By Anton Shilov via Tom’s Hardware
The hard drive market is already under pressure due to the emergence of cryptocurrency mining using hard drives, leading to stratospheric pricing, but that could become even worse in the coming months. According to some market analysts, the reappearance of the pandemic in Southeast Asia in general and Thailand in particular, along with a shortage of components, threatens hard drive production in the second half of the year. If authorities tighten lockdowns, then the supply of HDDs in the second half may be significantly impacted.
Seagate and Western Digital produce a significant portion of their hard drives in Thailand, where local authorities forced lockdowns in highly populated areas starting July 12 to avoid the spread of the virus. HDD assembly facilities and factories where components (such as printed circuit boards) are built by companies like Quanta Storage and New Kinpo Group are located far from populated areas, but there is still an impact on production, reports DigiTimes.
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