The hard disk drive supply chain was hit hard late last year when a series of floods struck Thailand. The Asian country accounts for about a quarter of the world"s hard drive production, but thousands of factories had to close shop for weeks as facilities were under water, in what is considered the world"s fourth costliest natural disaster according to World Bank estimates. That"s on top of the human cost of over 800 lives.
Western Digital and Toshiba had factories in the flood zones whereas Seagate was mainly affected by the resulting supply constraints from business partners who were forced to halt production of related components. Among those was Nidec, which produces ~70% of the world"s hard drive spindle motors.
All this resulted in hard drive prices shooting through the roof around the end of October as production became more expensive and limited. With the help of price tracking site Camelegg we"ve checked on a number of mobile and desktop HDDs to get a better overview of how the situation has developed in the last three months.
Read: HDD Pricewatch: Three Months Into the Thai Floods
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