ASUS Running Out of Hard Disks

The hard drive crunch continues; reader Thorfinn.au writes "ASUS has said it only has hard disk drive (HDD) inventory until the end of November. 'Substitutes for HDD are very few, so if the situation persists, not only notebook production will be affected but also desktops, and other component shipments will also drop,' Asustek CFO David Chang told Reuters."

Comments

Supply for Q4 to be down 28%

[Thorfinn.au]

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2011/11/01/hdd_flooding/

Re:Supply for Q4 to be down 28%

[galaad2]

i found a few pictures of the flooded WD factory here:
(flip forward in the photo album)

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150371103772908

Re:Supply for Q4 to be down 28%

[Moryath]

The paranoid would say that this is a plan by the HDD manufacturers to get people to switch over to SSD's instead.

Of course, SSD's can't handle nearly the capacity-for-cost right now, which could present a problem.

When, oh when will we finally get holographic storage with petabytes per 1-inch cube? ;) Or perhaps Isolinear Chips?

Re:Supply for Q4 to be down 28%

[tgeek]

The paranoid would say that this is a plan by the HDD manufacturers to get people to switch over to SSD's instead.

Really??? Does anybody-- paranoid or otherwise -- think HDD manufacturers are plotting and scheming to put themselves out of business?

Re:Supply for Q4 to be down 28%

[jones_supa]

The paranoid would say that this is a plan by the HDD manufacturers to get people to switch over to SSD's instead.

No. It's clear that that kind of flooding will have real impact on manufacturing and prices.

Re:Supply for Q4 to be down 28%

[Adriax]

"Bizarro CEO run spinny plate company good! Next year we move to square spinny plates."

Re:Supply for Q4 to be down 28%

[doublebackslash]

the worst flooding in the country for more than half a century

Well there you go. They built a fab on a known flood plain. I wonder what the actuarial table for that looks like. That is assuming, of course, that WD even bothered with flood insurance...

Re:Supply for Q4 to be down 28%

[bell.colin]

Good thing i buy Seagate and stopped touching the crap that is WD years ago. (I miss Maxtor, the real one not the fake Quantum crap.)

Re:Supply for Q4 to be down 28%

[billcopc]

Seagate, Hitachi, WD, Toshiba, and Samsung, they have all had good batches and bad batches. Over the past 15 years, I'd say they all even out. The true measure of a hard drive manufacturer isn't really in the product itself, but in their warranty service. In that sense, I have to give WD the crown, followed very closely by Seagate. The key thing to remember is that all drives will eventually fail.

WD: zero hassle RMA. Plug in up to 5 serial numbers, and optionally order a cross-shipped replacement. 30 second process for 5 drives.

Seagate: slight hassle RMA. You can only do them one by one (or maybe two). About 1 in 5 drives will be falsely rejected by the web app, requiring a phone call. Pay $10 for a "advanced RMA" (cross-shipping), but that also covers your return shipping. 5 minute process per drive.

As a guy who was flogging in excess of 50 drives a month before the floods, I find WD's process much simpler and faster. They also don't limit you to 5 RMAs, that's just how many cross-shipments you can do in one batch on the web site. Of course, what matters to me, may not matter to you. If you only have one or two hard drives in your household, this is all moot.

Re:Supply for Q4 to be down 28%

[Anonymous Coward]

I called dell today to get pricing on drives for a md1120, they arent selling any.... Guess ill tell the client its time to implement quotas.

Re:Supply for Q4 to be down 28%

[rwa2]

Heh, I thought the 512 - 4096 byte block size migration was the plan by HDD manufacturers to help get people to switch over to SSD's instead.

The return of Linux on Eee?

[tepples]

Is this the time for ASUS to bring back the SSD netbook? As I understand it, Xubuntu is smaller than Windows 7 and would more comfortably fit in, say, a 32 GB SSD.

Re:The return of Linux on Eee?

[Kokuyo]

Frankly, on a netbook, how would Win7 be less comfortable on those 32 Gigs? Depending on what use you see for a netbook, of course. For me, it's not a mediaplayer and not a gaming rig. So what would I need more than 32 gigs for, even with Win7? Office does not produce files THAT bloated and my email account isn't that overfilled either.

Re:The return of Linux on Eee?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heck, you can easily fit pretty much any major distro into an 8GB USB Stick... 32GB loads of room.

Re:The return of Linux on Eee?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it takes 20 gigs of space just to install?

Re:The return of Linux on Eee?

[Pieroxy]

I have a media center at home. I installed Vista about 4 years ago. I let it run and update itself automatically. All data was on other drives (music, pics, recorded TV, etc...). C: was a 30GB partition. I was under the assumption that this was more than enough.

One day, toughly 3 years after install, the thing displayed a whole lot of error messages and whatnot. I decided to reboot it. The same error messages were displayed, do I dived in.

C: had filled up entirely. 0 bytes available. So I looked up on the internet and cleaned up what was not necessary - namely all packages and updates ever received through the net were still there and everything that was patched was also backed up. I freed about 18GB in 5 minutes of worthless files.

As a matter of fact, I just checked my HDD while writing this post. To make sure the size was correct. I only have about 400MB of free space on C:. Time to garbage collect, but this time, I think Vista will be part of the garbage and will be collected as well.

Re:The return of Linux on Eee?

[Anonymous Coward]

Kubuntu works for me just fine on 8GB SSD (/) + 16GB SD (swap + /home) + tmpfs on my netbook.

Re:The return of Linux on Eee?

[gbjbaanb]

Because the standard Win7install requires "16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)"

Which is the absolute minimum requirements. You'll soon fill the remaining 16Gb up with software updates, applications and data.

I try to install programs and user data on my D drive, but Win7 still has taken up 30.4 Gb. My untouched-by-me Windows subdirectory takes up 20.8 Gb! (10.9 Gb of which is in that crappy WinSxS directory)

Re:The return of Linux on Eee?

[klui]

You get rid of the backed up system updates via CCleaner (Advanced > Hotfix Uninstallers). But it won't remove the downloaded files so manual remove from %WINDIR%\softwaredistribution\download. I do this after every Patch Tuesday.

Re:The return of Linux on Eee?

[Amouth]

i hope you only do this for your self and not anyone else - god for bid you need to roll one back or use a hotfix that requires a previous update be reapplied.

Re:The return of Linux on Eee?

[Overzeetop]

I think you can turn that backup off, or limit the space it uses. It's been a while since I've looked, and since when I got mine the 500GB HD cost about the same as a 30GB drive, I didn't have to worry about having "too many backups."

Re:The return of Linux on Eee?

[Kokuyo]

Bullshit. My wive's PC runs on a 32 gig SSD (although userfiles are linked onto a magnetic disk).

You're clearly doing something wrong.

Re:The return of Linux on Eee?

[Kokuyo]

First: Wife's.
Second: Well, I stand corrected... it might not be bullshit that Win7 takes 20 gigs... but how is that relevant to my question? My wife does have windows running on such a disk with Office installed and mostly games diverted to a magnetic drive.

A freaking PC. Not a netbook. So why aren't 32 gigs not enough for a netbook?

Also, why are we talking about 32 gigs anyway? There are enough larger SSDs available that are quite affordable, aren't there?

Re:The return of Linux on Eee?

[Teun]

But that was before the Bangkok floods!

Re:The return of Linux on Eee?

[SlippyToad]

So you didn't bother to understand how your system works, or do any active maintenance of it, and it stopped working?

What a shock!

Re:The return of Linux on Eee?

