HD Prices Headed Down, but Not Way Down

For system builders concerned about hard drive pricing, good news is followed by less stellar predictions. On the positive side, the spike in unit pricing that began after the July 2011 flooding in Thailand is fading, according to Tom Coughlin, president of Coughlin Associates, a data storage consultancy and research firm in Atascadero, Calif., but “we may see a long-term trend of 10 to 15 percent higher pricing than we had in 2011,” he notes.

Coughlin’s data shows average hard drive...