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HDD production to be slow throughout 2012, says Seagate

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A number of other manufacturers, such as Toshiba and Western Digital, expect to miss their respective quarter HDD production targets as well

The recent Thailand floods know no mercy as HDD manufacturers continue to feel the burn from inundated and inactivated factories.

Specifically, Seagate is expected produce less HDDs next year due to many of its factories still under three feet of water, reports Bloomberg.

This is going to take a lot longer than people are assuming, until the end of 2012 at least,” said Seagate CEO Stephen J. Luczo.

Average hard drive prices have already increased by as much as 20 percent because of the flooding, the source claims, since over one-third of HDDs worldwide are produced by manufacturers who have factories in the flooded regions. Because of this, Western Digital and Toshiba both anticipate missing their target production of 180 million units by at least 50 million for the current quarter.

It’s going to be very interesting to see who gets drives and who doesn’t,” said Luczo. Whether or not this means higher notebook/PC prices for the end-user or the same prices due manufacturers absorbing the cost increase remains to be seen. At least one company, Acer, will reportedly raise its Aspire S3 Ultrabook prices due to the floods.

The Sendai earthquake that directed massive tsunamis towards Japan earlier this year also caused a slight hiccup in worldwide SSD production, similar to the current HDD fiasco. Much of the world’s NAND flash chips are assembled in Japan, where a number of factories had to be shut down for some time due to the tsunami damages.

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Allen Ngo, 2011-11-20 (Update: 2012-05-26)