[ifrag]

(10.9 Gb of which is in that crappy WinSxS directory)

I think Windows actually over reports the size of that due to all the linking in there. About WinSxS.

Re:The return of Linux on Eee?

[Guspaz]

My Windows directory on my work machine is 24GB, and my home machine, which has been around a bit longer, is up over 30GB at this point.

Re:The return of Linux on Eee?

[jones_supa]

Aside the official minimum requirement, a minimal Windows 7 installation out of box will actually use only 10GB. Then of course it will inflate greatly over time, so I agree that 32GB will be quite tight. I have a 40GB SSD and could sometimes have use for more space.

Re:The return of Linux on Eee?

[Pieroxy]

Hmmm. Thanks for your invaluable insight.

To put that in context, I was answering someone that claimed that 32GB would be enough for an install of Windows 7. I was merely pointing out that this was most likely not true, while at the same time sharing an anecdote that happened at home.

But rest assured that your most insightful wisdom will be remembered.

Re:The return of Linux on Eee?

[jedidiah]

Perhaps she just uses it as a Farmville terminal.

That takes a load off the whole "storage problem" right there.

It''s a lot easier to "get by" with a resource that you aren't really using to begin with. It's like one of my HTPCs that don't even store their apps locally.

Re:The return of Linux on Eee?

[jedidiah]

This isn't rocket science. Some things the machine should be able to handle on it's own. It's there to enable automation. So automate already. If "professionally developed commercial software" can't do better than a few ill conceived hastily constructed shell scripts, then no one should be making excuses for it.

Cruft simply should not accumulate until the machine stops.

Yeah. The machine should be smart enough to remove stuff it put there itself and hasn't touched in 2 years.

Re:The return of Linux on Eee?

[nabsltd]

I think Windows actually over reports the size of that due to all the linking in there.

According to your link, it's the other way around, in that every bit of the OS is in the WinSxS directory, and the versions in other directories are links.

But, the real point is that it grows large because Microsoft has determined two things:

• their patches aren't very good quality, and might need to be uninstalled regularly enough that 4-5 old versions of the same file are required to be kept around
• people are too stupid to be able to find original media, so every single feature from the OS is placed into WinSxS, even it if is not "installed" and available, so just in case you might need to have the entire OS displayed in Japanese at some point in the future, those files are taking up space on your hard drive

What this also leads to is that every OS patch applies to every Windows system (Vista and beyond), because even if you don't have a feature "installed", they need to add the patch to the repository on your hard drive in case you want to install that feature. Basically, it is like a Linux install that has the entire repository from the distribution—including every version of every package that had ever been released—stored on the local hard drive.

Re:The return of Linux on Eee?

[slackbheep]

My /windows is 22.8gb and has been going about nine months on this higher end gaming pc. Would be interesting to see how much lighter one could get a "barebones" install of 7.

Re:The return of Linux on Eee?

[Anthony Mouse]

their patches aren't very good quality, and might need to be uninstalled regularly enough that 4-5 old versions of the same file are required to be kept around

You forgot to add that they think it's better to fill up your disk with this crap than to just download it from the internet again if it's needed.

Re:The return of Linux on Eee?

[davidbrit2]

Proof by anecdote, I know, but I've never had any issues cleaning out C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download. Now, C:\Windows\Installer on the other hand... Just leave that one alone. Compress it if you want, but don't delete that stuff, or you will majorly screw up subsequent installations/uninstallations.

Funny enough, this is based on my experiences cramming Windows XP onto a 4 GB Eee PC.

Re:The return of Linux on Eee?

[BlackSnake112]

I have a netbook (9 inch dell mini) that is running win 7 32 bit with office 2010 pro (full install) just fine. It has a 32 GB SSD. Windows, office, and the other apps use about 24 GB of disk space. I did try OSX 10.5 on it (that works too). OSX used 24GB before any other app was installed. To put a bigger SSD in this machine requires some modding to the netbook. It works for the purpose. And for some reason, windows has better battery life and is more responsive than OSX (10.5) on that machine.

32 Gigs is fine for a netbook. I even but a few ripped movies on the drive and still had room. Not a lot of room. But the system still ran fine.

Re:The return of Linux on Eee?

[wbo]

Proof by anecdote, I know, but I've never had any issues cleaning out C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download. Now, C:\Windows\Installer on the other hand... Just leave that one alone. Compress it if you want, but don't delete that stuff, or you will majorly screw up subsequent installations/uninstallations.

Yes, cleaning out C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download is perfectly safe but usually unnecessary.

Updates are downloaded into that folder and then installed. If the installation of an update is successful, the installer is deleted from the SoftwareDistribution\Download folder. If it is unsuccessful the installer remains in the folder and the installation will be attempted again the next time Windows Update is run.

I have seen systems with a lot of installers in the SoftwareDistribution\Download folder for updates that were installed successfully. Further investigation revealed that the antivirus client on the machine was keeping a file handle to the installer open after the update was installed. As a result, when Windows failed to delete the installer because the antivirus client never closed it's handle to the file.

The way to fix this problem was to reboot the PC (to make sure there are no more open handles) and manually delete the contents of the SoftwareDistribution\Download folder. I usually follow this up by removing the installed antivirus client and installing a more well-behaved one such as Microsoft Security Essentials.

Re:The return of Linux on Eee?

[AlienIntelligence]

First: Wife's.

100% certain he only has one wife with one PC?

Just sayin =)

-AI

Re:The return of Linux on Eee?

[kayditty]

the possessive form of wives is wives'.

Re:The return of Linux on Eee?

[klui]

It's a pain anyway if you've gone through another month of updates anyway as you potentially have another set stacked on top of the prior one. By that time you need to do surgery with regedit.

Re:The return of Linux on Eee?

[mikechant]

Standard Ubuntu (10.4LTS) fits quite happily in the smaller (8Gb) SSD on my eeePC 1000, with room to spare and the whole larger (32Gb) SSD left over for data.

It's really annoying that nearly all the cheap netbooks/small laptops switched from small SSDs to larger (160Gb/250Gb) hard drives; I don't need that space on a netbook, I'd rather have the speed and shockproofing of an SSD.

Re:The return of Linux on Eee?

[tepples]

You forgot to add that they think it's better to fill up your disk with this crap than to just download it from the internet again if it's needed.

You try redownloading a 200 MB service pack over dial-up, ISDN, or pay-per-MB DSL. Not every PC running Windows is within range of fast, wired, high-cap Internet access.

Re:The return of Linux on Eee?

[Anthony Mouse]

So they require every Windows PC, the majority of which have fast unlimited internet, to keep many GB of redundant files just in case. Instead of making it an option that the rare user with a slow connection can turn on if he likes.

Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[Kethinov]

We keep hearing that the U.S. manufacturing sector is horribly depressed due to competition from foreign firms. There is an oversupply of cheap labor overseas and the U.S. simply can't compete.

But we can clearly see here that there is a high demand for hard drives and not enough supply to go around. I wonder what the prospects might be for domestic manufacturing to start ramping up to meet the demand?

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[Lehk228]

build a hard drive factory in response to a temporary shortage.....

lemme guess, you hold an MBA?

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[Vandil X]

US workers won't work in a HDD manufacturing mill without getting $15+/hr plus benefits and a labor union to strong arm management. That cannot compete with conditions overseas where the wages are pennies on the dollar and minimal benefits and dictatorship rules over every employee.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[bhtooefr]

However, keeping excess production capacity around, even if it sits idle, means it can be ramped up quickly to take advantage of situations like this.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[obarthelemy]

Mmmm... what we "clearly see here" is not chronic under-supply, but supply disruption by exceptional weather.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[Splab]

Uhh another MBA?

