Hard Drive Prices Up 150% In Less Than Two Months

zyzko writes "The Register reports that hard drive prices (lowest average unit prices) have rocketed 151% from October 1 to November 14th. The worst days have seen over 5% daily price increases. This is commonly attributed to the floods in Thailand, but there are concerns of artificial price fixing and suspicion that retailers or members of the supply channel are taking advantage of the situation." The number varies when you break it down to individual drives, but it seems to be in the right ballpark. Anecdotally, the drive I picked up on Oct. 14th would cost me 135% more today. The flood waters in Thailand have partially receded, but aren't expected to be completely gone until early December. The damage to the country's economy and property is measured in the tens of billions.

Comments

Re:Maybe

[lightknight]

Parent is a troll, but I'll answer this anyway (I'm bored).

Maybe you dumb US fuckers will stop shipping all your manufacturing away. -> Perhaps, when other countries stop bending over backwards to get jobs for their people. Simply put, their country wants these jobs more than ours do.

Why are these not manufactured in the US? -> Because, in all likelihood, it's cost prohibitive.

Why does the destruction of one plant cause this much harm? -> Because it accounted for 25% of the market. That's actually fairly large; however, most techs would argue that 25% of the market going under does not justify a 400% price increase. It is possible, but something seems kind of...off about the situation. We'll revisit the problem in a few months, and see what the fallout is. Personally, I'm finding it difficult to believe that large HD manufacturers do not have capacity to spare. But then, Seagate merged with Maxtor, so bad decisions abound.

Because you're all fucking shortsighted idiots. -> Natural disasters tend to hit everyone, at some point or another. Why, a little while back, there was this Hurricane called Katrina that...