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Will prices of hard disks reach absurd level? This is just the beginning of bad news...

Speculators are driving that this spiral is moving to other markets as well. Floods that are now in Thailand and kill at least 377 people also affected consumer electronic market. All major hard disk manufactures, such as, Western Digital and Seagate, have its factories in Thailand. Both manufactures have recorded heavy losses. It is estimated that Western Digital has lost the most, and in upcoming months, even 75% of his production capacity will be unavailable.

Market quickly reacted to all problems that manufactures where facing. From June in some European countries, prices of hard disk drivers increased two or even three times! In United States it is reported that prices increased only about 50%. The biggest hard drive manufacturer, Western Digital, has suffered the greater loss. This means that all his OEM partners (like Dell or Hewlett-Packard), so the leading computer manufacturers, have the highest priority now. These companies are receiving all deliveries they can get. Only that what those manufactures, so the OEM market, can't absorb gets into the retail market.

Analysts do not leave any illusions. Hard drive production capacity will be restored to the full level earliest in March next year. Till that time we should expect further price increase that will be accelerated by upcoming Christmas season. Analyst firm IDC says that till March prices of hard disk can reach absurd levels. There is already a noticeable price increase in multimedia players, workstations, or other devices that are using hard drives. It will get only worse overtime. Notebooks may suffer the most from the whole situation, whose prices have already started to grow.  Almost all production of 1,8 2,5-inch drives goes to OEM market, and as demand for notebooks is big (in Christmas season even bigger), their manufactures will do anything just to keep their supplies.

"Ordinary" consumers will get on their pockets not only from the effects of the floods themselves. Manufactures of many types of devices have already noticed that speculators, distributions, wholesalers and shops are also gaining on this situation. Netgear noted that since the floods in Thailand, margins on theirs devices with hard drives increased at least twice. It is especially noticeable that in different countries price increases are dramatically different.

In time like this, everyone will need to utilize their storage to maximum capacity, therefore if you never heard about iSCSI, it is great time to try it by yourself. Below you can learn how to maximize your storage capacity and ultimately save money.