14 DAY TRIAL // Before the 2011 Thailand floods, which hit the HDD market pretty hard, prices of hard disks were really, really low, just like they were for RAM for years. Now, though, it's a different story.
The floods gave Seagate, Western Digital, Toshiba and everyone else on the HDD production front a reason to raise tags. And they went up by a lot, 300% in some cases.
Eventually, facilities were restored. Sadly, prices haven't fallen back to pre-flood levels, and if they ever do, it won't be soon.
According to a report from Tech Trader Daily, it's all because the HDD makers are actively avoiding oversupplies.
Which is to say, they are tightly controlling their product output, keeping the supply-demand balance. If they don't have too many drives, they won't have to cut prices to digest inventories.