Since the Thailand floods of late July, hard-disk prices have risen dramatically as manufacturers have been forced to close down plants. Prices for a typical 1TB hard disk from retailers have risen from £50 up to £90-100, an 80 to 100 per cent increase, as retailers anticipated stock shortages.
Digitimes reports that shortages have not been as dire as first anticipated, with retailers now suggesting prices will begin to drop again from December as they begin to clear stock built-up from the shortage concerns. This is good news for the PC and hard-disk markets, which have suffered under the recent success of competing solid-state flash based portables such as tablets and, to some extent, the up-and-coming Ultrabooks.
Slowly but surely, the flash technology found inside a typical SSD has improved, with drives now reaching terabyte capacities and outperforming hard disks in every which way but cost, though, even these have improved, with per-gigabyte cost dropping to $1.20.
It's becoming likely that the laptop market will increasingly adopt SSDs for their superior performance per watt and shock tolerance as cost becomes less of a concern, which, when discussing portables, leads to other benefits such as reductions in size and battery capacity. But of course, even with inflated spinning-disk prices, we're still some way off switching over completely.
For desktops, as long as traditional magnetic disks remain cost-effective and offer superior capacity, there will always be a home for the good ol' spinners, though perhaps the recent cost fluctuations will lead to system builders thinking twice about a more involved adoption of solid-state drives.
Update: 15:30
We've since heard from industry sources who claim that hard-drive production will not hit pre-flood levels for a year. These sources claim that Western Digital and Seagate will very slowly increase production over the coming months. Until then, expect the two goliaths to keep prices high, passing these on to retailers who, inevitably, pass them on to you.