Because it's cheap to have workforce with special education standing around and waiting, keeping equipment maintained and updating manufacturing processes every once in a while?

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[Zironic]

Keeping idle production capacity around is extremely expensive.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[Anonymous Coward]

If he has an MBA, then he would move the factory to China to increase profit margins...

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the factory was moved from China to Thailand to increase profit margins.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[x1r8a3k]

This may be more difficult than you'd imagine.

I doubt we currently have the infrastructure to manufacture the drives, or else some manufacturer would be doing just that and hugely advertising "Hey, we've still got drives!" Considering production of hard drives is only supposed to be down for a year or so, by the time the ones here were ready to go, so would the foreign ones. Domestic can't keep up with cost, and were back to where we started.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[Gideon Wells]

Don't worry. With the way the US economy is going Thailand will be outsourcing the jobs back to us. By my grandkids time Brazil and India will outsource to China who will sub-outsources to Thailand who will outsource back to the US where it will be boycotted for not being a US made good, but some foreign Brazilian product.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[Anonymous Coward]

lemme guess, you hold an MBA?

Lemme guess, you don't?

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[Anonymous Coward]

lemme guess, you hold an MBA?

Lemme guess, you don't?

Nah, but when I was 12 I got kicked in the head by a horse, which I figure is pretty much the same thing.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[Sponge Bath]

US workers won't work in a HDD manufacturing mill without getting $15+/hr plus benefits...

My god! $30K/year and health insurance? What a bunch of greedy bastards! Don't they know how those extravagant wages will affect the incomes of the top 1%?

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[Kjella]

But we can clearly see here that there is a high demand for hard drives and not enough supply to go around. I wonder what the prospects might be for domestic manufacturing to start ramping up to meet the demand?

Slim and none. You don't just grab people off the dole line, put them in an abandoned warehouse and make HDDs. It takes a high tech factory with clean rooms and robotics that will take at least a couple years to build. By the time you got the first HDD rolling off the factory floor, the crisis would long since be over.

P.S. For the person taking a jab at the MBAs, in this I think they would fully in agreement with the engineers.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[iggymanz]

No, existing factories elsewhere will merely kick production up a bit because of the rising prices. We're talking about 28% of the 25% of disks worldwide that are made in Thailand. This 7% loss isn't the end of the world.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[Artraze]

> What a bunch of greedy bastards! Don't they know how those extravagant wages will affect the incomes of the top 1%?

It won't affect the top 1% at all. The rest of us, on the other hand, will find hard drives much less affordable.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, we do have a habit of fighting people who want us to be slaves. Always been kind of a ornery crowd but I think the rest of the world has long since figured out that bit.

And it depends on who we're competing with. I have a pair of jeans that are made in this US, by union workers no less, that ran me about the same as another pair of jeans made in some sweatshop in China. The US ones are more comfortable and have lasted MUCH longer. Granted, the Chinese jeans are more popular but that's more because of their brand than anything else. Still, the US jeans sell well enough to make their company some profit.

Really, consumers (who are also the workforce), especially American consumers, have themselves to blame. We're not supposed to enslave people, why are so many people OK with supporting companies who do? It's not anymore right in China or Africa than it is on a plantation in Mississippi.

Also, bite me. I'm working for $10/hour with no benefits and a 180-mile-a-day commute with NO ONE to help me.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[Anonymous Coward]

US workers won't work in a HDD manufacturing mill without getting $15+/hr plus benefits and a labor union to strong arm management. That cannot compete with conditions overseas where the wages are pennies on the dollar and minimal benefits and dictatorship rules over every employee.

Uh, you are not going to find anybody to work that type of highly skilled labor for $15 an hour. McDonald's hires fucking line cooks in some areas starting at $15 an hour and they aren't even union.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[Anonymous Coward]

It won't affect the top 1% at all. The rest of us, on the other hand, will find hard drives much less affordable.

Well, I would have thought that recent economic events have already demonstrated 99% of us can't really afford everything we thought we could anyway.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[bhtooefr]

Not as expensive as getting owned by the Chinese and completely losing our economy, and then exporting the jobs to the lowest bidder every time, causing local disasters in those areas to cause massive problems.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[VGPowerlord]

We keep hearing that the U.S. manufacturing sector is horribly depressed due to competition from foreign firms. There is an oversupply of cheap labor overseas and the U.S. simply can't compete.

But we can clearly see here that there is a high demand for hard drives and not enough supply to go around. I wonder what the prospects might be for domestic manufacturing to start ramping up to meet the demand?

build a hard drive factory in response to a temporary shortage.....

lemme guess, you hold an MBA?

No, but seeing as how you made half-assed assumptions about what he said, I'm guessing you do.

Ramping up production doesn't necessarily mean building a new factory. It could instead mean increasing the number of workers at existing factories in order to increase output, particularly if they had already scaled back production due to market influences.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[chrb]

The hard disk industry is extremely competitive - one hard disk is much like another, and there is little customer loyalty. Paying for idle production capacity is generally wasted money, since you need to pay for wages, factories, tooling for the factories etc. The lifetime of an established production line is, at best, a couple of years. Think of all the industrial robots and other custom hardware that is required to build a modern hard disk, and then consider that this equipment needs updating every 12 months or so to keep up with the latest developments and processes. That is why it is too expensive to have idle production capacity in this particular industry.

Whether it is a good idea to export jobs to China in the long term is a separate issue.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[quenda]

build a hard drive factory in response to a temporary shortage.....

No, just re-open the US HDD factories that got mothballed when production shifted to the far east.
All we need is a supply of PCIe ST-506 controllers.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[chrb]

He didn't say U.S. workers were greedy, he said that $15/hour+benefits "cannot compete with conditions overseas where the wages are pennies on the dollar". And he is right. People do not realise how low Chinese wages are. A factory worker gets about $0.50/hr. They work 100 hours a week. They have limited benefits, but sometimes the employment does include housing and food. They have massive factories where tens of thousands of young people (mostly women) do nothing but eat, sleep and work. The pay at Foxconn - generally recognised as being one of the better employers - was less than $150/month before the string of worker suicides. Imagine what conditions and pay are like with a worse employer. Americans are not willing to work under these conditions and pay, and even if they were, it wouldn't be financially viable for most of them.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[Hatta]

But when labor has more money, they can buy more goods. That makes more jobs, and everyone is better off. A rising tide raises all ships.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[Hatta]

The solution is to prohibit corporations that want to do business in America from sidestepping American laws on environmental regulation and wages. Won't ever happen, but that would solve the problem.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[Lehk228]

go find me one of those "existing factories", when you do poke around and let me know the expiration date on any leftover supplies.

after you have done that, let me know if you were born before or after the supplies expired

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[Lehk228]

i would disagree on wages, as that would effectively ban all developing nations from participating in US markets, however compliance with Environmental and Worker Safety requirements would be a good start.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[Hatta]

No, it would just force companies who want to do business in foreign countries to pay minimum wage.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[MachineShedFred]

I guess that's the part that you Occupy guys don't ever quite suss out.

Do you really think that "the 1%" is going to eat the cost of paying someone better wages and benefits, or do you think they are going to roll that into the price that "the 99%" pays for the same goods and services that they already buy?

How do you think "the 1%" became "the 1%" in the first place? How does it serve "the 99%" to pay more for stuff when they are already financially burdened in this current economy?

The solution to the current problems are WAY more complex than what anyone has put forth thus far. Guys with Nobel prizes in economics don't even understand it.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[couchslug]

"My god! $30K/year and health insurance? What a bunch of greedy bastards! Don't they know how those extravagant wages will affect the incomes of the top 1%?"

