Following intense flooding across parts of Thailand over the past few weeks, distribution sources have warned that hard disk prices could rise even further.

With monsoon season in full flow, WD, Seagate, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST) and Toshiba are among those companies whose production has been disrupted by the flooding. As a result, some hard disk prices have already risen by double.

The disruption to manufacturing and the immense scale of the shortages, which analysts predict will see a 27.7 percent decrease in availability of drives in the fourth quarter (compared to Q3) has sparked fears that further price hikes are likely.

Ultimately, the consumer will be affected by the shortages, says one analyst. "You'll start to see PC makers increase prices for some products. So indirectly, consumers will face some higher prices because of higher HDD prices," said John Rydning, a vice president of research at IDC.

Though analysts are confident the HDD industry will recover, services are likely to be disrupted for some time.

"We generally believe the HDD industry will find way to return to pre-flood production levels by March, but by that point HDD supplies will be at extremely low levels," Rydning said. "It's still going to be a pretty painful period from December through February for most HDD customers."

More companies are likely to follow Acer, who has recently confirmed that it needs to increase its prices to claw back some of the losses.

"We will appropriately reflect a hike in HDD prices on laptops," said Acer Chairman J T Wang at an investor conference last week.