3 responses to “Hard drive shortage coming?”

1. 

   rc primak December 17th, 2009 at 00:28

   (RANT ALERT) Woody, I usually trust your analysis and judgment, but this report reeks of pre-holiday Big Box Electronics Store FUD. It is also being reported that there is a looming “shortage” of LCD Big-Screen TVs. This is all just like the alleged Flash Memory “shortage” last year. I will believe this only when I see evidence at my local Micro Center or NewEgg.com of gigantic price hikes, like those which followed the artificial “RAM Shortage” of two years ago. FUD, hype, and price manipulating. That’s all there is to this at this time.

   And while we’re at it, Best Buy’s proclamation four years ago of “the death of the VCR” has yet to reach Wal-Mart, where I just bought a fully-functioning VCR/DVD combo recorder for a steal. And blank tapes to record on. All I had to add was an OTR Digital Converter Box. And recent reports of “shortages” of Converter Boxes are also FUD. Why analog and why a VCR, you may ask? Have you ever missed a recording of a show like “Heroes” because it was “mistakenly” slapped with the NFL Football Broadcast Flag? In analog on a VCR, there is no Broadcast Flag (thanks to the US Supreme Court “BetaMax Ruling”). That’s why. Long live Fair Use!(END RANT)

   DO NOT rush out and buy up and hoard Hard Drives, folks! That is how these fake “shortages” become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Come springtime, there will be a new flood of external hard drives in all sizes, new bigger capacities, and lower prices per gigabyte. Same with LCD TVs and Monitors. The sky is NOT falling! Only the Holiday Snow Job at the Big Box Stores. Happy Holidays!

2. 

   woody December 17th, 2009 at 06:35

   RC – Good points!

   Generally hardware shortages right themselves quickly, but there have been some counterexamples over the short term. Memory shortages are real, sometimes, although the price hikes dissipate quickly.

3. 

   rc primak December 23rd, 2009 at 16:13

   Follow-up:

   There may be not just a shortage of 3.5 inch drives — this may be a technology transition. Vendors have recently noticed that consumers (like me) are buying more portable (2.5 inch) drives and fewer Desktop (3.5 inch) drives. Thus, there has been a manufacturing shift to outputting more portables and fewer desktop models. This trend has been developing for quite awhile, and it will worsen any artificial shortage during the holiday season.

   But given the increasing reliability of portable drives (unless you drop them or jar them severely — hint: get a hard case — ), these small wonders are almost ideal for pairing up with laptop computers (which are now the majority of new PCs sold in the USA). The current desktop drive shortage is looking a bit like the transition from 5.25 inch floppies to 3.5 inch floppies to flash drives. Technology is simply following Moore’s Law and the Law of Supply and Demand in the marketplace. I suspect that only the very large (1TB and larger) Desktop Drives will survive in the long run. Again, kinda like the increasing capacities of Flash Drives.

   Still, my previous examples do raise certain suspicions. And yes, I am still a dedicated devotee of analog TV and VCRs. (I don’t even have Cable or Satellite at my house! Nary even a cell phone or PDA or Mobile Device.)