In late summer of 2011 Thailand experienced heavy flooding, which inundated Western Digital's facility as well as the factories that produce the slider mechanisms used by all drive manufacturers. As a result, prices on all hard drives skyrocketed in late 2011. At times we were paying over $100 for a simple 500gb W/D Caviar Blue drive that had cost us about $38 before the shortage.

The floods subsided and the factories have been restored, but hard drive pricing has changed. Warranty from Seagate has dropped from 5 year to 1 year on most of their desktop product. Western digital has dropped warranty from 3 years to 2 years on their Caviar Blue series, but has kept 3 year warranty on their Caviar Black series.

Pricing on 500gb 7200RPM drives is currently at about $80, occasionally less at some of the internet discounters. Our favorite desktop drive, the W/D 1002FAEX, is below $120. It was priced consistently at $99 before the flooding.

There is plenty of availability for desktop drives.

The real problem for us has been the scarcity and high prices of server drives. Prices have finally returned to acceptable levels. We have updated all of our server systems to reflect current pricing and availability.