2TB Hard Drives reach the $100 Barrier

Word is that 2TB drives are down as low as $100 at some etailers, that's a year and a half after first coming to market, at $250 and up. That's $100 on promotional sales, for moderate-performance drives. Over the weekend, NewEgg.com offered the Seagate LP ST32000542AS, a 2TB 5900-rpm internal SATA drive, for $99.99 to its mailing list customers. This drive falls into the energy-consious, moderate-performance part of the spectrum. Other resellers with these Seagates and with competing drives are hovering in the $105-$130 price range. Highest-performance 7200-rpm drives with 6Gb/s transfer rates are in the $200-$300 range.

These lowered prices may been helped by the recent news that 3TB drives will arrive sometime near year's end (probably). As often happens, once a product nears a round price point - just above $1,000, $500, $200, $100 - odds are you'll see a promotion or sale to push it down that last little bit. Do it enough times, and the successor to a $2,999 LCD TV is $999 three years later.

In May, for instance, Newegg had the same Seagate drive at $130, then at $130 less $20 instant rebates for mailing list customers, then at $99.99 over the weekend for its mailng list.