Disk Drive Sector Discussion Forum Message Board

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Technology Stocks : Disk Drive Sector Discussion Forum

WDC 179.68

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To: Thomas DeGagne who wrote (8902)	11/20/2000 3:51:37 AM
From: Mark Madden	Read Replies (2) of 9256

Thank you for inquiring more about the pricing data. My data does not have a breakdown of drives by platters. Sometimes I can make reasonable guesses at platters but I can rarely tell how many platters a drive has from the information given by the retailer. The 10gb, 15gb and 20gb sizes are hard to tell whether they are one platter or two. I rarely find the platter capacity information in the drive specifications. Perhaps the manufacturers keep the platter information confidential so customers do not feel they are buying old technology when they purchase lower capacity platters. I believe the retail price of drives at a given capacity is about the same regardless of the number of platters. Although the cost of manufacturing a multi-platter drive may be more than a single platter drive, the asking price may be the same unless customers are willing to pay more for different internal components. From the figures others have mentioned for components, an additional platter and two heads may increase the production costs about $30. Here are some average desktop retail prices at different capacities: 20gb-5400rpm - $116 (24 samples) 20gb-7200rpm - $136 (24 samples) 40gb-5400rpm - $176 (8 samples) 40gb-7200rpm - $218 (12 samples) 60gb-5400rpm - $251 (12 samples) 60gb-7200rpm - $410 (3 samples) 80gb-5400rpm - $319 (5 samples) Although the manufacturing costs of a drive may increase about $30 per platter, the 5400 rpm drives increase about $60, $75 and $100 incrementally thus giving higher margins for the higher capacity drives. I hope this helps. I can easily make graphical data from my multiple spreadsheets but I have now way of displaying the data. Regards, Mark

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