Perhaps you’ve noticed the prices of hard disk drives (HDD) going through the roof in recent weeks. Flooding in Thailand has decimated the manufacturing facilities for Seagate and Western Digital, the two largest players in digital storage (they supply 80% of the SATA drives on the market). Seagate indicated through its most recent SEC filing that its production capacity is less than half of what it was before the flooding.
These natural disasters also came on the heels of the world’s largest suppliers of rare-earth elements (which include the magnets used in hard disks) halting shipments for one month in order to drive up prices.
Industry analysts expect the flooding, which has also claimed hundreds of lives, to impact the HDD market for the next four to six months as alternate production facilities ramp up.
Keep checking back with the CMIT Solutions Blog for more developments on the shortage. We’ll post new information as it becomes available.