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If you haven't seen hard drive prices recently you'd be in for a rude shock. Over the past month prices have shot through the roof, in some cases doubling in price, driven by the recent flooding in Thailand.
The flooding hasn't gotten a lot of coverage in Australia, but most of central Thailand was recently inundated by flood waters - which still haven't subsided. The situation is so bad that the Australian government's Smart Traveler website was advising a high degree of caution when planning travels to Thailand, with advice to reconsider traveling to Bangkok.
These flood waters have displaced an estimated 100,000 people and inundated several large industrial estates. These estates not only house some important part manufacturers for the automotive and electronics industry, but they are central to the manufacture of hard drives.
Whereas once upon a time there were a multitude of drive manufacturers, there are now three companies responsible for the creation of storage. Toshiba, which largely manufactures drives for its own computing and electronics products; Seagate, which recently entered into an agreement to take over Samsung's drive business; and Western Digital, who is in the midst of acquiring Hitachi's, nee IBM's, hard drive division.
Both Seagate and Western Digital have large manufacturing outfits in Thailand. According to a recent IDC report, a stunning 25% of the world's hard drives come from Thailand. Even worse, not only are the drives made in Thailand, but a lot of the components that go into the construction of drives are also made around the country.
With flooding impacting the entire supply chain there is no real notion of how long it will take to get affected factories back up and running. Western Digital has even closed its factories due to the flooding - Seagate's are still open but their suppliers have been hit quite badly, which is causing disruption.
Suddenly losing almost a quarter of the world's hard drive manufacturing capacity is no small problem. Not only are there bare drives to supply to component resellers, but there are both external hard drives and third party manufacturers to consider.
The knock-on effect of all this is the massive jump in pricing that we have seen in recent times. It hasn't been too obvious in big chain stores yet, due to the way in which pricing is managed, but the impact is becoming more and more widespread as time goes on and demand for products like external drives increases for the end of 2011 and beyond into 2012.
The flooding hasn't gotten a lot of coverage in Australia, but most of central Thailand was recently inundated by flood waters - which still haven't subsided. The situation is so bad that the Australian government's Smart Traveler website was advising a high degree of caution when planning travels to Thailand, with advice to reconsider traveling to Bangkok.
These flood waters have displaced an estimated 100,000 people and inundated several large industrial estates. These estates not only house some important part manufacturers for the automotive and electronics industry, but they are central to the manufacture of hard drives.
Whereas once upon a time there were a multitude of drive manufacturers, there are now three companies responsible for the creation of storage. Toshiba, which largely manufactures drives for its own computing and electronics products; Seagate, which recently entered into an agreement to take over Samsung's drive business; and Western Digital, who is in the midst of acquiring Hitachi's, nee IBM's, hard drive division.
Both Seagate and Western Digital have large manufacturing outfits in Thailand. According to a recent IDC report, a stunning 25% of the world's hard drives come from Thailand. Even worse, not only are the drives made in Thailand, but a lot of the components that go into the construction of drives are also made around the country.
With flooding impacting the entire supply chain there is no real notion of how long it will take to get affected factories back up and running. Western Digital has even closed its factories due to the flooding - Seagate's are still open but their suppliers have been hit quite badly, which is causing disruption.
Suddenly losing almost a quarter of the world's hard drive manufacturing capacity is no small problem. Not only are there bare drives to supply to component resellers, but there are both external hard drives and third party manufacturers to consider.
The knock-on effect of all this is the massive jump in pricing that we have seen in recent times. It hasn't been too obvious in big chain stores yet, due to the way in which pricing is managed, but the impact is becoming more and more widespread as time goes on and demand for products like external drives increases for the end of 2011 and beyond into 2012.
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