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Originally Posted by DarKStar  Yes but what I don't understand is how come I purchased 320GB for almost half, and now it's $91 ?
I've heard that the 500/640 have a high failure rate - mind you, I keep seeing people returning their drives failing, clicking, grinding, etc, not too encouraging - which is why I buy them in pair. For little over $100 I got 2 x 320GB SATA2 16MB NCQ, now for 2 of the same drives, only weeks later, I would pay over $180 ! |
500GB HDs are perfectly fine. In total, in my household I'm running 6 WD5000AAKS drives. No grinding or clicking here.
Anyway, I think the small drives are going up in price because the demand for them is dropping and retailers keep less stock. By simple economics, something in scarce supply will cost more.
Now...in the PC industry we see various anomalies where newer MUCH better hardware costs far less, but sometimes these fluctuations in price can also be attributed to a lower cost of production for the new stuff. The manufacturer and/or retailer may also have decided to run tighter margins in hopes of selling more of the product.
The general trend with both RAM and HDs is the lowering of prices. I remember how just 2 years back you couldn't even find a 4GB kit of DDR2-800. Back then, a half-decent 2GB kit would hit you at $150-200. Today such a kit is just $50.
As for the HDs...there are 1TB drives out there for the price of a 500GB HD just over 1 year ago.