The effects of the Thai floods are beginning to have a significant effect on product prices in the UK, with substantial hard drive price increases, and PC increases just around the corner.

Thailand is the world’s centre for hard disk and hard disk component manufacturing, and major firms such as Western Digital have been ravaged by the recent floods. With many factories still actually underwater due to continued flooding, production has been substantially hit and product prices are beginning to soar as inventory levels are depleted.

This is also leading to situations where PC makers are having to contemplate stopping production this month as hard drive supplies dwindle from the 170 million units seen in previous years to 100-110 million units in 2011.

According to sources, supply of hard drives is looking “very scarce” over the next quarter or two.   This has meant that in the UK prices have “gone up a lot already”, and on Monday there are expected to be further price increases. Hard disks going for £30 previously are now being sold for between £70 -£80 as prices increase “considerably” due to very limited stock. And due to the fact that flooding is still on-going it is expected that prices are only going to get worse over the next few quarters.

In terms of overall PC prices, there has not been any change, but that there is a good chance that these too will be affected come the first quarter of 2012 when supply “starts drying up”.

However, despite all the trouble occurring in the market, there is one section which could actually benefit from the mass disruption.  The majority of Intel’s ultrabooks are using solid state drives, apart from Acer, so the high prices may not be such an issue in a month’s time.

Some hard disk manufacturers are attempting to move production to different countries but it could be a long time before normality prevails.