Global trade and commerce brings the technological world together. But this also can bring negative impacts. Flooding in Thailand has decimated the production of computer hard drives, causing prices to sky-rocket around the rest of the world.
Thailand is responsible for a quarter of the global manufacturing of hard drives and many of the factories have been flooded.
The immediate impact has been seen on anyone who has needed to purchase a new internal hard drive for a computer. Prices for such hard drives have doubled and with production not restarting anytime soon, they will continue to rise.
This increase in hard drive prices has driven up prices of computers and external hard drives as warehouses are depleted of their pre-flooding supply. Industry sources have suggested it may take a year or longer before production returns to normal.
One alternative that may move in to fill this absence is solid-state drives (SSD) which utilize memory chips instead of a spinning platter. These drives, although more expensive, contain no moving parts which means they are more durable as well as the fact that they are fast drives. Prices of such SSDs have fallen in recent months to become reachable for average consumers.
This natural disaster may change your next computer, either with a higher price to compensate for the shortage or with the new type of storage device on your new purchase.