The ongoing shortage of hard disk drive supply is expected to worsen and peak in early 2012, analysts expect.

Gus Richard from Piper Jaffray told Cnet that "we could run out of drives by the end of November."

Caused by the dramatic flooding in Thailand, hard drive prices have already shot up by 10 to 60 percent, but Richard is concerned that PC manufacturers especially are not taking enough precaution to deal with the shortage.

"Nobody seems to be really paying attention. Everyone overreacted to the disaster in Japan. And now I think they're underreacting," he told Cnet. The estimate is that supply will fall about 60 million units short of a demand of 180 million drives and PC manufacturers will not be not able to meet demand with the units they can produce.

However, while Richard believes that shipments could drop by 5 to 10 million units because of the shortage, the supply problem is likely to spill over into Q1 2012 and affect 10 to 20 million units. In Q1, the expected shortage may be between 60 to 80 million units as lack of supply in Q4 is carried over into the new year.

Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman expected to take over at HP

Update: It's official. Léo Apotheker is out as CEO of HP, and former eBay chief Meg Whitman will take his place.

Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman is expected to take over the helm at Hewlett-Packard by the close of business today. Although no official vote has come down yet, multiple sources close to the situation say the HP board of directors will be meeting and voting on the matter today, according to All Things D.

Whitman has been pegged as the frontrunner for the job for some time now, but only on an interim basis. Sources now believe that she is poised to take over the position for the long run.

“Meg is not someone who wants to be a steward of a process to find another CEO for HP,” said one source. “She wants to run the company and be a strong leader for what she considers an important tech powerhouse.”

HP has seen seven CEOs come and go in the past 11 years and the current head, Leo Apotheker, has held the position for less than a year.

Whitman seems like a good fit to help steer HP back to calmer waters, at least on paper. As the head of eBay from 1998 to 2008, she led the small company of 40 employees and $4 million in annual revenue to a mega business with over 15,000 team members and $8 billion in yearly intake.

After her stint at eBay, Whitman ran for Governor of California but lost to Jerry Brown in the November 2010 election. She joined HP’s board of directors in January 2011 where it now seems she is positioned to take over as soon as today. All Things D also points out that Whitman has recently hired Henry Gomez as a consultant. Gomez worked with Whitman at eBay and during her run for governor as a communications advisor.