I haven't seen to much in the media about this, but it is easy to not pay much attention to disasters in foreign countries, until it starts affecting you. The flooding in Thailand has severly crippled industry there.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/storage/display/20111020134230_WD_HDD_Industry_Will_Be_Supply_Constrained_Due_to_Thailand_Flooding.html (http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/storage/display/20111020134230_WD_HDD_Industry_Will_Be_Supply_Constrained_Due_to_Thailand_Flooding.html)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/business/global/07iht-floods07.html?_r=1 (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/business/global/07iht-floods07.html?_r=1)
So there is now a major shortage of hard drives worldwide. As an example, a 500GB WD Caviar Black that was easy to find for $50 delivered is now over $150, with a limit of one per person. For some strange reason, external drive prices haven't jumped as much as internal drives.
We just got notice that Dell servers we used get in 2 weeks now have estimated delivery of March! because of the hard drive shortage. Kinda seems like multiple companies all put their eggs in one basket. ???