The 2011 Worldwide Hard Drive Shortage

[Candlelight]

The floods in Thailand have apparently knackered production of hard drives and supplies are becoming constrained around the world. On one of our supplier's websites it has:

"Due to the fact that there is a world wide shortage on Hard Drives, we no longer have any avaliable. We will inform you when supply returns."

Anyone else here being affected?

 

[RoJoHen]

I haven't heard of this. Of course, I've never really reason to just buy hard drives by themselves.

 

[Amaris]

On TigerDirect the prices have jumped. I used to find 250GB WD internals for about $40. Now they're $89. Newegg's prices seem to be about the same, though.

 

[Yoda]

Had to order a server drive for work, imagine my shock when on Newegg the same drive we got for 70 bucks a few months ago was now 270, and they only allowed you to buy one!

 

[ITL]

Dammit, I was wanting to buy a 1TB external in the near future. Bollocks.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I'm glad I bought that 500GB pocket drive a couple months back. Had I waited, I'd be hosed...

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Somewhat bizarrely, it's difficult to find the manufacturing country of origin for hard drives. As far as I can tell, Samsung lists China as the country of origin for its drives, Western Digital lists Singapore and Thailand, Hitachi lists Thailand, and Seagate lists Singapore.

I suspect there really is a shortage, but there might also be some speculation and price gouging going on by a couple of the manufacturers. I mostly buy WD drives, which I find to be the most reliable. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt as they do list Thailand as a source.

 

[Kemaiku]

My old harddrive failed a while ago, got a new one fitted (500GB to replace the 250GB) and heard nothing about a shortage.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

The shortage is pretty recent--as in, within the past few weeks.

 

[ares93]

the drive that i have in my SH mainframe was upped from 95 euros to 150.

 

[Pingfah]

Prices have more than doubled in the last month.

I was looking at £60 a pop for a couple of 2TB external drives a few months ago, now they are £150 each for the same model on ebuyer. And you can't buy a 2TB external drive for much less than that.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I just checked, and the 500GB pocket drive I bought August 24th for $45.08 is now $103.33. Crazy! And I haven't even done anything with it yet. Maybe I should try to sell it for $80 or so, and make a tidy profit.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

If I'd have known, I would have bough a shedload of them a couple of months ago. Would have beaten gold as an investment.

 

[Captain Ice]

Same here. I'd noticed prices had gone up, but not how much or why.

 

[B.J.]

Has anyone noticed if it's affected the price of a full computer system?

 

[ares93]

Has anyone noticed if it's affected the price of a full computer system?

Not at the same degree, but yes.

 

[Kemaiku]

The shortage is pretty recent--as in, within the past few weeks.

Yup, got mine done three weeks ago at most.

 

[Candlelight]

Somewhat bizarrely, it's difficult to find the manufacturing country of origin for hard drives. As far as I can tell, Samsung lists China as the country of origin for its drives, Western Digital lists Singapore and Thailand, Hitachi lists Thailand, and Seagate lists Singapore.

I have two HDDs on my desk at the moment, one HP, one Seagate - both say Product of Thailand.

 

[ares93]

All of me drives say Thailand. Just checked all nine. Dunno about me external. But I'm pretty sure that's Thailand too since its a WD drive.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Then what we have really is a single point of failure in a non-redundant system.