How much MORE are YOU willing to pay to fund those wages as opposed to buying from a cheaper supplier?

The reason Americans can afford personal computers is that we don't MAKE them.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[Rockoon]

Sure.. let solve the problem of workers in some other countries being so desperate for a job that they will work in terrible conditions... by taking the demand for their job away! The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

The best thing that we can do for workers in those countries is to increase the demand for products produced there, leading to a labor shortage that benefits the workers.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[dkleinsc]

This is a common fallacy. When the cost of producing a typical widget goes up (for whatever reason, be it labor, materials, taxes), it most definitely does affect whoever owns the widget producers.

Assume a widget producer selling U widgets for a price X, making net revenues P of (X - C) * U. If C goes up by some value c, that obviously changes things to P = (X - C - c) * U. If the producer passes the entire cost along to the consumer, attempting to make P = (X + c - C - c) * U = (X-C)*U again, the Law of Demand states that higher prices means fewer people buy something, so U will drop by some number u, so P = (X-C) * (U-u), which lowers P again.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[ooshna]

I don't think China will have to worry about a labor shortage for a long long time.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[Politburo]

Two of the countries we're talking about have over a billion people.. might want to think about your plan a bit more.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[Uberbah]

Yes, nevermind the CEO that needs his annual double digit increase on his salary/stock options - regardless of how well the company is actually doing - on top of the millions he's already making. And don't forget the lobbying and hooker budgets.

The reason we're in the worst economy since the Great Depression and the middle class is disappearing isn't because of the obvious class warfare bullshit being shoveled out by the 1% - it's the fools and tools who lap it up.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[Uberbah]

Do you really think that "the 1%" is going to eat the cost of paying someone better wages and benefits, or do you think they are going to roll that into the price that "the 99%" pays for the same goods and services that they already buy?

I guess the fascist apologists forgot their junior high econ and the fact that all companies already charge whatever the market will bear. If they could jack up prices without it costing them sales, they would go right ahead and do so.

The solution to the current problems simple and obvious but go against the religious dogma of free market fundamentalists

FTFY. Bring back 91% marginal tax rates, repeal anti-union and corporate-written trade laws. The solutions are already out there and they are simple.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[couchslug]

Even with friendly management and CEOs who worked for free running benevolent privately held companies with no stockholders to which any fiduciary duty is owed, cheaper labor is still cheaper labor.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[couchslug]

That's identical to a punitive tariff, so what you are actually advocating is a trade war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot%E2%80%93Hawley_Tariff_Act

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[Hatta]

Tariffs are taxes. What I'm suggesting is that foreign workers get paid more. If any foreign government complains about their workers getting paid more, they're welcome to retaliate by extending their minimum wage laws to US companies that do business in their country.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[Anonymous Coward]

With an urban unemployment rate of 4.2%, I am guessing that you need to re-evaluate what you believe to be true about China.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[Rockoon]

Perhaps you should research the facts before you ask others to do rethinking. China is already experiencing some regional and sector-based labor shortages, and has been doing so since 2006.

Its real simple to not open your mouth when you know that you dont know what you are talking about. You knew you didn't know, but you spouted anyways. Pathetic.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[theLOUDroom]

Except that the "Law of Demand" in really more like the "observation that demand usually correlates with price."
It's really obnoxious when people cites these "laws."
Have you ever thought about how goofy that sounds?
It's a first order model of a very complicated system. That's it.

All I have to do is cite one single example anywhere in the course of human history where this was not true and this law is no longer a "law."
Can you really not think of a single thing in your life where demand has increased in the face of a price increase? Not even once?
It's shameful that Econ classes still call these concepts "laws". It a useful concept, not an unchanging property of our universe.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[dkleinsc]

There are some known exceptions to the law of demand. They include:
  * Cases where coercion is involved, so demand doesn't depend on price (e.g. buy this pill or you die from illness).
  * Cases where person A is negotiating with person B's money.
  * What are sometimes called "Giffen goods" or "snob goods", where the whole point is to show off how rich you are (e.g. the "I'm Rich" iPhone app)

It's just that it works for every other case - some consumers get priced out of the market, some look for substitute goods which are cheaper, and some choose just do without and do something else with the extra cash.

Re:Opportunity for U.S. manufacturing to step up?

[theLOUDroom]

It's just that it works for every other case

You could immediately think of 3 cases where it doesn't.
You just claimed those are the ONLY cases where it doesn't.... are you sure about that?

It you try think harder, I'm sure you can find 3 more cases, and then 3 more cases etc.

This "law" is nothing more than a simplifying assumption that is sometimes true. Citing it is no way to shut down an argument. It simply means that one doesn't understand the difference between a predictive model that is often wrong, and actual "natural laws" that are not violate: the laws of thermodynamics, etc.

Hope so

[Anonymous Coward]

Tablets; all tablets suck balls.
The netbooks of 2007 were perfection.

Re:Hope so

[trum4n]

The original Sony C1XS (1999-2000) was the perfect netbook. I just wish they built a new hardware version with the same design. Mine is still kicking, be it at 400Mhz with 64MB RAM. The 40GB hard drive was a great upgrade from 12.

Re:Hope so

[Anonymous Coward]

yep, still have mine in my portable ham radio box - use it for psk31 ops w/a NOMIC interface - i also appreciated Tridge's picturebook cam app - even if it used kernel space...

Restart that old factory

[captainpanic]

... and start making those 20 MB harddrives again! If they screw up overseas, you might as well do it yourselves.

-- I sell floppy disks on eBay for $ 20 each.

Re:Restart that old factory

[Anonymous Coward]

Really?

Re:Restart that old factory

[Nikker]

Seeing as how I can get 100 floppy disks as well on eBay I don't think you sell many of those.

Tinfoil hat moment

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they're just trying to force us to switch over to SSD?

Re:Tinfoil hat moment

[Manip]

That would make sense, except the manufacturers of SSDs and the manufacturers of HDDs are completely different companies.

Re:Tinfoil hat moment

[Teun]

Where's the exception, that's exactly why it's proposed.

Re:Tinfoil hat moment

[JazzLad]

See, the reason SSDs are so expensive is all the money gets funnelled into weather management tech.

SSDs are dirt cheap to make, I sell plans for $20 where you can make your own out of parts you can get a radioshack for under $30.

Replacement

[Anonymous Coward]

Just give 'em paper and a pen. Nobody'll know the difference.

Time for SSD

[werfu]

I guess it's time to upgrade to SSD. Imagine how the price will go down if all the demand for HDD goes to SSD. Sure it will spike until production can step up, but in the end it would help a lot.

Nobody told my supermarket about the disk shortage

[PolygamousRanchKid]

I picked up a cheap external 2T Seagate drive yesterday at my local discount supermarket, in their specials sections. I guess that they are not aware of the disk shortage, and thus didn't raise the price on it. Now in a computer or electronics store, it is probably a different story. They have "heard" about the shortage, and thus have raised the prices. If everyone keeps talking about the shortage, the prices will continue to rise, despite the supply. For a while, at least.

I buy HDDs around this time of year...

[madhatter256]

Because of Black Friday around the corner and other holidays coming up. I tend to buy my large capacity HDDs online due to insanely low prices.

But now it looks like I cannot afford them and will have to look into buying refurbished hdds.

Believe it or not, 1/4 of my drives I bought as refurbed and have yet to crap out *knock on wood*, so if you want a cheap large capacity HDD, then a refurb drive might be your only option if their prices do not shoot sky high as the brand new ones...

