Flooding Leads to Hard Drive Shortages and Price Rises
Friday, November 11, 2011
Thailand's worst flooding in half a
century is resulting in disk drive shortages and prices rises.
Over a fifth of Bangkok is now under
water and the floods are still advancing into central areas of the
city. So far over 520 people have died, 14,000 factories have
been flooded and 700,000 people are out of work.
Thailand is the second largest
producers of hard drives in the world after China and many of the
biggest names in hard drive manufacture operate from the country
and have been badly affected
The largest producer of drives,
Western Digital, has seen 75% of their production line shut
down. Toshiba has stated that some of its factories are under
3m of water.
The current estimate for full recovery
is Q3 2012, but prices and stock will be very volatile for the
foreseeable future. Currently disk prices are double what they were
a couple of month ago.
