So, hard drive prices are pretty much back to normal?

Not quite but they're getting there.

Definitely not back to normal yet. Before the prices increased I paid $65 to $70 for my 2TB Seagate drives. If they are down to $100 now then that is good progress but still about 50% higher than they used to be.

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HDD prices won’t recover until 2014

Moreover, there are now only two manufacturers for all intents and purposes, they have no incentive to lower prices. The floods gave them a reason to increase prices and now its an excuse to continue with high prices.
Before the floods, a 2TB Hitachi was selling for $60 AR regularly. I probably purchased 12-15 drives (for myself and other installations). Thankfully I don't need any more storage for the next year or two.

+1. I was just about to say the same thing.

Actually three, I think. The antitrust folks made WD sell Hitachi's 3.5" business to Toshiba, as I understand it.

Before the flood, $69 was the standard price for a 2TB green drive, with specials occassionally at $59. Now the standard has fallen to $109 with specials at $99, but there's still a long way to go.

I recently bought a 1.5TB Seagate Green from Micro Center for $85 with no rebate, but that might have been an in store only sale.

Is that Seagate Drive a good drive? I get scared by DOA complaints but all drives seem to have them. I am about to build my first HTPC and have my solid state drive but wanted to add one internal drive at least to go along with my 6TB external storage. Is this a good drive for that?

I still have 1.4TB left as I sort out all the server, but won't retire my externals until prices drop back to pre-flood levels. I know the OEM's are trying to milk this for a long as possible.

Yup, this is what I heard we are down to no competition, don't expect great prices anymore. I'm doing my part to lower prices, I stopped buying hard drives. I'm going to use what I have until failure. Who knows by 2014 500gig ssd's might be affordable.
Edited by jeffkro - 6/12/12 at 10:37pm

I think they'll come down more, especially before 2014. Most DIY consumers already have a bunch of drives for storage. SSD's are becoming so cheap now that everyone will be using them for OS drives soon. The only people who are buying lots of large size mechanical drives are people building/buying NASes, and storage servers.

I could use a couple spare 2GB drives, just to make it easier to move my data from my old NAS to a new one I am in the process of building. But I have so many hard drives laying around I can really do without buying new stuff just for that purpose. If they were $50-60 again it would just be easier to buy a new drive, rather then organize all the crap I have on spare drives I have.

They will come down, especially at the rate SSDs are HDDs will have to come down to be competitive with others.

I have been holding off as long as I can for 2TBs drives to go back down, and they are slowly starting to, if they dont anytime soon I bet around x mas we will see a big drop.

I read the Newegg reviews, & others, & the Seagate Green appeared to be slightly better than the WD Green drive. But neither one was 5 star (or eggs). I've always heard WD was better than Seagate but when I was researching this a few weeks ago it seemed to me that Seagate was getting the better reviews. So who knows.

The Seagate Green is a 5900 rpm drive. I'm told the WD Green is variable from 5400 to (I think) 7200. Depending on who I listen to, the WD is slower because it has to change speeds, or it's faster because it can be.

I needed a drive for my first HTPC & the Seagate seemed as good as any & the price was decent.

Good luck with your first build.

FWIW, and this is a small sample, but I have the following in my WHS:

1 x WD 1.5TB
3 x Samsung 2TB
2 x Seagate (1TB, 2TB)

All of these drives have been very reliable. The WD, 1 Samsung and 1 Seagate are close to 2 years old. The rest have been running at least 1 year. 24/7.

It has me rethinking: is one drive manufacturer really that much more reliable than any other.

Of the dozens and dozens of WD, Samsung and Seagate HDDs I've bought over the past 5 years, only one was DOA and I believe it was because it was stuffed in an padded envelope with no protection (yes, Amazon, nice job!).

I have all Samsung dives minus my 2 SSDs my 500gig Samsung is over 2 years old and I have never had a problem. I personally love their drives especially their higher capacity drives.