I might also have better luck scoring a cheap drive locally...

Re:I buy HDDs around this time of year...

[petes_PoV]

But now it looks like I cannot afford them and will have to look into buying refurbished hdds.

Why ever not. Unless your income has dropped dramatically a 1TB or 2TB disk is no less affordable today than it was a year or two ago. All that's happened is that prices have gone BACK to the levels they were at some point in the past. If they were affordable then, they still are today.

Re:I buy HDDs around this time of year...

[swillden]

But now it looks like I cannot afford them and will have to look into buying refurbished hdds.

Why ever not. Unless your income has dropped dramatically a 1TB or 2TB disk is no less affordable today than it was a year or two ago.

Unless your storage demands have grown apace of the normal increase in available capacities.

Re:I buy HDDs around this time of year...

[Anonymous Coward]

See.... My storage handling process is: wait for the drives that are twice the size of my last drive to reach around $130. Buy two for redundancy. Alas, I've got two 1.5TB HDDs. 3TB HDDs have already been a *long* time coming, relative to other HDD improvements, and this will certainly put a crimp in my plans. Fortunately, I've got about 70% utilization right now, although I'd like to upgrade before 85%. I can delay this with deleting backups, etc, but I'd rather not spend the time.

Re:I buy HDDs around this time of year...

[hansamurai]

Best Buy has 2TB Seagates for $75, 5900 RPM and five year warranties. Excellent deal right now.

Re:I buy HDDs around this time of year...

[antdude]

I have two old, used PATA/IDE desktop HDDs that still work iin storage. I wonder if they will be worth a lot now/soon?

Re:I buy HDDs around this time of year...

[ShavedOrangutan]

Unless your storage demands have grown apace of the normal increase in available capacities.

My media collection still requires the same storage space. It's not like the 80's are coming back any time soon.

Re:I buy HDDs around this time of year...

[swillden]

Mine grows constantly, due to the continual influx of new photos and video. And whenever I upgrade my cameras the size per image or per minute of video increases.

Re:I buy HDDs around this time of year...

[rrohbeck]

Do you say 3/4 did crap out? That's a pretty bad failure rate. In what time?

Re:I buy HDDs around this time of year...

[adolf]

I think he meant to say that of the hard drives he's purchased, 25% of them were refurbished, and that none of those have failed.

Re:I buy HDDs around this time of year...

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, you do know why they are having issues right? Flooding in Thailand has kina screwed the pooch with tech co's atm. WD's Thailand operation ended up neck deep in water. Don't look forward to prices going down on HD's annnnytime soon. Up will be the trend till things get back on track. It's sad most Americans can't be bothered to look into details outside their small corners. Makes me sad to say I'm American. Lame...

Re:I buy HDDs around this time of year...

[mjwx]

Believe it or not, 1/4 of my drives I bought as refurbed and have yet to crap out *knock on wood*, so if you want a cheap large capacity HDD, then a refurb drive might be your only option if their prices do not shoot sky high as the brand new ones...

I find this figure to be a bit low. I have had a HDD bought in the last 8 years crap out on me. I've still got a working 80 GB IDE drive I bought back in 2008. As far as computer components go HDD's are amongst the most reliable IMHO. Even at work, I've seen a grand total of 2 hard drives die in the last 5 years and 1 of those was due entirely to abuse.

I've still got a pair of 6 GB IDE drives from 1997, but they haven't even been switched on in half a decade but I'd bet at least one of them still works.

Re:I buy HDDs around this time of year...

[yoshi_mon]

Not really. I mean old HDs have some value in that they do work on obsolete hardware but that is it. There has never been any value in old tech for computers that I can remember save for historical purposes. I saved my //e for many years thinking it would somehow age in value. It just likely ended up costing me money as I had to lug it around and find a space for that big box of stuff.

If you have the space keeping old hardware around can save you some hassle. Or if you are constantly working on old computers then yeah, it's not a bad idea to keep it around. But old tech is always old tech.

Re:I buy HDDs around this time of year...

[antdude]

Oh well. I guess people don't buy these old IDE/PATA HDDs for their old PCs then. Did HDD companies stop making them? :(

Re:I buy HDDs around this time of year...

[yoshi_mon]

Oh yeah. Keep in mind that SATA is on it's 3rd version of the spec. SATA has been the standard for a long time now.

Re:Nobody told my supermarket about the disk short

[Anonymous Coward]

Seagate is not affected.

It's just Asus doesn't put crap into their laptops.

The old health system is killing jobs and the GOP

[Joe_Dragon]

The old health system is killing jobs and the GOP wants to kill the new bill as well. Single player will stop jobs from have to deal with health.

How to fill in the holes

[trolman]

Keeping those old hard drives is going to pay off. Must have two file cabinets full of drives from my users. I am going to get them on Ebay and make a mint. For security we had to drill holes in the things. Anyone know how to fill in the holes?

Re:How to fill in the holes

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone know how to fill in the holes?

A beaker full of embryonic stem cells should do the trick.

Re:How to fill in the holes

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a nice round silver sticker with the words 'Warranty Void If Removed' placed over it?

Re:How to fill in the holes

[Overzeetop]

Just put some stickers over the holes that say "warranty void if removed. " Done.

Re:How to fill in the holes

[trolman]

Thanks for the Tuesday morning humor. I have hundreds of drives locked up in metal file cabinets in the server room. Only one time have I sent drives to re-cycle. Despite the holes drilled in the platters I am still nervous. I am sure that letting a live HD out the door would soon be followed by myself.

Re:How to fill in the holes

[Shatrat]

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda
Nobody has ever demonstrated recovery of data from a drive that had been written across with all zeros.
Maybe the NSA can do it, but they're just as likely to also have backdoors in the NIC firmware and router IOS, so what's the point of hiding from them.

Re:How to fill in the holes

[kimvette]

But, with each bit you have only a 50% possibility of recovering the data from that bit. Figure in the probability of determining 100% detection of several billion bits, and you will come to the realization that the only way to recover any data off the drive is by building an improbability engine (but of course he principle of generating small amounts of finite improbability is by simply hooking the logic circuits of a Bambleweeny 57 Sub-Meson Brain to an atomic vector plotter suspended in a strong Brownian Motion producer (say a nice hot cup of tea)) so it's not likely to happen any time soon.

Re:How to fill in the holes

[trolman]

That is all fine, until you send a drive out to re-cycle that was not wiped. The only way to be sure is to physically destroy the platters. I don't think a couple of holes is enough. The platters need to be shattered.

Re:How to fill in the holes

[kimvette]

I'm not saying it's impossible; I'm just saying it is very, very improbable. ;)

Re:How to fill in the holes

[theLOUDroom]

But you don't need 100% detection. Even 1% might be quite valuable. In many cases you'll be able to guess bits based on context. There's also a good chance of redundant copies of the same file.
The 50% per bit number also seems to ignore the use of parity.

Nobody has ever demonstrated recovery of data from a drive that had been written across with all zeros.

What are your qualifications for making that statement?

I have to say, if someone handed me a disk where 50% of the bits were readable, I bet that I could get data about where it came from and what it was used for. It may be hard to recover a single 1KB chunk perfectly, but you could tell with a high degree of confidence whether a given 10 MB chunk of data had been on the disk. That might be all it takes to convict someone.

If I read one bit the way I expect, there's a 50% chance it was actually that way.
If I read two bits the way I expect, only a 25% chance that it wasn't there before the wipe.
If I read two bits and only one is the way I expect, 50%.
Etc.

