Recent flooding in Thailand have caused a global shortage and price increases in hard drives. Shortages may last more than six months.
Why? Most of the world’s makers of hard drives do a significant portion of their manufacturing in Thailand. I don’t know why that is but it’s a fact.
There were shortages of some Apple products following the Japan earthquake / tsunami. One critical part is only manufactured at one facility in Japan.
Increasingly it’s not just a small world. but a connected world.