Thailand Floods: HDD Prices To Remain Extortionately High As Supplies Get Tighter

[qubit]

The recent dreadful flooding in Thailand has forced the closure of several hard drive factories. The immediate concerns of course, are for the health and wellbeing of the people living and working in the area. The wider concern is the severe restriction in hard drive manufacturing capacity. Already, prices have doubled or tripled, depending on the exact model affected. The biggest HD manufacturer, Western Digital, has been hit the hardest, as IDC predicts that up to 75% of its production will be shut down. This means, that the big corporate HDD customers, those like HP and Dell, who build computer systems in large volumes, will get whatever inventory is available to fully satisfy their needs. Whatever is left is then sold on to the retail channel, for ordinary consumers to buy. IDC believes that hard disk production will reach pre-flood levels by around March, but that HDD levels by then will be very low. The prices should go through the roof then, in the meantime. As expected, this will also increase the prices of complete systems, as such a price hike is too much to absorb fully.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[qubit]

Thanks to Damn_Smooth for the lead.

 

[n-ster]

Damn I was thinking mid-Feb would be much more than enough to to get to pre-flood prices...

This destroys many of my plans... I had at least 12 HDDs that I wanted to buy. Sucks for me... Though it does suck even worse for Thailand

 

[Neuromancer]

Isn't there already a multipage thread on this? Should close this one like erocker does for bulldozer threads

 

[TheLaughingMan]

You can't close a news post. If anything happens, the original thread(s) about this will be removed, but I doubt that because it would be mean.

 

[n-ster]

Why thread-crap on this thread? just PM him or a someone else (super-mod? bta?) if you truly think this shouldn't be here... I personally like it as a news post, and this is about how bad the situation actually is vs just stating the situation.

Either way, please people, try not to thread-crap, especially in news posts... Use private communication or what's wrong with the forum?" thread

 

[FordGT90Concept]

I hope HDD manufacturers learned their lesson about putting too many eggs in one basket. Yes, labor might be cheap there but when there's a 144% increase in commedity price, most people aren't going to buy.

 

[Rowsol]

I hear SSDs are the future. Lets go back to the future.

 

[de.das.dude]

i was savin up for a new HDD

 

[Damn_Smooth]

It is going to be a long wait until March. I'm in the process of building a system for my brother right now. Luckily he has a hard drive we can use as a temp until then.

 

[RejZoR]

Current HDD prices are insane. Are they made out of gold and platinum or something? :lunatic:

 

[Damn_Smooth]

Current HDD prices are insane. Are they made out of gold and platinum or something? :lunatic:

Nope, they just aren't being made at all.

 

[Jack Doph]

Nope, they just aren't being made at all.

Nonsense.
Less than 25% of HDDs are manufactured in Thailand, so there is most definitely a case for price gouging going on.
It's yet another typical response by businesses to turn a human tragedy into a profit margin.
That said, it is true that WD in particular has invested a lot of their operations in Thailand, but this is far less true for the other manufacturers (Seagate in particular).

 

[Jetster]

What no flood sale?



http://www.crn.com/news/storage/231...;jsessionid=PLXGYIguWUTRR-RLiUisPg**.ecappj01

 

[mtosev]

SSDs FTW

 

[rpsgc]

Free market FTW! Right? Right? Riiiight?

 

[HossHuge]

People will be burning DVD's more until prices come down again.

 

[N-Gen]

Yup, guess my next step will be an optical drive instead of HDD. A BD writer might cover me until prices are down again.

 

[Wagoo]

There are still some bargains out there if you look in shops too slow to react.

 

[Jack Doph]

Yup, guess my next step will be an optical drive instead of HDD. A BD writer might cover me until prices are down again.

You know, I find that very interesting, because if I look at the local prices here (Australia) I'm rather astonished at the fact that external HDDs have barely changed in price.
I wonder if that's just a local thing, or a gamble on customers not looking at the similarities between external and internal drives?

 

[NdMk2o1o]

Why thread-crap on this thread?

Cause it's a qubit thread of course, flavour of the month is jump on the bandwagon and trash the new news posters threads, didn't you get the memo??

I have just bought 2x 2Tb drives and managed to get them at a good price, you can still find the odd drive or external drive at the same price as they were though they really are few and far between, on a different note at least I can sell my 2 500Gb wd5000aaks drives for more than I bought them for

 

[N-Gen]

You know, I find that very interesting, because if I look at the local prices here (Australia) I'm rather astonished at the fact that external HDDs have barely changed in price.
I wonder if that's just a local thing, or a gamble on customers not looking at the similarities between external and internal drives?

External drives here are even more expensive than the internals actually.

 

[Wagoo]

2TB externals here are the ones I found at an unadjusted price. Bought 4 so far, may pick-up some more today. Just a normal Seagate Barracuda Green inside.

 

[N-Gen]

2TB externals here are the ones I found at an unadjusted price. Bought 4 so far, may pick-up some more today. Just a normal Seagate Barracuda Green inside.

Wish I could do that, I managed to get a 1TB Black before the prices shot up, and I'm running low. Hopefully by the time everything is back to normal we'll have some 4TB drives out.

 

[AhokZYashA]

aaaaannnddd, just in time when all my 2TB HDD's are full,

how can i save all my files?