WD Resumes HDD Production at Just One Factory
Just one building is back, but the rest is still in pretty wet and damaged shape.
On Thursday in its financial outlook for the December quarter, Western Digital gave an update on its Thailand flood recovery effort, reporting that production of hard drives finally resumed this week in one of its buildings in Bang Pa-in (BPI), Thailand, just one week ahead of internal schedules.
According to the company, this particular building was previously standing in six feet of water since flooding began back on October 15. The estate was eventually pumped dry as of November 17, and the lights officially switched back on over a week later. Hard drive production finally resumed as of November 30, the company said.
As for the remaining buildings at its BPI facility, all submerged slider manufacturing equipment has been removed from the BPI facilities for assessment, decontamination and refurbishment -- structural decontamination and restoration has now commenced. Western Digital expects to resume head slider production in the March 2012 quarter (Q3 FY'12) and also begin production in a new WD slider fab location in Penang, Malaysia, in the same time frame.
The company's other Thailand hard drive facilities at Navanakorn, however, still remain under approximately two feet of water. Western Digital expects the industrial estate to be pumped dry within ten days at which point the work of decontamination and refurbishment will commence.
"The company believes that hard drive industry shipments in the December quarter will be limited to approximately 120 million units due to production and supply constraints related to the historic flooding in Thailand," Western Digital said on Thursday. "This includes units that were in inventory at the beginning of the quarter. The company believes that demand for the December quarter is in the range of 170 million to 180 million units. The company believes that significant industry supply constraints will continue in the March quarter and beyond."
Earlier in the report, Western Digital said it now expects a fiscal Q2 (December quarter) revenue of at least $1.8 billion and gross margins above the high end of its business model range of 18-percent to 23-percent. The company also noted that it will be "vigorously contesting the arbitration decision announced November 21, 2011, in the legal matter with Seagate and has not yet determined the accounting treatment associated with this matter."
To read the full report, head here.

Talk about inflation!
I'm waiting the HDD price to drop and i need 6TB because my x2 2TB are getting full. 1080P movies......
I would never usually recommend this, but buy now, it's only going to go up if this continues. Find a cyber week deal and just buy enough to hold you over for a year or so
And this is another good reason to buy now f you are going to need a hard drive soon. Buy before the newest batches start coming in.
Right, because no natural disasters happen in the U.S.?
That point aside, prices of hard drives produced domestically would be even higher than they are right now.
a) No place on Earth is safe from natural disasters.
b) Cheaper working force allows cheaper products. Minimum wage in USA is much much higher than in Thailand.
that said there are people in the us who prefer to buy made in the usa products even if they cost more
with electronics there likely won't be a huge difference, but i'd pay a good bti mroe to help support my own country's gdp... i am in the minority though so maybe you're right that it wouldn't make enough of a drop in the bucket
And there are others of us who would rather pay someone who wants to work hard and improve themselves rather than paying someone's union dues for inferior products.
who says its an inferior product... try finding a good quality tool not made by theUS, Germany, or Swiss ... its difficult. with tech products i admit there likely won't be much if any difference, but when it comes to buying anything made of steel made in the US still means something
some people think unions are good, without them we'd all still eb workign for penuts in dangerous workign conditions with no days off and no ovetime pay for it... what some unions have become is bad... btu not all unions are like that, and they have doen alot of good for us
This is not a pissing contest or about "cheap probability". It's about sustainability, past time to see what's going on and where.