[EwanToo]

I'm sure they would have been dealing with various distributors to source their drives, but pretty much every one of them will have been saying the same thing "We've got no drives to sell."

Anyone who didn't have a multi-year, multi-million drive deal struggled to get any drives at all, even EMC and HP (who are possibly the number 1 and 2 hard drive buyers in the world) couldn't source drives at their usual prices, and they were definitely buying from the manufacturer.

You can have all the manufacturer direct deals you want, but it doesn't make a difference when the manufacturers factory is under water.