back to article WD: Thai floods will force hard drive prices up

WD has warned disk drive shortages will linger well into 2012 and price rises are inevitable as it deals with the aftermath of the severe flooding in Thailand. The country's worst floods in over half a century have so far claimed the lives of at least 317 people, affected more than nine million, and inundated 700,000 homes: 14 …

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  1. J.G.Harston Silver badge

    News bias?

    I have a friend in Nagoya where it's been raining almost continuously for weeks, and after being hit by a typhoon was underwater for half of September. Is it anywhere on the news? No. But one little city in Louisiana gets hit by a hurricane and it's on the TV continuously, even six years later.

    1. JulianB

      Since when is Thailand a little city in Louisiana?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Check your sources.

      Newsflash: It isn't raining in Nagoya. Also, the flood you are referring to wasn't anything close to what's happening in Thailand, or New Orleans for that matter. It even disappeared from the Japanese news in about a week.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    UK Distribution

    Ingram Micro UK have suspended selling hard drives (at least to small accounts). Searching their site today for 'momentus' brings up 0 results, 'scorpio' brings up 2, neither in stock.

    Unless they are overreacting this looks to be pretty serious.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    As the sayings goes. "Don't keep your eggs in one basket." "What can go wrong will go wrong". That's what insurance is for.

  4. The Fuzzy Wotnot

    Now I realise the manufacturing world is full of tight margins and sale-or-return type agreements but why is it the second there's a natural disaster, anywhere in the world, the tech components makers immediately seize upon it to declare that prices must rise?!

    Sorry lads but it's as tired a story as another vapourware announcement from the "Barmy" Ballmer.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Given the projected losses WD have given investors from the flooding, I seriously doubt they are sitting around rubbing their hands with glee about the prospect of price rises.

  5. theblackhand

    Hmmm

    Doesn't surprise me that WD are looking to increase costs as HDD's have been on pretty thin margins (for a high-tch product) for years now - can't help wondering if it will have the unintended side effect of driving people to SSD's... Sure SSD's don't have the capacity, but the speed and shorter lifetime will appeal to laptop/PC manufacturers.

    1. Clyde

      ref Hmmm...

      " WD are looking to increase costs " :

      surely you mean ... are looking to increase prices ?

  6. Graham Jordan

    Just bought 5.5tb of WD storage

    Booyah!

    Someone's watching over me... well, 317 people perhaps. (Too much?)

  7. M H

    many other manufacturers too...

    I'm in bangkok and perhaps hear more from the local press than's reported internationally. So far, Honda, Toshiba, Ford, WD, Seagate, Canon, Nikon and others have been affected. There are huge industrial estates in Ayuthaya and Pathom Thani (both just north of bangkok) that are under as much as 3 metres of water which prevously employed 100,000's of workers. Food prices will rise too as Thailand is one of the biggest rice exporters worldwide but 10% of the farmland nationwide is destroyed.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Happy Christmas for Retailers !

    They only have to mention a possibility of a price rise and the retailers will let loose and hike the prices up. Convenient to say the least, however inconvenient the flooding itself was.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Mushroom

    Insufficient Budget Contingency?

    Prices of various models of Seagate and WD drives are up from 40%-60% over the past 2 weeks alone, at leading online discount stores here in North America. By sheer luck I bought at the low as well.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not all HDs are made in Thailand, the last two I ordered a while back were both made in China and were Seagates.

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