had the same opinion, the world would be a dull place, but I havent seen any advancement in spinners other than the price of a VRaptor being cut in half. Yes SSDs are new and exciting and IMO, the most important upgrade you can put in any computer to improve on its performance, even the " Previous SSD you would have bought " is better than any spinner.

Agreed

Maybe spinners are approaching their end of useful life in terms of no new innovation can be made for them, perhaps - but I think, at the moment, SSD drives are just too expensive - and most folk won't really benefit from the added features an SSD drive can offer.

A HDD is fundamentally problematic because it's magnetic and on spinners (mechanical, meaning they're more prone to breaking down) but at least HDD technology works, and most of the time we know when it goes just before it is about to go.

There are some nasty scare stories floating about the internet about SSD drives going 'bang' and losing a heck of a lot of data - and, from what I understand, aren't SSD useless for small files?

Try reading a thousand small files from an SSD and from a HDD and then tell us which drive is more "useless" than the other.
(Hint: The SSD has access times several orders of magnitude faster than a HDD)

Someone needs to get a new SSD and put an end to his fear and loathing. Once you do you'll never go back.