In that particular case, there was a shortage - it was extremely difficult for even large businesses to get hard drives. The issue was that hard drive manufacturers were (are?) clustered around an area that got flooded.

Or the shortage was caused by the NSA filling their new data-center with as much capacity as it could get its hands on, covertly, and the flood was used as a convenient cover-story for the shortage.

Maybe the NSA even managed to engineer the flood itself? Yes, that sounds about right.

It is a possibility that might have made the situation worse, but there really was a flood and many HDD factories were flooded and closed.