If you’ve been watching PC component prices lately, you might have noticed that hard drives have gone up in price but as much as 50% or more.

SSDs (solid state drives) have also risen slightly but nowhere near the same level.

The reason? The devastating floods in Thailand. The majority of the world’s platter-based hard drives come out of the Thai technology basin and the floods have affected drive production along with everything else.

At this stage, word is that prices probably won’t drop until April 2012 with online sources suggesting that supply issues will get worse during the first quarter of 2012.

Currently, prices for 1TB drives in Australia have risen from around $80 to $110 online while 60GB SSDs are now selling for around the $110-120 mark.

According to online news source digitimes.com, current demand for hard drives is running at around 170million units each quarter. Production for the quarter ending December 2011 is expected to be less than 120million and rise to around 140million for the first-quarter of 2011.

So if you know of anyone who is hording a couple of million drives, now’s the time to cash them in…

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