Hard Drives are going up fast. If you need a new hard disk drive for your PC, be prepared for a potential delay. Western Digital, the world's largest provider who makes 60 percent of their drives in Thailand has stopped production there due to record breaking floods there. The country manufacturers produce one fourth of all the world’s disk drives. Seagate drives may be curtailed as well due to flooding of component suppliers.

Western Digital’s facility in the Bang Pa Industrial Park of Thailand's Ayutthaya province will need to dry out or replace some equipment that became submerged. After hitting their operation at Bang Pa, water flowed onward threatening Western Digital’s Navanakorn Industrial Park location as well. The company has not given a time frame for recovery from the intrusive water.

Toshiba temporarily halted production. In the second quarter, Toshiba was ranked the number four HDD supplier, with 17.8 million units. Now their Thailand facility will sit idle. While you decry the inconvenience of your computer having to sit unused without a new disk drive, give a moments thought to Toshiba’s nearly 4,000 Thai workers who must also sit idle until they can get their country, their job, and their lives back to normal. 
Prior to the flooding disruption, disk drives were at an inventory low. Following the water damage, inventory will be at a premium, even though Western Digital’s manufacturing locations in Malaysia, Singapore, and the US remain on dry land.

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