Rumor : Western Digital HD shortage

[CougTek]

One of my distributors sent me an e-mail about a shortage of Western Digital hard drives, causing Seagate to increase their prices by up to 15% during the upcoming 5 weeks. Anyone heard something about this? I find it hard to believe that a manufacturer couldn't supply drives in all capacities for an entire month, especially the back-to-school month.

 

[Clocker]

hmmm. Could be a good opportunity to buy some STX.

 

[Bozo]

One of my distributors sent me an e-mail about a shortage of Western Digital hard drives, causing Seagate to increase their prices by up to 15% during the upcoming 5 weeks. Anyone heard something about this? I find it hard to believe that a manufacturer couldn't supply drives in all capacities for an entire month, especially the back-to-school month.

Maybe some parts were made in Japan and they shut down after the earthquake???

Bozo :joker:

 

[[Edit]]

Likely Theoretical Reasons (in descending order):


1.) Western Digi is coming out with some unannounced model of new high-volume consumer (7200 RPM) hard drives, possibly based on the platters in their new 1.0 TB drive. However, platter production is behind due to bugs. (Remember, their upcoming 1.0 TB drive will be Western Digi's first drive using perpendicular recording technology!)

The result is that management screwed up and miscalculated the cutoff date for existing drive models too early. Now they have a product availability gap. The presumed production problem could also be related to some other production problem besides platters (like #3).


2.) WD won a big OEM order (or two) from someone -- retail channel be damned.


3.) WD is a bit cash-short after buying Komag and can't afford to pay expedited material costs for manufacturing existing and upcoming drive models.


4.) Dubya Dee fired the secretary that took care of ordering paper, paperclips, and aluminum for manufacturing hard drives.


5.) Western Digital is breaking up into four separate units: Western Digital, Eastern Digital, Northern Digital, and Southern Digital -- with Central Digital acting as the parent corporation.

 

[Piyono]

Who is this [Edit] feller?
I like the cut of his jib.

 

[LOST6200]

Mercutio

 

[mubs]

Methinks it's Gary.

 

[ddrueding]

Gary seconded

 

[Computer Generated Baby]

It might be Gary, but it's probably just Merc playing around with us or something.

 

[mubs]

No, it's the Baby fella who's messin with our heads.

 

[Tea]

Nope: it's not Gary. It's not Merc. [Edit] is his own person, with his own style. (And some useful things to say.)

Welcome [Edit]. You are probably not as nutty as the rest of them here, but don't worry about it, we will talk with you anyway. Nice post.

 

[e_dawg]

Ah, good old WD. I still have a box with 3 WD drives chugging away faithfully. Actually, it makes more of a whining sound every now and then. I can hear the bearings whine now. Getting a bit worried, as it's been >5 years, I think, of 24x7 operation in a hot enclosure.

The old WD153BA died methinks from a power surge a couple years back that also killed a Soltek motherboard, but it also made that sound for a year before it passed.