I recently went to order a hard drive through my regular supplier and noticed there are none showing with prices. I asked them and it’s due to the prices of hard drives recently sky rocketing that they can’t keep updating the price list because every day it seems to be going up a bit more!
I read an article that claims price increases are due to a flood in Thailand where almost half of the manufacturing takes place for Western Digital and Toshiba. In one aspect it makes sense with regards to supply and demand, but is it truly necessary to increase prices this much? And why is it affecting Seagate prices and other brands? Also, when the affected manufacturing plants are back in operation, will they lower their prices back down again or keep them up there since they know we are willing to pay any price. When we need the parts, we need the parts, regardless of price. This is not fair though and it will be interesting to see what the competition does when the playing fields are level again.
In the mean time, hold on to your hats, and hopefully we don’t get too much more of an increase with public media most likely blowing this entire story up to be much bigger than it actually is, which I’m sure is helping the manufacturers justify these ridiculous price increases.