Is this the right time to buy a new hard disk?

With our recent live guides, we have tried to make the buying decision easier for consumers. This week we will be focussing on computer components, and right now, we’re looking at hard drives. The question in the headline comes to mind, but it doesn’t exactly have the easiest answer, given the recent fall of the rupee and the subsequent rise in prices.

We got in touch with some of our sources in the market to see which storage drives are selling well as well as whether prices will keep rising in the future. The answers, sadly enough, weren’t very uplifting. Despite the festive season shopping frenzy, prices of hard drives have remained higher than one would expect.

HDDs are an important part of PCs

Retailers told us that though SSDs and HDDs have seen a rise in prices over the last few months, they’ve essentially followed the pattern of the rupee against the dollar. The price of HDDs have followed the same curve. When the rupee fell disastrously in the middle of the year, prices shot up dramatically. Now that INR is in the Rs 60-63 range when compared to the US dollar, prices have fallen, but are still higher compared to the early months of the year. So after a brief spell when prices shot up astronimically, they have ‘stabilised’, but are still on the higher side of things. Retailers told us that in terms of HDDs, popular options include the 1TB HDD from Seagate, which costs about Rs 3,999, while the 256GB SSD from Plextor costs Rs 11,599 and is also one of the fastest-moving SKUs.

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The question, however, is how much sense it makes to buy an HDD or SSD right now. Or indeed which one. Retailers tols us that prices aren’t likely to come down anytime soon, so expect to see very similar prices to the ones listed on the below table for the next few weeks. Check out the table below for the prices for some of the popular drives out there.

| | <span style=“mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: " times=”" new="" roman";="" mso-hansi-font-family:="" calibri;="" mso-bidi-font-family:="" color:="" black;="" mso-fareast-language:="" en-in;"="">Samsung 128GB | <span style=“mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: " times=”" new="" roman";="" mso-hansi-font-family:="" calibri;="" mso-bidi-font-family:="" color:="" black;="" mso-fareast-language:="" en-in;"="">Rs 9,899 | | <span style=“mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: " times=”" new="" roman";="" mso-hansi-font-family:="" calibri;="" mso-bidi-font-family:="" color:="" black;="" mso-fareast-language:="" en-in;"="">Samsung 256GB | <span style=“mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: " times=”" new="" roman";="" mso-hansi-font-family:="" calibri;="" mso-bidi-font-family:="" color:="" black;="" mso-fareast-language:="" en-in;"="">Rs 16,049 | | <span style=“mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: " times=”" new="" roman";="" mso-hansi-font-family:="" calibri;="" mso-bidi-font-family:="" color:="" black;="" mso-fareast-language:="" en-in;"="">Plextor 128GB | <span style=“mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: " times=”" new="" roman";="" mso-hansi-font-family:="" calibri;="" mso-bidi-font-family:="" color:="" black;="" mso-fareast-language:="" en-in;"="">Rs 6,899 | | <span style=“mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: " times=”" new="" roman";="" mso-hansi-font-family:="" calibri;="" mso-bidi-font-family:="" color:="" black;="" mso-fareast-language:="" en-in;"="">Plextor 256GB | <span style=“mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: " times=”" new="" roman";="" mso-hansi-font-family:="" calibri;="" mso-bidi-font-family:="" color:="" black;="" mso-fareast-language:="" en-in;"="">Rs 11,599 | | <span style=“mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: " times=”" new="" roman";="" mso-hansi-font-family:="" calibri;="" mso-bidi-font-family:="" color:="" black;="" mso-fareast-language:="" en-in;"="">Corsair 128GB Neutron | <span style=“mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: " times=”" new="" roman";="" mso-hansi-font-family:="" calibri;="" mso-bidi-font-family:="" color:="" black;="" mso-fareast-language:="" en-in;"="">Rs 8,299 | | <span style=“mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: " times=”" new="" roman";="" mso-hansi-font-family:="" calibri;="" mso-bidi-font-family:="" color:="" black;="" mso-fareast-language:="" en-in;"="">Transcend 128GB | <span style=“mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: " times=”" new="" roman";="" mso-hansi-font-family:="" calibri;="" mso-bidi-font-family:="" color:="" black;="" mso-fareast-language:="" en-in;"="">Rs 10,000 |

If you look at the short term, this wouldn’t be a bad time to buy HDDs, as their prices will not fluctuate too heavily in the future. SSDs, however, have ended up becoming too expensive right now for the average consumer. We were told to expect a fall in the prices for SSDs, but not in the short term. While we will undoubtedly see SSDs getting much more affordable in the future, right now, they will only make sense to the richest among us.