Flood waters that have besieged parts of Thailand and affected the production of hard drives could possibly become a problem for our industry around February or March 2012. If the DVRs and NVRs you are installing require specialized hard drives, and they were being built at the flooded factory, there well could be equipment shortages and/or greatly increased costs for these devices.

I suggest you consider three moves:

1.  Check with your DVR/NVR vendor regarding the types of hard drives used in your current product line, and whether this flood will affect delivery and/or prices.

2.  If your current product line does not use standardized SATAII hard drives, look for alternative vendors who do use the standard plug-in hard drives, such as the Nuuo NVRs.

3.  Go to Best Buy or an online store and order a dozen to 15 standard SATAII 1 or 0.5 terabyte drives and squirrel them away. You will end up using them somewhere in your operation — either at the office or at a client’s location — and you’ll have some backup stock in the event that the shortage scenario becomes a reality.

— By Dave Engebretson,
Slayton Solutions Ltd., Chicago, SDM’s Contributing Technology Writer