Hard Drive

It's been roughly six months since the devastating floods in Thailand, and the storage industry is still struggling in the wake of the destruction. Analysts predicted hard drive prices would jump in the months following, and unfortunately, that's precisely what we've seen.

But where do we stand now, and how long will it take for prices to stabilize once production is back to normal? We looked at price trends in our dealnews archives to get a better picture.

Today's External Hard Drive Deals Feature 2010 Prices
Prior to the September floods in Thailand, 1TB external hard drive deals had plateaued at about $48 to $50, with $48 being the all-time low. However, by the end of October 2011 prices on 1TB drives had jumped by as much as 16% from the previous month's low. And come November (a month where we typically see the best prices on electronics) 1TB hard drive prices had reached $90, the highest price we'd see all year for them. Prices began to decline in the months that followed, but the deals were short lived and quickly crept up again to around $73.Read more

"Why, anybody can have a brain. That's a very mediocre commodity. Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the Earth or slinks through slimy seas has a brain. Back where I come from, we have universities, seats of great learning, where men go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. But they have one thing you haven't got: a diploma." – Wizard, The Wizard of Oz, MGM (1939)

Maybe the computer never delivered on the promise of the paperless office, but it did open the floodgate on one thing … data.

The result has been a data explosion:

• 1,203 Exabytes of digital info was created, replicated around the globe last year
• 1 Petabyte of new info has been produced every 15 seconds this year
• The annual growth in information is 59 percent

All of this is because people want to do it themselves (O.K., maybe companies "encouraged/pushed us a little") with ATMs, self check-in/check-out, email/video/tweets, online tell your life story, personalized TV/video/music entertainment, online travel/banking/paying/shopping.Read more

It's inevitable that as the New Year creeps closer, we begin to muse about what's to come in the next 12 months.

The editors over at dealnews researched and listed price adjustments that consumers can expect to see in 2012. Some increases seem almost customary, like ever-rising gas prices, while others, like a potential 25% hike on tap water, are more surprising.

1. Domestic and International Airfare
Greater demand and fewer available airline seats will likely lead to higher ticket prices for flights next year. American Express predicts prices within North America will increase up to 5% for economy seating, depending on the length of the flight, and up to 7% in business class. Things look more bleak for European travel. A new "green tax" implemented by the EU is aimed at reducing emissions, and it will levy a fee of roughly $15 per passenger, each way, for flights to the U.S. Fees on shorter flights within the EU will be taxed slightly less.Read more

Seagate Teams With Technology Leaders to Bring SATA 6Gbit/s Complete Solutions to Market

September 21, 2009 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Seagate Technology today began global shipments of the world's fastest, largest-capacity mainstream desktop hard drive - Barracuda XT, a 7200RPM product featuring 2TB of storage capacity and a blazing fast Serial ATA (SATA) 6Gb/second interface. The 3.5-inch desktop drive, the industry's first to feature a SATA 6Gb/s interface, meets the capacity demands of gaming, digital video-environments and other storage-hungry desktop computing applications while delivering the highest performance in its class.

The introduction of the Barracuda XT drive marks the shift to the next generation of desktop computing speed as Seagate doubles the storage bandwidth of current computers. Read more