To summarise, HDD prices are at an all-time high and will carry on rising daily
until well into 2012.
Thailand has experienced
catastrophic floods in October 2011, resulting in more than two-thirds of the
country submerged in water, affecting the majority of businesses and families in
the region. The majority of HDD manufacturers have production facilities in
Thailand and their component manufacturers are based in the region.
This natural disaster has impacted the world supply of HDDs and caused large
price increases. We have been doing our best to buy large volumes of stock to
protect customers from price hikes, but it is with great displeasure that we now
need to raise our prices as our re-buy costs are around triple compared to the
prices at the start of October 2011.
Every retailer and system builder is in the same situation, we will do our best
to off-set the costs and search the market for the best deals, but as our
computer prices are already extremely keen we cannot carry all of the burden of
the increased costs. The prices will continue rising on a daily basis until at
least February/March 2012, as the production facilities have been soaked in 2
meters of water, there is severe damage and the re-building process will take a
few months to complete.
Although standard HDDs have risen in price, the prices for SSDs have not been affected, so if you couldn't afford to stretch to an SSD, it would be a worthwhile alternative compared to the currently inflated HDD prices.
Click
here for a statement from Western Digital, the world's biggest HDD
manufacturer:
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