If a butterfly on the other side of the world can cause a hurricane, a flood in Thailand can wreak havoc on hard drive customers. Devastating floods in the country are expected to soften manufacturers’ abilities to crank out hard drives, and analysts say private customers will have to deal with the resulting price increases more than computer manufacturers. Affected companies include Toshiba and Western Digital, which have temporarily shut down Thailand plants.

According to Computerworld, retail hard drive prices should increase by 10 percent. In some cases, overreacting vendors may launch prices even higher. The story says Western Digital’s 1.5TB Caviar Green series’ internal drive shot up from $162 to $280 within five days on one site.

The industry is expected to return to full production levels by March.

Hard drive shortage expected to hurt consumers most [Computerworld]

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