The past couple months of rain have brought unbelievable devastation to the country of Thailand.  Lives have been lost, property has been damaged and infrastructure has been washed away.  Too much damage has been caused by the flood waters.  The damage will have an inescapable effect on the manufacturing industry including the computer hard drive industry.

Thailand manufactures a quarter of the world’s hard drives.  The flooding has a very high potential to threaten the supply of hard drives starting as early as November 2011 and lingering on into 2012.  Hard drive suppliers are warning people of the possible shortage and increased prices as the flood waters continue to rise and enter their manufacturing facilities.

The hard drive shortage will include large suppliers such as Thailand’s Western Digital, Seagate, Origin Storage, Nimec, Fujitsu, IBM/Hitachi, Hutchinson Technology, Verbatim, LaCie and others.  The distributors are trying to be responsible by limiting the available supply.  By limiting doing so, they hope the available inventory will last longer and help them through the demands of 2012.

Here at EDGE Tech Corp., our thoughts and prayers go out to the country and people of Thailand.  We also hope the flood waters recede and manufacturing can return to normal for all the industries affected.