Demand for hard drives exceeded supply by 7% in Q4 2004

The demand for enterprise-class hard drives exceeded supply by nearly 7%, or about 400,000 drives, in Q4 2004. IDC said the supply shortfall was due to a combination of the product transition and an increase in purchases by hardware vendors. An investigation by IDC revealed delays in server shipments by all the major system vendors except Dell. The delays primarily involve higher-end drives, specifically 15,000-rpm models with 73GB and 146GB capacities, IDC said.