The Mac Man

Due to the recent flooding in Thailand hard drive manufacturing has ground to a halt. A very high percentage of hard drives are made in Thailand and the stop in production can only mean one thing, higher prices for consumers and us....

We've read reports that many of the larger factories are still in the process of cleaning up after the terrible flooding that started back in October. This is Thailand's monsoon season so flooding is expected, but not to the degree being seen today.

Two of Western digital's main factories are underwater and these two factories produce 60% of WD's drives. So you can understand why hard drive prices are increasing day by day.

There is also another factor that is impacting on the shortage. The internal components that make up a hard drive are not manufactured by WD, Seagate or any of the HD manufacturers. They are made by many other firms. Nidec is responsible for making the internal motors that spin up conventional hard drives. Nidec is also suffering from the flooding and is completely offline at the moment. So even if WD get production back up and running, other internal components may still be hard to come by meaning production may halt again.

If you look at hard drive prices on Amazon they have increased by nearly 60% and this is continuing. This is not good for us or consumers as the increased cost will have to be passed on to our customers. We have a good stock of hard drives currently but this will deplete and the shortage is due to continue in to early next year.

Now might be a good time to look at getting that SSD you've been looking at...