Consumers who are in the market for hard disk drive-based may benefit from shopping around at various stores. While most retailers offer the same hard drives for similar prices, bargains can be had if you do a little digging.
Current hard drive pricing remains higher than it was towards the beginning of Q3 2011, as the industry is still feeling the effects of the flood that hit Thailand and crippled hard drive production.
That said, hard drive pricing is steadily reducing towards pre-flood levels, while still being the cheapest form of storage for gamers.
Below is a table with pricing (including VAT) of various Seagate drives, sourced from local retailers including PC International, LandmarkPC, Prophecy, and Sybaritic.
| 500GB Barracuda | 1TB Barracuda | 1.5TB Barracuda | 2TB Barracuda XT | 3TB Barracuda XT | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PC International | R760.00 | R987.00 | R967.00 | R1214.00 | R1717.00 |
| LandmarkPC | R772.92 | R1002.06 | R1098.96 | R2059.98 | R2707.50 |
| Sybaritic | R775.00 | R1002.00 | R1099.00 | R2061.00 | R2758.00 |
| Prophecy | R820.12 | R1020.76 | R1117.31 | R2079.13 | R2515.52 |
| Platter speed | 7200rpm | 7200rpm | 5900rpm | 7200rpm | 7200rpm |
| Cache | 16MB | 32MB | 32MB | 64MB | 64MB |
| Sata connection | 6Gbps | 6Gbps | 6Gbps | 6Gbps | 6Gbps |
The first thing we notice from the table is that the 2TB and 3TB Barracuda XT from PC International are substantially cheaper than from the other retail stores. The store confirmed that the drives are in fact Barracuda XT drives and not the standard Barracuda drives which sell at other local retailers for the same price.
The 2TB drive from PC International is 41 percent cheaper that the cheapest competition (LandmarkPC), while the 3TB is 31.7 percent cheaper than the next cheapest offering (Prophecy).
Apart from the noticeable difference in high capacity drives, PC International consistently offers the lowest prices across all drives, though to a far lesser degree than the 2TB and 3TB drives.
As for the three online retailers, they are all priced extremely closely on average apart from the 3TB Barracuda XT offering from Prophecy which undercuts the other online stores by around 8 percent.
With the small price difference between the three online retailers, buying online from the store that provides the best after sales service, cheapest delivery and most user friendly site interface makes more sense that switching to a retailer you have no experience with.
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Pricing isn’t everything – I’ve had consistently better service from Prophecy than Sybaritic.
All my New-Hardware PC needs go to Prophecy now o/