Hard Drive Shortage

[tastar]

It seems like there is going to be a very serious hard drive shortage over the next few months that will significantly affect end-users. Western Digital's hard drive factory in Thailand (that produces 60 percent of their hard drives) is shut down from flooding, and a large number of component manufacturers based in Thailand are shut down as well. Per a sales rep that I spoke to, there is a 60 to 90 day lead time from the start of production to the finished product, so the shortage isn't going to end any time soon. Our company does local hard drive replacements, sells NAS and server systems and I tracked down some hard drives over the last couple of days to add to our stock. But, at the 4 wholesalers that I deal with, there are effectively no hard drives left - including internal notebook and desktop drives and external hard drives - and for the drives that they did have, prices were up by at least 10 - 15 percent. My guess is that the big computer manufacturers are scooping up the existing inventory to assure that they are going to be able to have enough computers to sell over the upcoming holiday shopping season.

So, if anyone is looking for an internal or external hard drive, or a NAS or a server, I would try to track one down quickly. Part of the shortage is probably due to panic buying, but, for our company, having internal hard drives available for our customers with failed drives is much better than risking the alternative. And, if someone ordered a NAS or server that required a bunch of drives, I don't believe that we would be able to fill the order under current circumstances.

Tony

[jonathanlung]

Wow. I just looked at local prices for hard drives... they've ballooned by about 50% since the last time I checked.

[Ellis Vener]

An update on the Thai flooding situation: http://www.weather.com/outlook/weather-news/news/articles/thailand-flooding_2011-10-17

[PierreVandevenne]

Wow. I just looked at local prices for hard drives... they've ballooned by about 50% since the last time I checked.

I bought a small batch in September at distributor level, the same batch would cost me 69% more if I ordered today. Ouch.

Also, sent one of the drives out for warranty two weeks ago, that was an advanced format drive - WD who has always been extremely reliable in terms of fulfilling their warranties, sent me a standard format drive as a replacement, same specs otherwise (unusual for them) that's marked as produced in Malaysia on the 19th of October 2011. Given that it may have transited through their German support center, arriving in Belgium on the 24th of October is impressive. Also gives an idea of how tight the supply is.

[tastar]

Just an update - the hard drive shortage is now hitting the PC market, too. Per one of our suppliers, some large equipment brokers are buying up existing PC inventory at distributors. The theory is that these guys are going to hoard inventory to drive up prices and then sell at a nice profit. We bought some Corei7 HP's three of weeks ago, and today they are $100.00 more expensive than they were (approximately $900 vs. $800). And, our distributor said that they couldn't guarantee whether the current price would hold for 1 day or a week, and that the situation won't clear up for the remainder of the year at best. They also said that manufacturers were cancelling existing PO's from them and weren't able to commit to deliveries.

So, if anyone is sitting on the fence about buying a new computer, I would consider accelerating the buying process. The holiday selling season is rapidly approaching, and I don't see good things happening. I know that this is definitely affecting the big PC suppliers like HP and Dell. I have a feeling that Apple, with their huge wads of cash and astute purchasing habits, could buy their way through the crisis without anyone noticing and might be able to use it to increase market share (and I can't imagine that they would raise prices, but if everyone else is doing it...).

Our company has been in the technology business for 16 years, and have always seen prices continuously drop. For the near term, re. hard drives and computers, it ain't going to be happening for a while. Very different feeling.

Tony

[NikoJorj]

HD prices rocketing here in EU too... Attached is the best price curve of a WD 2TB caviar green in Germany.

[francois]

Same here in Switzerland. I bought a 2.5" HD and a couple of days later its price had more than doubled.