Slashdot Mirror
Flooding Takes Major Hard Drive Plant Offline; Shortages Predicted
snydeq writes "Flooding near Bangkok has taken about 25 percent of the world's hard disk manufacturing capacity offline, InfoWorld reports. 'Disk manufacturing sites in Thailand — notably including the largest Western Digital plant — were shut down due to floods around Bangkok last week and are expected to remain shut for at least several more days. The end to flooding is not in sight, and Western Digital now says it could take five to eight months to bring its plants back online.' Toshiba's Thailand plants have also been affected, as have key disk component suppliers, including Nidec and Hutchinson Technologies."
Try to order some WD RE drives and just hope that they are in stock, or better yet email the seller in advance.
I thought with offshoring everything you wouldn't run into these problems.
you're SOL when the specialist is out of commission.
It's sort of fascinating how, despite all our technology, we still suffer from such problems. It seems we may have crossed beyond the point where gained efficiency from specialization has more total cost than slightly less efficient, more flexible (less specialized) industries. In this case the "specialist" is geographical rather than talent, but I think the concept applies well enough.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
Giant planning failure!
I can't wait to hear who decided to put the largest HD assembly operation in a flood plain where Asian Monsoons routinely flood out large areas every year.
It is not like this is unexpected.
Restart the plant and...it happens next year or the year thereafter.
Need more be said. Hard drives are so last year.
I tole 'em they shudna moved them faktrees outa tornader alley.
Good thing global climate change is just a liberal hoax, or we'd be in real trouble!
Great. Another industry that can blame massive price increases on some sort of natural disaster or political instability, and conveniently leave prices there when the danger has passed.
How long do you think it will take for prices to come back down once all of these plants are repaired or replaced? Will they ever come down? Southeast asian semi-conductor manufacturing is already rife with price-fixing and other grossly anti-competitive practices. Throw in this flooding which, albeit temporarily, provides a real excuse for some short supply and weakened competition and I bet we'll never hear the end of it.
The prices are going to skyrocket. Anyone remember about a decade ago when the earthquake knocked out the memory manufacturers? RAM shot up in price x.x
Good thing I stocked up on HDD this year. Now my dream PC can be built in Feb. =D
"That's right...I said it."
Shortages usually mean higher prices. And if spinning platters become more expensive, more people will turn to solid state instead.
Yeah, prices only have to go up about a factor of a hundred and that 3TB SSD will finally be competitive with my 3TB HDD.
...is going to wish it had chosen a different name.
(yes, I know that Seagate wasn't listed in TFS)
There are a good number of Tech Manufacturing Plants all or partially under water in Thailand.
Nikon makes most of its Consumer DSLR's there and the plant is out of action. With thait other big plant in Sendai still operating at reduced levels after the Tsuami, quite a bit of stock is going to become hard to find.
I live in the middle of the Canadian shield. About the only natural disaster we see is the occasional small tornado. No floods, no earthquakes, no hurricanes. Nothing large-scale.
Looks like they didn't have a back-up plan...
Mastering the English language is fucking easy: all you have to do is to put an f* word in every fucking sentence.
The great thing about calling it Global Climate Change is that it is anything the speaker wishes it to be. Any condition can be ascribed to it. Any weather phenomenon that makes the news can be included.
It you make your terms generic enough there isn't much that escapes your grasp.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
No kidding, maybe they should keep other plants open for instances like this. Why there is a Seagate plant just about 10 miles from me that they pretty much stopped production at. Maybe they should ramp production back over there. The upside is that the people in this area will once again be able to afford hard drives.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
buildup areas change river flows and food walls just move the flood down the river.
For those needing bulk storage it would take a MASSIVE rise in the cost of HDDs to make SSDs price competitive.
More interesting is the cost comparison between a basic SSD and a basic HDD. IMO the smallest drive you can reasonablly put in a new computer is arround 60GB, go much lower than that and a lot of users will be running out of disk space but at 60GB most people other than gamers, video hoarders and a few other special classes will be quite happy. That will set you back $69 at current prices. A basic HDD will currently set you back $41 (prices from newegg and rounded to nearest dollar).
So the price of a basic HDD would only have to double for it to become attractive for those who don't have futures contracts (e.g. small whitebox builders) to put SSDs into low end boxes (assuming the SSD vendors have the extra capacity to cope without raising the price too much).
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register