Hard Drive Shortage Could Hurt Cloud Computing

[KDawg]

The impact of flooding in Thailand on PC inventories going into the holiday has been widely reported, but an obvious connection we’ve been missing has been raised by the New York Times, and it’s an important one. According to interviews conducted by Nick Bilton, cloud computing could grind to a halt early next year as storage prices skyrocket, and supply reaches historic lows. Flooding in the region has shuttered more than 1,000 factories, including several which are responsible for pumping out a significant percentage of the world’s mechanical hard drives.

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/new...loud_computing

Do we rely on Thailand that much for our hard drives?

[Asparas]

Well I certainly noticed a price hike on drives.

[verotik66]

yes we do an nikon cameras

[Hans]

Well I certainly noticed a price hike on drives.

Which is based on pure speculation, since they were manufactured several weeks ago at best.

[Asparas]

Which is based on pure speculation, since they were manufactured several weeks ago at best.

Well what kills me is that Seagate only has like 25% or so of their factories in Thailand, whereas WD has like 60%, yet their price hike was just as severe even though they're barely affected compared to WD. I understand supply and demand got messed up pretty bad, but not bad enough that they also have to gouge us that bad. They really should have ramped up their production while keeping prices moderate, so that they could take advantage of this.

[Hans]

Hopefully this will give SSD a bit more push. SSD is the way to go for everything except data storage.

[8th]

[Asparas]

Hopefully this will give SSD a bit more push. SSD is the way to go for everything except data storage.

My server build is delayed now. Also, SSD is still quite expensive for what you get.

[Hans]

I found SSD in raid 1 for booting up windows and general internet usage unbeatable.

[KDawg]

Hopefully this will give SSD a bit more push. SSD is the way to go for everything except data storage.

Is that because of price or reliability?

[KDawg]

Ha. When I was at work in the early 90's, I got a new 40MB external hard drive for my Apple Macintosh. I remember thinking, how could anyone possibly need that much storage space? LOL.

[Hans]

Is that because of price or reliability?

Speed and power consumption. It can save a large data center millions per year on power costs.

[SSMP]

Anyone have a date for that ad?

[jeffster]

http://www.techepics.com/files/look_back_full.jpg

an original ad from Byte Magazine dated July 1990

[Bluesky]

Anyone remember the cassette tape drive on the Commodore Vic20? That's what I got started on.