If you bought a new hard drive for your PC within the past month, consider yourself very lucky. As we reported earlier this month, a massive flooding event in the country of Thailand, which is the world"s number two exporter of hard drives, was expected to cut into supplies. Now Reuters is reporting that hard drive makers have increased prices for their products by as much as 40 percent.
Hard drive factories are from companies like Western Digital are being shut down due to the floods in Thailand. The end result is that hard drive inventories are disappearing here in the US, not just from big PC makers like Dell and HP but most likely from your local computer store as well. This could also affect PC supplies as a whole, during the very busy holiday season. In fact one company, NetGear, claims that hard drive distributors are using the floods as an excuse to increase hard drive prices by more than double their normal amount.
We sometimes take for granted that products such as hard drives will always be available and that prices for those drives would continue to go down. With no end to the floods in Thailand in sight, this current situation could put a big dent in PC sales at a time when the industry certainly doesn"t need it.