When will hard drive prices go back to normal?

The flood in Thailand has increased hard drive prices all over the world. When will the prices go back to normal? I presume that with dramatic price increase, demand will go down and they can't sell as much. So, in the end, price has to go down to normal to match the demand.

 

A lot of computer parts are commoditized these days. Just like when bad weather reduces a particular crop yield, it constricts supply, which raises prices. When production gets back to normal, prices will come back down. Your guess is as good as mine as to when it'll happen.

 

I saw an ad by Frys just the other day, prices were not off by much. Just because online ads are high doesn't mean B and M stores adhere to those inflated prces.

 

In another 10 months

 

Analysts estimate at least 6 months. And they would not be surprised if ti actually took up to 12 months.

A large part of the problem is that the companies that make parts that go into a hard drive (like the motors, bearings, etc) are from Thailand. So even if a hard drive manufacturer (like Seagate) has facilities outside of Thailand, they will have a hard time finding a large supply of inexpensive components that go into those drives.

 

It's not the distributors that are inflating prices, distributors will be charged more when obtaining their supply, so they will charge more to the customer.

 

I wouldn't expect it to be less than a year or so. Even though the production goes upto the full capacity there should be a considerable amount of backlog from various manufacturers.


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FYI, there is an article that talks about the actual numbers behind the hard drive shortage.
Seagate lowers 4Q11 target HDD shipments to 41-45 million units

Seagate estimates that the global hard drive industry will ship 110mm - 120mm units out of 180mm unit demand, which is a shortfall of about 35% - 40%.

Seagate themselves expects to ship about 41mm - 45mm units in Q4 2011 (down from 50mm units in Q3 2011), which is a drop of about 15% for them. They were not as affected by the flooding in Thailand, because their manufacturing is not located there. However, a lot of the parts suppliers that go into making hard drives (motors, ball bearings, etc) are sourced from Thailand.

 

So the prices have to increase so that 40% of the people are unwilling to buy HDDs.

Methinks prices will go up even more early next year when more people think about upgrading.

 

WD has contracted with the Thai Navy to send divers in to survey production machinery to determine what can be salvaged. WD/Hitachi are doing what they can to ramp up production elsewhere.

Small component manufacturers, particularity in the US, are ramping up quickly. Raw materials shortages from China seem to be the bottleneck at the moment. China has a recent history of playing strategic games with the availability of rare earths, so much so that they have been buying up mineral rights across Africa and South America.

Don't forget that in addition to the production capacity for intermediate assemblies and finished goods, a huge amount of stockpiled raw materials were lost in the floods.

Sony has successfully transferred their lens, NEX, and Alpha DSLR production to Japan and VN.

No word on what Nikon or the independent lens makers have been able to do. Nikon and Canon are both sitting on the introduction of new high-end DSLRs because their factories are out of action.

Although the typhoon/hurricane season traditionally ends on 30 Nov, there are several interesting weather patterns in place for the next 10 days.

I'm heading back over there the first week of December.

 

I will not pay inflated prices for a new HDD for my laptop, so I'm buying an SSD instead. Plus, a damaged HDD is a perfect excuse to upgrade anyways

 

kent1146 summed it up pretty well. Abidderman has a good point about brick and mortar, though. Apparently some of them didn't get the news that their supply chain would be drying up and didn't change prices. I was able to buy the same exact hard drive that Amazon and Newegg had for $150 for less than $100 post-tax at Best Buy a few weeks ago - they actually lived up to their name for once. They might be out of stock by now, but back then they still had adequate stock, probably because no one ever buys computer supplies from them.

As a side note, they didn't have a one-per-customer limit, either, so if you wanted two identical drives for RAID or whatever, you could get them. I've heard that other B&M retailers such as MicroCenter do have such a limit, though, so YMMV.

 

Shortages To Ease By The End Of 2012

The recent floods in Thailand have caused significant disasters to the factories of Western Digital, Toshiba and Seagate, as well as to other suppliers of components needed for making hard disk drives.

Seagate's CEO is not very optimistic about when HDD production will be back to pre-flood levels.

"This is going to take a lot longer than people are assuming, until the end of 2012 at least," he said speaking to Bloomberg. And by then, demand will have gone up."

Compared with the scores of companies in the disk drive industry with operations in Thailand, Seagate Technology Plc is lucky. The company's two biggest competitors, Western Digital and Toshiba , both have major factories in the flood zone, and industry production this quarter is expected to be 50 million drives short of its 180 million target.

Average drive prices have already jumped about 20 percent because of the flooding.

 

I got lucky and had ordered numerous harddrives for both work and home a week before the flooding happened but seeing the price tag on my beloved 2TB samsung F4 go from $89 to $230 made me sick to my stomach.

Seems like SSD prices stayed relatively the same though.