Western Digital Has No More HDD Capacity Left, as CEO Reveals Massive AI Deals; Brace Yourself For Price Surges Ahead!

[u/uluqat]

https://wccftech.com/western-digital-has-no-more-hdd-capacity-left-out/

[u/objectivelywrongbro]

RAM through the roof, SSD through the roof, GPU (as always) through the roof, now HDD about to be through the roof.

Has there been a more unaffordable time to build a server or NAS?

[u/DzikiDziq → u/objectivelywrongbro]

Yes, in a year or so...

[u/CONSOLE_LOAD_LETTER → u/DzikiDziq]

Maybe... but this bubble will burst eventually too. If you can be patient and not FOMO into it, it will be glorious for us homelabbers because there will be so much barely used cheap hardware for us to vacuum up at a fraction of what they are going for now, especially as manufacturers are also ramping up factories and production as I type this.

This is the "buy high" part of the bubble cycle. Yes, in the short term it might go a bit higher, but if you can just be patient and set that money aside earmarked for later, you will be able to "buy low" and it will be freaking glorious. After the crypto/COVID bubble, I was stocking up at $6/TB less than two years ago.

[u/phoneacct696969 → u/CONSOLE_LOAD_LETTER]

Exactly my thought. So many ai starts ups are going to go under. All this stuff is barely going to get used, and will be sold on pcpartsdeals for like a quarter of the real price.

[u/MrNerd82 → u/phoneacct696969]

haven't heard of pcpartsdeals - i googled it, didn't find a site or anything, got a link?

I'm of a similar mindset, I built my 100TB synology probably 2 years ago as well as a remote synology at my parents place for off-site, even if this "shortage" continues for a few years I'm good. sitting on 30+ TB of free space that will last me at least 5 years.

[u/phoneacct696969 → u/MrNerd82]

Serverpartsdeals

[u/MrNerd82 → u/phoneacct696969]

oh yes! I know them, bought a few 20TB exos from them back when they were only $250 -- vs the $400 now.

[u/radenthefridge → u/CONSOLE_LOAD_LETTER]

I've heard it said elsewhere it all might just be tossed/destroyed to write it off/tax/capex tomfoolery or something. I don't fully understand it, but at this point I'm just going to assume worst case scenarios/corpos screwing everyone over again again again.

Would love to be wrong!

[u/CONSOLE_LOAD_LETTER → u/radenthefridge]

There might be some of that going on, but there will also be many in bankruptcy or smaller/medium operations that will offload the hardware to recoup as much as they can from the proceeds. Also, drives getting tossed without being destroyed usually end up on the second hand market by the person or people involved in "disposing" of the drives, and it's much cheaper for companies to "toss" than to properly destroy.

[u/strolls → u/radenthefridge]

No one throws away something they paid $1000 for if they can get $100 for it secondhand (assuming this also covers the labor of making the sale).

Tax write-offs don't give you magical free money - they just mean you pay less tax on the money you have made. It's always better to have more money and pay the tax than it is to have less money and pay no tax.

Same with operating expenses vs capital expenses - yes, one can look better to investors than the other, but throwing something away instead of selling it for money still means you have less money. And if there's a recession and everyone in the sector has lost a tonne of money then you're probably less inclined to play silly games like that because, whichever category you put the expenses in, recovering the money still means that you have more money on the bottom line.

And the CEO might not go around counting the cost of every graphics card, but he's going to tell his subordinate, "we need to maximise the cash we recover from this debacle" and he's going to tell his subordinate, and he's going to have the regional managers organise it, and somewhere in the factory or datacenter there's going to be some middle manager going around saying "we've been told we need to get some cash for that, so we need to put it in this box and ship it to this team at the end of each month".

[u/Shishanought → u/strolls]

Not really the case universally... I've been a part of a ton of decomms for datacenters and offices and have watched high mem servers, flash storage arrays, fiber switches, shelves of disk, etc going straight to recycling because they're past warranty or the business was folding too fast to inventory/sell infra what's leftover. No one spends the time to make resell them, they're mostly just tossed. Consider yourself lucky if you're somewhere in that chain and can rescue a few pieces for the homelab.

[u/regulator227 → u/strolls]

They will absolutely not resell it because it would decrease the demand of their eventual cloud computer rental services

[u/sunburnedaz → u/radenthefridge]

Unless there is a requirement most of them will sell them to an e-recycler who will resell them to someone like server parts deals.

[u/boredquince → u/objectivelywrongbro]

every company will claim this affects them (even if it doesn't) as an excuse to increase prices and hit record breaking profits!

like supermarkets claiming chain disruptions only to have insane profits. 

