Hard drive prices continue to soar but when will they come down again?

The devastating floods in Thailand had serious implications for hard drive production. But it seems things are not as bad as they seem, there has been an essence of manufacturer and retailer scaremongering in order to exploit much higher prices. Hard drive production could recover within about 3 weeks so in time for the new year and Christmas. According to Digitimes there are several suppliers waiting to unload their hard drive inventory onto the market and the supplies they have, were hoarded over fears of hard drive shortages. So in essence the current hard drive shortage, to a large extent, is a self fulfilling prophecy of suppliers hoarding hard drives midst fears of a shortage and then actually creating one.

“Japan-based hard drive motor supplier Nidec already announced that one of its plants in Thailand has resumed production, while many other hard drive component suppliers are also aggressively seeking solutions to substitute their lost capacity in Thailand, the sources believe the hard drive shortage issues will see an obvious improvement in January 2012.”

The UK and Europe has been hit particularly bad by the soaring prices. In the UK prices have gone from around £35 for 1TB to about £105 for 1TB which is a 300% increase. Internationally these kind of prices actually are similar to what we saw in late 2009 and early 2010 when high capacity disk drives were relatively new. The main message of this all is that if you do not have to upgrade now then hold out for a month and you should be able to avoid the inflated scaremongering prices set by most retailers.

Source: Digitimes