Flooding Threatens Thai Hard Drive Production

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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In what may be shaping up for a repeat of the Thailand floods of 2011, heavy sustained rainfall is once again threatening the production of hard drives. Authorities are confident that the flooding will not reach the same levels that shut down hard drive production in 2011.

It took more than a year for tech prices to level off, but more importantly, Thailand has yet to recover fully from the damage.
 
Maybe they should make the building flood proof. I don't know that's just common sense thinking on my part. Billion dollar companies can't protect them selves from water just seems stupid.
 
Are we seeing a trend here? Annual fires and floods the norm to boost prices now?

Cynical?
 
Are we seeing a trend here? Annual fires and floods the norm to boost prices now?

Cynical?

I remember a time in the late 90s or early 2000s when there was like 5 fab fires in 3 years, with a price hike on RAM each time, so this is not a new trick.
 
Here we go again...

Glad I'm good for a while as far as disk space goes.

You would think they would move the factories to a place that does not get natural disasters, or keep a better stock so if the production has to stop it does not affect availability. Then again, all this is smoke and mirrors and just a reason to jack up prices. There's probably not an actual real shortage when this happens.
 
Definatly a trick though. Thank god for competition as people will just be buying up ssd's in place of their temporary price hikes. Good job!!!
 
<Checks calendar> Yep, right on schedule. Does anyone really believe all these excuses for HD and RAM price hikes anymore?
 
Not this shit again. There wasn't even a shortage the last time around.
 
Maybe they should make the building flood proof. I don't know that's just common sense thinking on my part. Billion dollar companies can't protect them selves from water just seems stupid.

Obviously it is not that simple. I am not a civil engineer but I do know that there isn't really a foolproof solution in place for that, if there is it is probably not economical.

The issue about the price hike from the last round of floods was really how long they lasted. The last HDD I bought was a 2TB Samsung F4 for $70 about 3 years ago. Even after transporting my PC several times between states, it is still holding strong, but I am starting to run out of space (most of which is occupied by anime). It was bad enough that Samsung had to sell their HDD line to Seagate but even two years after the previous floods we are still not at the $70 / 2 TB price point.
 
I'm still waiting for HDD prices to drop haven't bought one since before the flood 2011

Agreed. Been trying pretty hard to not buy anymore drives since I've built a few arrays and they are all doing great. I still think 3/4TB drives are far too high but I suppose there aren't even 5TB's and people will pay higher for better quality/compatible drives & they know this..
 
The last time I did a buy it was for 5x 1TB WD Blacks from Amazon for my NAS. Within a week prices skyrocketed due to the last flood. I wonder if I should make a similar buy for some 2TB drives before they come up with a reason to jack prices up again.
 
Here's a novel idea. Don't make most of the world's production in a flood zone known for monsoon seasons!
 
They still make hds in Thailand? All of mine for the last year or more have been china disposables...
 
LOL... I gave up on the hard drive thing last flood. Screw those job stealing hacks.
 
The benefit of experiencing "natural disasters" that raise prices is that there are often exception clauses in contracts for force majeure. So not only can you jack up consumer prices, but also prices for your high volume corp/gov't data centers.
 
I am living in Central Thailand. When the US news talks about flooding in some far away Country they never show how bad it really is. It has rained heavily everyday for the last 20 or so days sometimes continuously. I can assure you the flooding is very real. When flooding in the US happens the Govt comes to the rescue and does everything in it's power to mitigate the effects, here when flooding happens nobody give a shit. People just live in in for as long as it takes for the water to go down.

They build HD's in Thailand because it is cheap to do so flooding or not. The average Thai factory worker gets 300 Baht a day which is about $10 US. If HD's were built in the US how much do you think they would cost?

I just took a drive to the Cambodian Border last week. The main highway that I took was 24 it goes right through Thailand. It is like driving in a Mad Max film. Most of the roads in Thailand are a lot worse. The flooding washed most of the roads away. It was like driving across a small inland sea. I saw schools under 3 or 4 feet of water.

The people who talk like this is just a money making stunt are talking out their asses and have probably never left their Mom's basement let alone have any experience in South East Asia.
 
Yeah the flooding is real but there's lot of stuff they could do to mitigate it, these (US) companies have TONS of money, but they choose to build the factories in places where there is common flooding issues instead of paying more to build in better locations. Most US companies seem to not believe in proper salaries and rather outsource to places where it's basically slave labour.

There probably is not even any real storage, I'm sure there are warehouses in the US that have TONS of em so even if the factory is out of comission for a few months there should be enough.
 
There probably is not even any real storage[shortage?], I'm sure there are warehouses in the US that have TONS of em so even if the factory is out of comission for a few months there should be enough.

Warehousing is dead. Manufacturers try to ship everything they make out the same day. Retailers don't want to hold stock they might not sell.

Also, great news that we'll go from the current SSD shortage to a HDD shortage. (and a DDR3 shortage)
 
Are these the same authorities that said the Tsunami wouldn't be a problem in Phuket?
 
The people who talk like this is just a money making stunt are talking out their asses and have probably never left their Mom's basement let alone have any experience in South East Asia.

Did you read up on the last hard drive price increase due to "flooding"?

We're not saying there wasn't floods, but what you don't know, is that the manufacturers had PLENTY of supply in their warehouses and there was NO shortage. They just used it as an excuse to reduce their supply at increased prices. Do some reading and go educate yourself on what happened.
 
The people who talk like this is just a money making stunt are talking out their asses and have probably never left their Mom's basement let alone have any experience in South East Asia.

I have not came across any shortage during the last flooding. No one is saying there isn't and flood, but the shortage they claim to have happened did not occur.

The price was jacked up due to a shortage that never happened.
 
They build HD's in Thailand because it is cheap to do so flooding or not. The average Thai factory worker gets 300 Baht a day which is about $10 US. If HD's were built in the US how much do you think they would cost?
.

Probably only a dollar or two more if they built them in the US. They are building the Moto X phone in the US and that only adds an extra $3 or $4 to cost. The labor cost is a fairly small part of the final cost.
 
Another bullshit excuse. Maybe WDC stock price will go through the roof after this flood.
 
It might be, you know it used to be the Asian manufacturers would get together and collude to fix prices. But after they were caught in several different industries maybe they think that is just to risky now.
 
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