AfterDawn: News

Disk drive shipments reach pre-Thai flood levels

Over a year after massive floods in Thailand disrupted a significant portion of the world's disk drive production, shipment levels have recovered to pre-flood levels.

According to IHS iSuppli, demand from the enterprise market has helped the industry recover, with shipment levels expected to break early 2011 levels, soon.



In total, shipments are expected to reach 524 million units this year, up 4.3 percent from last year. What will not be the same as last year, however, is prices, which are still artificially high as hard drive makers make up for years of vicious price wars.

Prices are still, on average, 28 percent higher than they were before the flood.

Another reason for the production boost is the upcoming Windows 8 operating system, Microsoft's first since 2009's Windows 7. Windows 8 will be the most used OS for ultrabooks, many of which use hybrid drives that include SSD for boot up and HDD for storage.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 30 Sep 2012 11:48

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• 4 comments

• snardos

  I will continue to avoid buying hard drives until prices fall back to pre flood levels. I have only bought one since then, and that was a refurbished drive (unimportant data) that I bought during the flood when prices were just starting to climb, and I got it cheap.

  1.10.2012 08:36 #1

• ThePastor

  Agreed. I am making due with what I have. Deleting instead of archiving, until prices come back down or capacity goes significantly up.
  Where's my 6TB drive for $150 ???
  

  Oh, Im sorry... Did the middle of my sentence interrupt the beginning of yours?

  1.10.2012 12:16 #2

• IguanaC64

  Eh? I'm seeing 2TB drives on sale at $89 now...they have come back down. They are back to pre-flood levels...just not lower.

  1.10.2012 14:39 #3

• KillerBug

  Originally posted by IguanaC64: Eh? I'm seeing 2TB drives on sale at $89 now...they have come back down. They are back to pre-flood levels...just not lower. I was getting 3TB drives for under $70 shipped before the flood...they are not back down, even if you ignore Moore's law.
  
  It is amazing...a couple of LCD makers agree to jack keep prices where they are and the government cracks down on them in spite of the fact that their competition was undercutting their prices and stealing the market away, yet all the hard drive makers got together and agreed not only to keep prices where they are, but to increase them...and the government does nothing about it. It is the most obvious, easily proven price fixing imaginable and no one is in court.
  

  
  

  1.10.2012 19:43 #4