Flooding in Thailand = expensive computer hard drives.

[Tastes_of_Chocolate]

@Dr.Strangelove

I’ve read that the floods have actually destroyed a bunch of machinery–it’s not just that they couldn’t work during the downtime. Could be a while before prices come down.

Chatting with one of our guys in this field - His estimate is that the real shortages are only about to hit. So far, we’ve been selling HDs that were already completed and either sitting in someone’s inventory, or were in transit.If they are lucky manufacturers will be able to salvage their equipment, and either wait until the waters go down, or move the equipment to a new location. TIf they are unlucky, they are going to have to order all new manufacturing equipment, and basically set up a new factory. From what I’ve heard, that could be 6-9months.

[Crown_Prince_of_Irony]

@drachillix

I deal with alot of small and micro businesses. People who make a $20K a year working from home and such. Increasing the price of a repair on a computer they use to do freelance medical transcription can be crippling.

Oh, totally understood - any implication that this is a First World Problem only extends to my predicament. I do realize that this hits others much harder than me. I know some folks who work at smaller companies who are hit very badly by this - this increases their cost of building a white-box backup server by almost double, which directly hits their bottom line.

If there’s one plus side to this (he said, tongue firmly in cheek) it’s that the price gap between hard drives and solid state drives is shinking - just in the wrong direction.

[Rachellelogram]

Ooh, I bought a 500gb hard drive a year ago, that I never ended up using. It’s just sitting in my bedroom now. I should flip it!

[Dr.Strangelove]

@Tastes_of_Chocolate

If they are lucky manufacturers will be able to salvage their equipment, and either wait until the waters go down, or move the equipment to a new location. TIf they are unlucky, they are going to have to order all new manufacturing equipment, and basically set up a new factory.

Ouch… but it fits with what I’ve heard. I forget where he heard it from, but one of my coworkers mentioned that some places were sending in SCUBA divers to salvage some equipment. Seemed pretty unlikely to me, but I guess if it’s fresh water it might not all be unusable. Glass platters might survive, I guess.

[JustinC]

I had a look online and prices seem to be normal here in the UK; ie we, in our smaller market, are gouged as a matter of course.

But, I had a look for new external drives on ebay.co and there are still 1TB drives for around $130 and 2TB drives for around $180 (if my forex math is correct). I didn’t look to see if the delivery charges would counteract any savings though. Also I don’t know if the brands are reliable.

[jjimm]

@mhendo

Obligatory nitpick: i was using hyperbole.

Obligatory acknowledgement: I kinda knew you were, but my friends in the south are saying that tourism numbers are way down due to a perception that the whole country’s underwater, so I wanted publicly to clarify the hyperbole just in case.

[Dangerosa]

@mhendo

Well, gaffa, there are a few issues here that complicate things.

Firstly, Thailand is, according to the stories that i have read, the source for about 40% of the world’s hard drives. So, as you say, it’s not the only source, but it is a significant source, and any industry that suddenly loses up to 40% of its capacity will likely see a rather dramatic (temporary) supply deficit.

But there’s also the issue of who those drives get shipped to. A couple of stories suggest that the hard drive manufacturers will fulfill their large orders from computer manufacturers (Dell, etc.) first, and that shortages will probably be greatest in precisely the area that i discussed in my OP – people buying individual drives from retail outlets like NewEgg, Best Buy, etc.

Finally, as alluded to by Tastes of Chocolate, even drives not listed as being manufactured in Thailand often have parts that were made there. For example, a company called Nidec makes spindle motors for hard drives, and is the main supplier of this component for drives made in a variety of countries. Nidec is located in Thailand, and has also been hit by the floods, so even companies that don’t make their drives in Thailand will be affected if their component suppliers are in Thailand.

And what they’ll switch their lines to. If your capacity is at 40% of what it was (according to something I read - 60% of Western Digital’s drives come out of that Thai factory), do you make cheap, low margin desktop drives or do you switch your functional lines to making expensive high margin enterprise drives?

Also, there has been a lot of contraction in the industry - and the parts ship from all over. If your media plant, or your motors supplier, is under water, it doesn’t make any difference if your final assembly location is high and dry.

And a lot of the stuff underwater is highly calibrated cleanroom equipment. It ain’t drying out.

[Siam_Sam]

Yes, I mentioned this in the flooding thread. Unfortunately, there’s been a lot of incorrect and hysterical reporting, same as the riots last year. First of all, let’s get something straight: “Most” of the country is not and never has been underwater. That’s just crazy talk. However, a large part of the Central region (there are four main regions) has been inundated, but most of Bangkok, including my area, has been unaffected.

Unfortunately, seven major industrial estates are awash, and they contain a lot of computer and computer-parts factories, so yes, there is a very real threat of a price rise.

[Dangerosa]

@Siam_Sam

Yes, I mentioned this in the flooding thread. Unfortunately, there’s been a lot of incorrect and hysterical reporting, same as the riots last year. First of all, let’s get something straight: “Most” of the country is not and never has been underwater. That’s just crazy talk. However, a large part of the Central region (there are four main regions) has been inundated, but most of Bangkok, including my area, has been unaffected.

Unfortunately, seven major industrial estates are awash, and they contain a lot of computer and computer-parts factories, so yes, there is a very real threat of a price rise.

And there is another issue - your plant might be dry, but if your employees can’t get to work because between here and there its flooded, your plant isn’t running. That seems to be quite a bit of it - my coworkers homes are dry, the plant is dry, but they can’t get from home to work and back.

[Siam_Sam]

Yes, there is that too. Plus there’s that most workers are migrants from upcountry, many have returned home and who knows if they’ll even come back.

[ReticulatingSplines]

I too was in the market for a new drive and made the fatal mistake of thinking that if I waited I could get more space at the same price.

On the bright side, might as well splurge on that expensive-as-shit SSD I could never justify before, if a hard disk costs the same.

[Tastes_of_Chocolate]

@ReticulatingSplines

I too was in the market for a new drive and made the fatal mistake of thinking that if I waited I could get more space at the same price.

On the bright side, might as well splurge on that expensive-as-shit SSD I could never justify before, if a hard disk costs the same.

If you haven’t splurged yet, some of the industry newsletters I’m seeing are guessing that HD pricing may start to drop around the end of the year. Now this is for commercial purchasers, large volume stuff, but that leads me to believe that consumer level HDs will follow behind that shortly.