Western Digital bet its hard-drive output on Thailand — then the floods came

By 2011 Thailand had become one of the world's main hubs for making hard disk drives, accounting for a large share of global output. Western Digital and Seagate both ran large factories there, drawn by low costs and an established electronics supply base. The concentration was efficient — right up until the water arrived.

The 2011 Thailand floods, the worst in decades, inundated industrial estates north of Bangkok in October. Western Digital's factories were swamped; the supply chain, as the BBC put it, ground to a halt. With Thai output offline, the global supply of hard drives fell sharply, computer makers could not get drives for their machines, and retail prices for drives roughly doubled.

Western Digital was among the hardest hit, shipping far fewer drives than planned and estimating hundreds of millions of dollars in lost sales, while rivals with more diversified production gained ground. The shortage rippled through the whole computer industry and lasted well into 2012. The lesson was plain: concentrating so much of one critical component in a single flood-prone region had turned a weather event into an industry-wide crisis.