I wouldn't mind the prices if overall capacity was improving. Without the floods, and taking actual prices to be relative, I'd have expected the best price-per-gig to be 3-4TB by now. Last I checked a couple weeks ago, the best $/GB was either 1.5 or 2 depending on how much you're willing to skimp on quality, seek time, sata rate, or warrantee. This is slightly backwards from where things were in Oct 2011. I don't know how much of this is a normal bump in Moore's law or an actual slow-down of R&D due to floods, mergers or something else.
I'd hoped to rebuild a RAID by now, but it can probably wait til 2013. Sad that these floods have impacted our technological progress, and shame on price-fixing greedy corporate shills, but personally, I choose to be humbled that my hard drive woes are nothing compared to the displacement faced by people under the Thai floods. My life could be a lot worse.