Last year's Thailand floods wreaked havoc on the storage industry, as the region accounts for about half of all hard drive production. Western Digital was among the hardest hit, announcing last October that, like many others, it would suspend operations at affected locations. In addition to inflating prices, the disaster slowed the introduction of new products as suppliers and manufacturers struggled to get back on track.

It's been a long year of supply shortages and wacky premiums, but things are finally stabilizing and new designs are trickling out of drive makers including Western Digital, which hasn't showed much since unveiling its first 3TB hard drive two years ago. Making up for that dry spell, the company has recently introduced new ultra-fast RE enterprise drives as well as a Red series for NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices.