Over a week after, and still reeling with one of the biggest disasters in its history, Japan is home to major manufacturing plants of hard drive-grade substrate makers such as Furukawa Denko and Kobe Steel; as well as HDD OEM Showa Denko, all of which have faced temporary shutdowns after the quake. The three have all reported damage to facilities, injuries of employees and have shut down their operations pending further evaluation. This could have its repercussions on the hard drive industry, which is beginning to face serious competition from the solid-state drive (SSD) industry, in the lower-mainstream segments.

Showa Denko-made HDDs amount for 25% of global market, but its facilities are distributed between Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore. Showa Denko supplies to Seagate and Western Digital, two major companies in the HDD business, though since the two have their own manufacturing facilities, shortage of Showa Denko-sourced hard drives may not have an immediate impact, notes DigiTimes. On the other hand is HDD component manufacturers such as Furukawa Denko and Kobe Steel, which produce HDD-use substrates using aluminum mainly for desktop PCs; TDK, Showa Denko and Fuji Electric, which make fine components such as read/write heads and the magnetic discs.TDK's facilities are unaffected by the quake as they are outside the disaster zone, the Japan-based magnetic-storage veteran owns about 30% of the global magnetic read/write head market. But on the other hand, Showa Denko's facilities are struck by disaster and have shut down. This company owns about 25% of the market, supplying around 22 million discs each month. HDD metal substrate supply is dominated by Japanese players, most of the substrate and motor makers including Hoya, Nihon Densan and Konica Minolta do not have plants in the disaster zones, and they only have seen limited impact from the earthquake. Kobe Steel, and Furukawa Denko, have suspended their plants in disaster zones.

Japan's rolling power-cuts in the wake of disabled atomic power plants is another factor at play here, it affects production at facilities otherwise unaffected by the disaster. Overall, it is observed that while there is little short term impact on the HDD industry, it could be a long term setback for major HDD companies to compete against the SSD industry.