The flooding in Thailand is set to cause an even more drastic shortage of hard drives according to researchers at iSuppli. Roughly 660,000 Thailand residents are out of work after the country shut down 14,000 factories, including those that Western Digital and Seagate use. Shipments of hard drives are set to decline 27.7-percent from 173 million units in Q3, down to 125 million in Q4.

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Both WD and Seagate have adjusted their shipment estimates, as well as raising prices to meet revenue forecasts. Average hard drive prices will increase by 10-percent according to iSuppli (not here in Australia where we're seeing a near 100-percent increase), but certain models have increased by as much as 20 to 40-percent. WD has been more directly impacted by the flooding, with analysts reporting that they will lose market share to Seagate, who has roughly double the shipment forecast for the current quarter.

Of course, there are stock reservers by most vendors to avoid disruption in desktop and notebook shipments for months, but ASUS aren't so fortunate. ASUS expects to ship 4.1 million notebooks, 600,000 Eee Pads and 1.2 million Eee PCs in Q4 2011, down from 4.3 million, 800,000 and 1.3 million in Q3. Part of that forecasted decline can be blamed on the production halt in Thailand.

ASUS CFO David Chang told Reuters:

Substitutes for HDD are very few, so if the situation persists, not only notebook production will be affected but also desktops, and other component shipments will also drop.

There is no relief in sight, as the Thai government has said it hopes to have factories up and running again in three months.