Impending hard drive shortage

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Floods in Thailand have shut down approximately 25% of the world’s hard drive manufacturing capacity. Expect price hikes — or  at least no immediate
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Didn’t we have this same discussion about “impending hard drive shortages” about a year ago? And a year earlier, and a year before that? Always some sort of Natural Disaster or Format Change, but always the same timing — just in time for the Holiday tech buying season. I am getting tired of this sort of FUD masquerading as tech news. It’s manufacturer hype and nothing more.

In a global economy, even after the Japan Earthquake, manufacturers rapidly switched tech component making to other locations not affected by the disaster. This is no different.

I am indeed sorry for all the folks affected by the Thailand flooding, and this is a serious humanitarian issue. But it will NOT affect hard drive availability. Pricing will spike on speculation, but there will be NO actual shortage.

Just my own opinion.

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@Bob –

I assure you it isn’t FUD. The floods in Thailand are very real – Rotary here is doing massive relief work – and those Western Digital plants are completely out. That said, yes, you can bet manufacturing will be shifting to other locations. But it’s also true that a substantial percentage of all the components used by the major HD manufacturers are also made in Thailand, in plants that got wiped out.

Will it lead to price increases? Hard to say. But I feel very confident in saying that we aren’t going to see any price decreases in the near term.

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Woody, I wasn’t questioning the floods or the plants being out of service. What I question is whether the worldwide market will really be impacted as hard as the tech news seems to want us to believe.

Prices and availability will undoubtedly be impacted for awhile. But what I’ve seen in similar disasters is that the supply quickly recovers and there hasn’t been much long-term increase in pricing or decrease in availability of whatever the rumors are about.

I know the floods are real, and this is a terrible humanitarian situation. But the pricing rumors are out of line in my opinion. No, prices will not be going down anytime soon. But I don’t think this will result in critical shortages.

The timing of this rumor is still suspect, IMHO.

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rc primak,

Look up the pictures online, they are all over the internet. You’re completely wrong in every way. Two of Western Digital largest manufacturing facilities are literally half under water. If you think this won’t disrupt supply lines you’re out to lunch.

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@John —

Believe what you want, but Western Digital is not the world’s only hard drive manufacturer. And these arre not the only plants Western Digital has which can manufacture hard drives. If everyone buys into the FUD, yes, there will be panic buying and there will be a self-fulfilling prophecy of a shortage. But this is not what has happened for four years of pre-holiday hard drive FUD.

A year or two ago, it was a format change which was supposed to make it impossible to use Windows XP with the new hard drives. This never amounted to more than a rumor. Before that there was another rumor of parts shortages, and before that, the manufacturers were supposedly discontinuing all hard drives of less than 2TB capacity. All rumors. All FUD.

Anyone who looks at one photo and declares a worldwide disaster is the one who is out to lunch.

I have never in my lifetime seen the shelves of Frys, the Micro Center or Best Buy bare of hard drives in all sizes and all formats. and I never will live to see that day. End of discussion.

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One more thing:

Windows 8 Metro does not use local storage. If this is the platform which home users will prefer (and that is a very big IF) there will be a precipitous decline in consumer demand for hard drives, and manufacturers will no longer put hard drives into new consumer-level netbooks and tablets. If this happens, it will be in about two to four years. And hard drive manufacturers, far from experiencing shortages, will have a massive glut of inventory with no consumer buyers to take up the slack. Probably not going to happen quite this way, but it is something all manufacturers must be thinking about even this far in advance.

Remember the day when Best Buy declared The Death of The VCR? Try to buy one now. Or when Bill gates declared The Death of The Floppy Disk? Who uses them anymore? More examples could fill a book. Technology moves forward and could leave the Hard Drive in the dust in just a few more years.

Something to think about during the current hard drive shortages.

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These companies do not have contingency plans? These d********* cover every base as taught in the Harvard-Yale Shark Academy.

I’m sorry for the plight of the slave labor force of Thailand, but this would not have happened if the factory was in Indiana.

These manufacturers know people use high-capacity disks for storage once provided by
DVDs. Tragedy plus opportunism always equates to good business. Anyone else out there besides the big four could clean up. Nothing in Ireland. Some Euro backwater?

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@Buster –

Slave labor force? Naw. The people who work at the hard drive fab plants in Thailand have excellent jobs.

The flooding wouldn’t have happened in Indiana. But it might’ve happened in Louisiana…

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