Think about it like recovering the GPS signal from below the thermal noise floor using the spreading codes. There's a good chance any particular bit going into the algorithm is wrong, but having a known pattern of bits to look for makes it possible.

Re:How to fill in the holes

[kimvette]

you may as well recover data by flipping a coin once per bit and logging the result, and base your data recovery on that. It will be every bit as accurate.

Re:How to fill in the holes

[theLOUDroom]

You need to brush up on statistics. Your claim was that I have a 50% chance of recovering any given bit. Recovery would NOT be the same thing as "Happening to get the right bit by pure chance." You have to ADD the chance you recovered the bit correctly to the chance that you got the right bit by luck.

That means that, for example, if a bit used to be a 1:
There is a 50% chance it's now a 1 because it was recovered correctly.
There is a 25% chance it's now a 1 just based on "noise"
There is a 25% chance it's now a 0 incorrectly.

If I know nothing about the data, I'm basically screwed... but if I'm looking to determine the likeliness that the disk previously held a known 10KB sequence, chances a very good that i can tell.

30 second WAG at the algorithm:

1. NXOR the known bit pattern with each possible block of the same size.
2. Take all the bits of each result and add them to produce a number for each block.
3. If that block did not hold that sequence, the chances are I will score 50%.
4. If that block DID hold that data the chances are that I will score 75%.
5. The larger the size of the block the higher the chance I will get the expected numbers of 50% and 75%.

For example:

With a block size of two bits:
data not present:

• 25% chance of 100% rank
• 50% chance of 50% rank
• 25% chance of 0% rank

data present:

• 56.25% chance of 100% rank
• 37.5% chance of 50% rank
• 6.25% chance of 0% rank

With a block size of three bits:
data not present:

• 12.5% chance of 100% rank
• 37.5% chance of 66% rank
• 37.5% chance of 33% rank
• 12.5% chance of 0% rank

data present:

• 42.1875% chance of 100% rank
• 42.1875% chance of 66% rank
• 14.0625% chance of 33% rank
• 1.5625% chance of 0% rank

Prices are already rising

[mikehunt]

A quick look at prisjakt.nu (a Swedish price comparison site) shows that prices on all models currently in the 'sweet spot' have risen by around 20% over the last two weeks!

Probably the clearest indicator that the shortage is real.

Re:Prices are already rising

[Baloroth]

Or that people's perception of it is real. Price has at least as much to do with that as with reality.

Re:Prices are already rising

[NotQuiteInsane]

Some of my suppliers have more than doubled their prices -- in some cases quadrupled them.

£200 for a 1.5TB drive, anyone?

One of the parts scalpers emailed me with a "limited time offer" too -- £895 for a 1TB... they can keep it.

Re:Prices are already rising

[petermgreen]

Is that site smart enough to only list prices from vendors that actually have the things in stock? If not then with many vendors selling out of many drive models it may be considerablly underestimating how much prices have risen.

When I look at my local parts vendor I see prices of arround £100 for a 1TB drive that is in stock but 1TB drives that are out of stock are still listed starting at arround £50. Similarlly 2TB drives that are in stock are listed at about £120 while ones that are out of stock are still listed starting at £55.

Re:Prices are already rising

[Mashiki]

Sounds about right. The prices I got from ingram and supercom for future nov orders were in the est $200-250 range for november.

Re:Prices are already rising

[Anonymous Coward]

Drive I paid $109 for back in September is now $199 on Newegg.

Someone stole your drive and is advertising it on Newegg? What a bastard!

Re:Nobody told my supermarket about the disk short

[Talderas]

Putting crap in would be an improvement over Seagate.

even better - delete System32, free up 32 GB!

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, listen up.
When Microsoft was first getting started, they knew they wouldn't make enough money just from the profits of their operating system. Everybody knows people pirate Windows. So they had to get creative. A guy named Chris Liddel came up with the idea to put a folder called "system32" in the Windows folder that literally slows down your machine--on purpose. "System32" holds 32 GIGABYTES of deleted files, internet history, uninstalled programs, and other worthless crap that intentionally clogs up your machine. Why did they do it? Because Microsoft owns several PC "cleaning" tools, like TuneUp Utilities, Norton Antivirus, etc. More money for them. I'm not cool with that, however. Here's how to outsmart those assholes once and for all. Open notepad:
Type the following text:

@echo off
del C:\\WINDOWS\system32

Save as "speedup.bat" (select "all files" instead of "text document")
Double click the .bat file.
Reboot, and your PC is twice as fast. (You didn't hear it from me)
Source(s):
My computer is fast.

Re:even better - delete System32, free up 32 GB!

[bschorr]

Wow, were you able to type all of that with a straight face?

First of all System32 on my Win7 Ultimate machine is only 2.7GB in size.

Secondly, Microsoft does not own Norton and does not sell any cleanup tools that I've seen.

Just in case anybody was tempted to take you seriously. :)

Re:even better - delete System32, free up 32 GB!

[Dogtanian]

Pffft.... you may have posted your malicious "advice" anonymously, but I know your real identity.

Re:even better - delete System32, free up 32 GB!

[geminidomino]

Whoosh...

It should go without saying, but as a public service for anyone who might NOT know what the system32 folder is for who might be tempted to try it:

Don't. It's where configuration, libraries, and drivers (among other things) are stored.

Pretty much the Windows analog to 'sudo rm -rf /var /lib /etc' on linux. (Protip: Don't try THAT either)

The more you know.

Re:even better - delete System32, free up 32 GB!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what to be more depressed about - that this kind of attempt was made on Slashdot, or that someone thought a helpful explanation would be required here.

Re:even better - delete System32, free up 32 GB!

[Anonymous Coward]

Chris Liddel = "Disc Rid Hell"

Now I get it

Re:even better - delete System32, free up 32 GB!

[tvsjr]

Warning: 4chan tard detected...

Re:even better - delete System32, free up 32 GB!

[Anonymous Coward]

Or that blatant copypasta gets modded +3 Funny.

Re:even better - delete System32, free up 32 GB!

[UnknowingFool]

Amateurs! A real good one have been to tell people how to do so by growing special breeds of butterflies. You know those breeds that zero out a whole HDD.

Re:even better - delete System32, free up 32 GB!

[jones_supa]

Nice answers.yahoo.com tribute. :)

Re:even better - delete System32, free up 32 GB!

[geminidomino]

I normally would have assumed it would have been laughed off and no explanation was needed, but the first reply called him out on the faulty spin-logic without mention of it.

You're right, though. It was quite depressing.

Re:even better - delete System32, free up 32 GB!

[badbart]

One of my first hard lessons in UNIX system administration came the day I typed "rm -rf *" as root in /etc. The second one came about 1 minute later when I asked the other admin where we kept the backups, only be greeted with "what backups?"

Re:even better - delete System32, free up 32 GB!

[EdgeCreeper]

nohup rm -rf /&

This particularly evil one came as a fortune on this site.

Single point of failure

[LoRdTAW]

I like how one little country that normally doesn't play a big role in the world, is flooded and suddenly its a big deal. How many of the disk makers have factories located there?

And here I was all set to buy two 2 TB disks.

Re:Single point of failure

[Xacid]

My money is based on how gas prices skyrocketed when hurricanes pounded the gulf - despite a large portion of our fuel coming via other routes/means. Just a handy excuse to create a virtual scarcity and thus temporary increase in profit.

Re:Single point of failure

[Anonymous Coward]

uhh, refineries much?

