Electronics Hard Drive Shortage Coming Soon - Page 2

**gblowfish** · 11-02-2011, 12:21 PM

If you need a hard drive, better think about buying one now before prices go up and stocks go down:

http://tinyurl.com/3n6btep

The humble hard disk drive may become a more precious commodity in the coming months, according to analysts and Apple.

Apple CEO Tim Cook made this very clear this week in the company's earnings conference call, referring to the impact of the floods in Thailand. "Like many others, we source many components from Thailand and have multiple factories that supply these components. There are several factories that are currently not operable, and the recovery timeline for these factories is not known at this point," he said.

Cook continued. "We would say that our primary exposure is on the Mac...I'm virtually certain there will be an overall industry shortage of disk drives as a result of the disaster," he said.

Analysts at DisplaySearch and IHS-iSuppli chimed in this week with warnings too, centered on drive motor maker Nidec, which supplies between 70 percent to 80 percent of the hard disk drive motors. "The floods are expected to limit the hard disk drive motor supply coming from maker Nidec, which has about 80 percent share of the market," Richard Shim of DisplaySearch wrote this week. (Note: iSuppli says 70 percent.)

Nidec is a supplier to all the major hard drive manufacturers, including Hitachi, Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital, wrote Shim.

And there is an impact beyond Nidec because Thailand is a global hub for production, as Apple's Cook pointed out. Hitachi, Toshiba, and Western Digital have HDD plants in Thailand that have curtailed production because of the supply shortage, according to Shim.

Thailand accounts for about 25 percent of worldwide HDD production, according to iSuppli.

But warnings about production aside, what's the bottom line on supply and prices? "Typically, notebook brands carry up to four weeks of hard disk drive inventory to respond to market dynamics and logistics...some brands were leaning towards the lower end of inventory ranges, two to three weeks, for most components," wrote Shim, referring to the fourth quarter.

And in a phone interview on Friday, Shim said that in the short term, prices should not rise, at least not considerably. "In the short term, no. Because most of the brands have several weeks [inventory]. But if it becomes this perfect storm of events where there is a lot of demand and the flooding continues to have an impact, then we could have a problem," he said.

If there's one company to watch, it may be No.1 Western Digital (WDC), according to IHS-iSuppli.

"WDC, the world's largest HDD manufacturer in terms of volume, has 37,000 workers in Thailand, and production in the country accounts for 60 percent of the company's total capacity. WDC in the second quarter made 53.8 million HDDs, giving it a 32 percent share of the global market," said iSuppli.

Fish · 11-02-2011, 03:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaveNull

OWC does a lot of testing of the aftermarket hardware that they sell. If you go with one of their custom builds, they put it through all kinds of stress testing before you get it.

My low post count is keeping me from linking, but look around at the mpgprolaptop.com website.

Stress testing is completely unnecessary. All that does is shorten the life of the system.

Stress testing is really only good for determining the average life of a component by stress testing many of the exact same component and averaging the results. It's never been a very effective method of predicting when a single computer component will fail. There's rarely any "warning signs" from stress testing that would actually predict single component failure.

That would be equivalent to a car salesman putting a new car up on blocks and running it at 10k rpm for 24 hours just to see if something breaks, and then saying "Yep I'm pretty sure it's safe from further mechanical failure now." That's a fallacy.

It's ineffective and really hard on the system.

DaveNull · 11-02-2011, 05:59 PM

That's a poor analogy to try to discredit my point. For traditional drives, such testing would reveal whether or not a drive came from the manufacturer with a defect that would show up quickly in the hands of the user. I've had two of my backup drives fail within two cycles...something that may have been uncovered if I'd done something similar prior to deploying them into rotation.

My point was that a reseller who does this amount of testing is more likely to understand the failure rates of the products they sell and doesn't sell crap.

11-02-2011, 12:21 PM
gblowfish Be Kind To Your Pets Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Glorious Independence, MO Casino cash: $16886178 VARSITY	Hard Drive Shortage Coming Soon If you need a hard drive, better think about buying one now before prices go up and stocks go down: http://tinyurl.com/3n6btep The humble hard disk drive may become a more precious commodity in the coming months, according to analysts and Apple. Apple CEO Tim Cook made this very clear this week in the company's earnings conference call, referring to the impact of the floods in Thailand. "Like many others, we source many components from Thailand and have multiple factories that supply these components. There are several factories that are currently not operable, and the recovery timeline for these factories is not known at this point," he said. Cook continued. "We would say that our primary exposure is on the Mac...I'm virtually certain there will be an overall industry shortage of disk drives as a result of the disaster," he said. Analysts at DisplaySearch and IHS-iSuppli chimed in this week with warnings too, centered on drive motor maker Nidec, which supplies between 70 percent to 80 percent of the hard disk drive motors. "The floods are expected to limit the hard disk drive motor supply coming from maker Nidec, which has about 80 percent share of the market," Richard Shim of DisplaySearch wrote this week. (Note: iSuppli says 70 percent.) Nidec is a supplier to all the major hard drive manufacturers, including Hitachi, Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital, wrote Shim. And there is an impact beyond Nidec because Thailand is a global hub for production, as Apple's Cook pointed out. Hitachi, Toshiba, and Western Digital have HDD plants in Thailand that have curtailed production because of the supply shortage, according to Shim. Thailand accounts for about 25 percent of worldwide HDD production, according to iSuppli. But warnings about production aside, what's the bottom line on supply and prices? "Typically, notebook brands carry up to four weeks of hard disk drive inventory to respond to market dynamics and logistics...some brands were leaning towards the lower end of inventory ranges, two to three weeks, for most components," wrote Shim, referring to the fourth quarter. And in a phone interview on Friday, Shim said that in the short term, prices should not rise, at least not considerably. "In the short term, no. Because most of the brands have several weeks [inventory]. But if it becomes this perfect storm of events where there is a lot of demand and the flooding continues to have an impact, then we could have a problem," he said. If there's one company to watch, it may be No.1 Western Digital (WDC), according to IHS-iSuppli. "WDC, the world's largest HDD manufacturer in terms of volume, has 37,000 workers in Thailand, and production in the country accounts for 60 percent of the company's total capacity. WDC in the second quarter made 53.8 million HDDs, giving it a 32 percent share of the global market," said iSuppli.
Posts: 41,016

11-02-2011, 05:59 PM	#17
DaveNull Veteran Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: Villa Straylight Casino cash: $9975610	That's a poor analogy to try to discredit my point. For traditional drives, such testing would reveal whether or not a drive came from the manufacturer with a defect that would show up quickly in the hands of the user. I've had two of my backup drives fail within two cycles...something that may have been uncovered if I'd done something similar prior to deploying them into rotation. My point was that a reseller who does this amount of testing is more likely to understand the failure rates of the products they sell and doesn't sell crap.
Posts: 2,367