If you're going to need hard drives this year or early next year, it would be smart to get your sources locked in now.

Disk manufacturing sites in Thailand -- notably including the largest Western Digital plant -- were shut down due to floods around Bangkok last week and are expected to remain shut for at least several more days. The end to flooding is not in sight, and Western Digital now says it could take five to eight months to bring its plants back online. Thailand is a major manufacturer of hard drives, and the shutdowns have reduced the industry's output by 25 percent.

Western Digital, the largest hard disk manufacturer, makes more than 30 percent of all hard drives in the world. Its plants in Ayutthaya's Bang Pa-In Industrial Estate and Pathum Thani's Navanakorn Industrial Estate together produce about 60 percent the company's disks. Both were shut down last Wednesday. (Western Digital also has a major plant in Malaysia that hasn't been affected by the floods, so some production will likely shift to that plant.)

Fourth-ranked hard-disk manufacturer Toshiba makes more than 10 percent of the world's hard disks, and half of its capacity is in Thailand. Toshiba's plant has also been closed due to flooding.

Key disk component suppliers have also been hit. Nidec, which makes more than 70 percent of all hard drive motors, has temporarily suspended operations at all three of its plants in Thailand, affecting 30 percent of its production capacity. Hutchinson Technologies, which makes drive suspension assemblies, has also suspended operations due to power outages, although it says it will shift operations to its U.S. plant.

más del 98% de los discos duros del mundo son fabricados por un conjunto de grandes empresas: seagate (que ahora es propietaria de maxtor), western digital (propietaria de hitachi, a la que a su vez fue propietaria de la antigua división de fabricación de discos de ibm) y fujitsu, que sigue haciendo discos portátiles y discos de servidores, pero dejó de hacer discos para ordenadores de escritorio en 2001, y el resto lo vendió a western digital. Toshiba es uno de los principales fabricantes de discos duros para portátiles de 2,5 pulgadas y 1,8 pulgadas. Trekstor es un fabricante alemán que en 2009 tuvo problemas de insolvencia, pero que actualmente sigue en activo. Excelstor es un pequeño fabricante chino de discos duros.

Iniciado por kudeiro

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