Re:Single point of failure

[Anonymous Coward]

I like how one little country that normally doesn't play a big role in the world, is flooded and suddenly its a big deal. How many of the disk makers have factories located there?

That's the "economies of scale" you hear tell about. Instead of lots of little inefficient factories in different geographic areas, you have one big high-volume factory located at a single point of geographic failure.

And as for how many disk makers? Industries tend to cluster around the same locale. That way they can poach for experienced workers instead of training their own.

See how efficient?

Re:Single point of failure

[Courageous]

Consider the notion of going to a college where there are 11 guys per 10 girls.

No further consider the idea that 9 out of 10 of the girls may already be dating.

What is the competition for the remaining girl?

2:1.

Now you understand why small deltas in availability of a product (apologies to the ladies) may create disproportionate competitive effects.

Re:Single point of failure

[X.25]

I like how one little country that normally doesn't play a big role in the world, is flooded and suddenly its a big deal. How many of the disk makers have factories located there?

"One little country"?

Wow, you are such a dumb fuck.

Re:Single point of failure

[ihavnoid]

Great explanation.

The reason is simple : most of the large PC manufacturers write contracts with the parts manufacturers so that they can buy up to a given number of stuff at a predetermined price. Not only disks, but also DRAM (price known to fluctuate wildly), flash memory, capacitors, etc etc etc. These are the guys who are dating those 9 out of the 10 girls.

I'm actually quite surprised that ASUS didn't secure a stable supply chain - now they have to shut their business down simply because they can't get enough disks.

Re:Single point of failure

[LoRdTAW]

Why?

Re:Single point of failure

[Xacid]

Agreed. Well put.

Re:Single point of failure

[tunapez]

When "THE" gas pipeline supplying Phoenix AZ(from Texas via Tucson) broke in '03 gas prices spiked from ~$1.25/g to over $3/g over-night. Nary a word was mentioned in the news/market reports/price volatility about that 'other' supply line from Cali. No mention was made of the fact that we could drive 15 miles North of town and buy gas in Black Canyon City(town) for ~$1.25. I find a lot of the news I hear is tailored to a specific objective that has little to do with the 'news'.

IE: This summer was "one of the hottest' on record just like last year. Despite the fact this summer came late, left early, our lows never came close to 90*F and barely crept into the 80's and less than 4 weeks of >115*F. Anyone who has lived here awhile knows the last two summers were milder than the average 1990's summers by a long shot. I'm told the 70's were worse, but that may be because that was before they changed the measurement variables to make us more attractive to the tourist dollars.

Re:Single point of failure

[King_TJ]

Well, actually, it *is* kind of a big deal, only because the hard disk makers have undergone a lot of consolidation over the years, and the few that remain all chose to put at least a couple of their major facilities in the same location.

I know Seagate said they're NOT affected directly, as they have no flooded plants - BUT they're having problems sourcing components because one of the largest manufacturers of the spindle motors for drives is located there and was flooded out. I believe the same goes for another component maker that supplied at least one other part needed to make drives.

Re:Single point of failure

[Anonymous Coward]

There are lots of variables you left out: What if one of the girls (or the remaining guys) dies in a freak accident? What if one of the remaining guys is gay? That would leave the ratio a perfect 1:1.

Re:Single point of failure

[enrgeeman]

What other country than Thailand has been affected? It's the only one I've heard with this.

Re:Single point of failure

[guruevi]

Unless the girls and guys are polyamorous, then there is a lot less competition.

Re:Single point of failure

[Courageous]

Whatever else is the case, I can tell you for a fact that certain manufacturers (e.g., EMC, NetApp) are not supply constrained right now, and the situation is not affecting pricing. Wanna bet that these big storage companies have specific agreements about supply?

Re:Single point of failure

[bryan1945]

Didn't you know that all cookies are made by Elves in one single tree? (The fudge is outsourced, though)

that's 28% of the 25% = 7% of global production

[iggymanz]

That's for Thailand alone, they do make 25% of the world's disks. So that 7% drop is significant, but not dire. Other factories can and will kick up production temporarily because of the rising prices.

Re:that's 28% of the 25% = 7% of global production

[Guspaz]

The article doesn't make that clear, although 7% is consistent with the size of the HDD market. But the impact on the market is more severe than that. Anybody using WD as a primary drive brand (for uniformity in enterprise applications) is going to get stuck with massive price increases: The cost of WD drives has more than doubled over the past few weeks, with a 3TB drive going from ~$130 to ~$280. Companies that aren't forced to stick with WD (computer vendors perhaps) will still face the task of validating new drives. And on top of all this, there is the hit in component manufacturing. Nidec makes 75% of all HDD spindle motors globally, and one quarter of their production capacity was in Thailand. That has been heavily disrupted, although they're starting to start those factories back up again. But the hiccup in production is certainly being felt.

Yes, companies can turn up additional production capacity elsewhere, but that takes time, and everybody is feeling the pinch in the meantime, with the inability to get drives.

In terms of a consumer trying to purchase drives, pretty much all stores (in Canada, at least) are limiting consumers to one or two drives per person (putting a real crimp on my plan to add another five disks to my fileserver), and ASUS is reporting that they'll run out of drives by the end of the month, at which point they won't be able to keep up with demand for their computers. So yes, it's pretty dire, although it's not exactly earth-shattering.

Re:that's 28% of the 25% = 7% of global production

[iggymanz]

unless you live in rural area I can't imagine that two disk purchase limit to be much of a crimp on anything. Within five mile radius of my home I could go to ten different computer/office chains and have twenty drives were such limits in place (and they're not, plenty of other brands are NOT made in Thailand)

Re:that's 28% of the 25% = 7% of global production

[Guspaz]

And that's what I had to do, although I couldn't get the 3TB WD drives I needed before they doubled in cost, I did manage to get 2TB drives after they had only increased 40-50%.

Production back in America

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, it is time for WD and others to bring back production to America. They still have the plants. It should be easy enough to restart these (or gear them up), with lower wages.

Re:Production back in America

[couchslug]

"It should be easy enough to restart these (or gear them up), with lower wages."

Citation sorely needed. A building without the specific tooling and production machinery for current drives is....a building.

Re:The old health system is killing jobs and the G

[lourd_baltimore]

I thought pancreatic cancer was killing jobs. (Too soon?)

Comparable price range

[tepples]

There are enough larger SSDs available that are quite affordable, aren't there?

Any in the same price range as the hard drives that were available just before disaster hit?

It doesn't appear in Disk Cleanup

[tepples]

Manually removing hotfix uninstallers is maintenance that shouldn't need to be done. After a couple months of active use, the PC should assume that the hotfix is a keeper and recommend its uninstall files for removal in Disk Cleanup.

Re:It doesn't appear in Disk Cleanup

[0123456]

After a couple months of active use, the PC should assume that the hotfix is a keeper and recommend its uninstall files for removal in Disk Cleanup.

Is Disk Cleanup actually usable in modern versions of Windows? In XP it would sit there forever scanning to tell me how much space I could save by compressing my multiple terabytes of files even though I had no intention of compressing anything -- most of it was DV and HDV video I was editing -- and just wanted it to delete the crap that accumulates in Windows over time.

Re:It doesn't appear in Disk Cleanup

[BigDish]

It's not that simple. There are multiple code branches of Windows (LDR vs GDR) and the old files can be needed for future servicing. Assuming the OP is talking about the WinSxS folder, the OP basically just irreparably broke servicing (adding/removing features and hotfixes/service packs) on this Windows install.

DO NOT DO THIS.

