Although Seagate's factories weren't directly impacted by the huge flooding in Thailand, the company has been affected by the inventory shortages of components crucial to its supply chain. All Things D recently interviewed Seagate CEO Steve Luczo, who assessed the road that lies ahead for the industry: supply shortages will continue until at least late 2012, and the industry may not return to normal until the end of 2013. And while manufacturers are adapting to the shortage by including fewer parts in their drives by using a single higher-density disk with two heads instead of two disks with four heads, Luczo says price increases are inevitable. Although Seagate doesn't plan to build factories outside of the flood zone because it views the situation as temporary, it's probably still a good idea to stock up on hard drives before prices start skyrocketing — or finally make the jump to SSD.