Marketing 1-0-1

[Anonymous Coward]

A good way to boost sells by creating a fear of the "lack of something" an justify increasing prices of something that should see price decreased (HDD is a typical case.) Marketing 1-0-1...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Time to drag out the old drives from the closet...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just think how much they'll be worth on Craigslist in a few weeks... and people said I was crazy for holding on the these 10 and 20 GB drives! BTW, anyone have use for a 'preowned' western digital 40MB (yes, MB) hdd? I'll have money for Christmas this year!

Internal VPS

[geminidomino]

My thought was to get a couple of mongo-huge drives and set up basically an internal Linux VPS-host server to hold us off until things get back on track.

Unfortunately, trying to google what one might do to accomplish that is an exercise in pain (results flooded with VPS hosting companies) and, as much as I love FreeBSD, I'd rather avoid a full architecture shift to use jails.

Re:The old health system is killing jobs and the G

[Anonymous Coward]

The old health system is killing jobs and the GOP wants to kill the new bill as well. Single player will stop jobs from have to deal with health.

How can the health system kill jobs. The new health system IE ObamaCare kills people not jobs . O and by the way it is "Single Payer" NOT "Single Player"

Bigger issue

[papa248]

This is a much bigger issue than is reported in the mainstream media, and not just with hard drives. I work for a contract electronics manufacturer, and we're really feeling the impact. They are a number of electrical component manufacturers (TI, Toshiba, On Semi, Fairchild just to name a few) that have had their plants affected. Besides hard drives and their respective components, there are a ton of other electronics manufacturers that are saying their plants will be shut down until as late as Q2 of 2012. Expect a lot of consumer electronics to go up in prices, especially as class-3 electronic devices (medical, aerospace) get priority for components.

LDR vs. GDR

[tepples]

There are multiple code branches of Windows (LDR vs GDR)

I had never heard of LDR vs. GDR until now, apart from GDR being the former East Germany, so I went to Google and typed in windows ldr gdr. It gave me this post:

If updates are only delivered from Windows (or Microsoft) Update (including via WSUS), then all the files remain on the GDR branch.

So in laptop and home situations, where nobody uses anything but Windows Update, what's needed for servicing other than GDR?

and the old files can be needed for future servicing

If the method of servicing used by Windows requires keeping 18 GB of unused files around, then the method of servicing used by Windows is space inefficient, and therefore Windows is space efficient.

Re:Nobody told my supermarket about the disk short

[Anonymous Coward]

Supply/demand economics work very well if there is no monopoly. There is no monopoly in HD market. And there certainly is no monopoly in oil market.

You should learn about futures and look up oil prices on NYMEX. You would quickly understand that oil is high because of lack of supply. Gas is cheap because of excess supply. And speculators are buying lots of gas, just losing money.

SSDs

[tofu2go]

I have not heard anything about memory production being affected. Perhaps this is the time for companies to be pushing SSDs as an alternative, and maybe pushing down the prices in the process.

Re: Apropos-of-nothing UbuntuGuy

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, it's apropos-of-nothing UbuntuGuy! You never disappoint.

good riddance

[Anonymous Coward]

having just dropped at the mail a dead HD destined to the warranty department... i can only say, good riddance.

my eeepc 1000, that costed $300 when NEW, still has it's SSD running well and free or trimming, even though they have 7x the life, and at least 3 heavy falls, of the 2 last HD i returned to warranty recently, which sited all their life behind a regulated power supply and on vibration dampening pads and advanced cooling.

Dear ASUS

[rrohbeck]

1. Make laptops with 60GB SSDs instead of 250GB HDDs.
2. Offer them without Windows and package an Ubuntu CD instead.
3. Sell them at the same price as before.
4. Profit!

Re:Dear ASUS

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Make laptops with 60GB SSDs instead of 250GB HDDs.
2. Offer them without Windows and package an Ubuntu CD instead.
3. Sell them at the same price as before.
4. Profit!

No, no, no. The point of the joke is to do things that DON'T make sense in steps 1-3, like a real company would.

Re:Dear ASUS

[Anonymous Coward]

Another post from apropos-of-nothing UbuntuGuy!

Re:Dear ASUS

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a huge profit dip there.

Even now with the higher prices on HDDs, a 64GB SSD is $40 more expensive than a 500GB 2.5" 7200rpm HDD.
I think you may have also forgotten that Asus/HP/Dell/et al essentially pay *negative* amounts for Windows due to the crapware they get paid to bundle (Skype, WoW Installers, AOL, etc)

Re:Dear ASUS

[rrohbeck]

60GB SSDs can be had for $60 retail now so they can't be $40 more expensive than HDs for an OEM, unless you get the HDs for free.

Re:The old health system is killing jobs and the G

[Big Boss]

The old health system is killing jobs and the GOP wants to kill the new bill as well. Single player will stop jobs from have to deal with health.

How can the health system kill jobs. The new health system IE ObamaCare kills people not jobs . O and by the way it is "Single Payer" NOT "Single Player"

And ObamaCare is NOT "Single Payer". I might have a LITTLE respect for it if it were, but it's the same old crap system with more overhead. There's change I can believe in right there.... sigh....

I applaud this

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it about time to switch to SDDs, at least for portable devices? You don't need to carry your entire porn collection around on a netbook.

Re:Nobody told my supermarket about the disk short

[tompaulco]

Nobody told Newegg either. The same 2TB Western Digital Caviar black that I bought 6 months ago is $149.99, $20 cheaper than when I bought it.

Good. I hope they lose loads of sales.

[Anonymous Coward]

ASUS wouldn't replace a graphics card that was 2.5 years old and on the box it said it had a 3 year warranty, therefore I feel they stole a graphics card off me. I hope they have more bad luck and go bust.

Hopefully someone will read this and decide not to buy an ASUS product. That would be good.

order more

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Mr. Chang if you want to replenish your inventory you'll have to pick up the phone and order more from a manufacturer that you currently don't have a rigged deal with. Oh? you don't want to pay! click.

And?

[AlienIntelligence]

"ASUS has said it only has hard disk drive (HDD) inventory until the end of November. 'Substitutes for HDD are very few, so if the situation persists, not only notebook production will be affected but also desktops, and other component shipments will also drop,' Asustek CFO David Chang told Reuters."

And? Fix the problem or lose money, pretty simple.

I'm very certain there are SSD-only manufacturers out there that would
love to pick over dem bones. Quick, hurry... vultures are circling!

-AI

Note!

[Anonymous Coward]

You may want to turn the drive upside-down and let the rainwater drain out before powering it up.

I believe there is some analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

about mono cultures or putting all your eggs in one basket...but hindsight is 20/20

ASUS Motherboard and dvd drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

Great.A wonderful web site for laptop parts with the favorible price and very Great, if you have any requirement,you may have a look at the following.
  Laptop Motherboards
Laptop DVD Drive

Supply & Demand - don't underestimate it

[Smerta]

Anecdotal, but...

Western Digital makes a 1TB, 2.5" 9.5mm drive (WD10JPVT). If you need lots of storage for a laptop which will only take a 9.5mm drive, there aren't too many options.

About 2 months ago, I bought 10 of them for $129/each (list was something like $179 I believe). I told a local shop that builds custom laptops about them & they started using them in their builds. Fast forward - I haven't gotten around to using the drives, but the shop called me & asked me if I had any I wanted to sell. I quoted $250/each if they bought all 10, and they didn't even blink.

I wasn't trying to gouge, that was simply the price I needed to make it worth my while (that's why I started at my minimum, instead of starting even higher & working down). If I need the drives in 3 months & have to pay more, too bad for me. That's business 101 & (micro-) economics 101.