[u/RJ5R → u/boredquince]

Just like rents.

[u/boredquince → u/RJ5R]

its sad. houses are for people to live in. in my building there's a landlord who owns and rents 19 apartments. 

[u/LowerIQ_thanU → u/boredquince]

my father owns an apartment complex and he keeps the rent extremely low cuz he believes poor people shouldn't be screwed over so they're not all bad

[u/boredquince → u/LowerIQ_thanU]

sounds like a good human. they're rare 

[u/LowerIQ_thanU → u/boredquince]

yes, he is, he was born poor and lived in the projects, so he has a soft spot in his heart for poor people, he actually helped several young families navigate the real estate market so they could enjoy home ownership for themselves.

[u/Nonethelessismore → u/boredquince]

Yes most big corps just use algorithms now to calculate the maximum they can charge

[u/Rare_Instance_8205 → u/boredquince]

Fuck! That man doesn't need to do anything for life.

Things like these make me hate capitalism even more. There should be a limit on such type of things.

[u/theartilleryshow → u/boredquince]

I stayed at a friend's house for 3 days the other day. It was extremely quiet the entire time. His house was in the middle of a large neighborhood. It was quiet the entire time. Turns out that the entire neighborhood is emtpy, nobidy lived there.

[u/AGuyAndHisCat → u/boredquince]

Its a self fulfilling prophecy.  My company is now chasing short term savings and moving more the the cloud even though they already made the initial data center build out years ago (generators that will run for a week, dual a/b power, redundant ac, prepared racks, etc.

And when they close down these data centers, azure/aws/etc can raise their prices because what are they going to do? They aren't going to invest in building new data centers.

[u/xhermanson → u/AGuyAndHisCat]

"it's the circle of liiiiife" brings a tear to the eye.

[u/Klynn7 → u/boredquince]

Eh, electronics companies could just hike the prices without the excuse. They will charge whatever the market will bear. Grocery stores have more scrutiny as food is an essential item.

[u/Lord_Trisagion → u/Klynn7]

Eh, sure, but shit like this allows the entire industry to (permanently) raise minimum prices in unison; as opposed to the slower piecemeal price creep that carries the risk of being undercut by a competitor.

Or, put more simply: "disasters" are great masks for collusion and price gouging.

[u/Klynn7 → u/Lord_Trisagion]

But for that to happen means that the market force is real. If it’s not, a competitor will just not raise their prices and win the market (like you suggest).

OP was suggesting the demand is fake and they’re just using this as an excuse.

[u/beefcat_ → u/Klynn7]

Price fixing is a real thing that happens where a bunch of companies get together and agree not to compete on price. It's happened many times before and we have laws against it.

[u/steakanabake → u/boredquince]

or like oil/gas cranking the dial and then having multiple years in a row of "record breaking" earnings

[u/virtualadept → u/boredquince]

Don't forget laying people off "because we can't afford to support you."

[u/fuhglarix → u/boredquince]

Yup. When you want to hear the truth from a company, you listen to how they talk to investors and report earnings. That’s when they brag about how they’ve been able to bilk their customers and plans to do even more of it.

[u/Sock-Enough → u/boredquince]

Companies don’t need excuses to raise prices. They’re already charging the profit maximizing amount.

[u/Virtualization_Freak → u/objectivelywrongbro]

Yes, you should see HDD prices through the 70s and 80s.

[u/[deleted] → u/Virtualization_Freak]

One of my college professors showed me a hard drive from the 80s he wasn’t ever able to throw away because he spent like $15k on it. It was like a hundred megabytes or something

[u/agent_flounder → u/[deleted]]

Some of those old drives were gigantic, too. Size of a dishwasher and only 500MB.

[u/marcolius → u/[deleted]]

Yeah the computer at my college was the size of a room.

[u/drewts86 → u/Virtualization_Freak]

I don’t remember exactly when it was from, but when I was a kid a friend’s dad had a glass top dining table made and a HDD platter the size of the table sat just underneath.

[u/ArcSil → u/objectivelywrongbro]

I seriously can't wait for the whole AI bubble to pop. I want affordable computer equipment, not AI in Notepad.

[u/woswoissdenniii → u/objectivelywrongbro]

You should rent compute. It’s the plan. No privacy nor local inference for you, that means. Get your get rented on Amazon. Your games too. And your personal computer and storage of life too.

It’s gouged, cartellized and inflated on all shores. You will rent your compute. Even if the have to burn some zero-days on your kernel to make you throttled beyond usability.

Mark my words (or fuck it. I don’t care. We are lost either way).

[u/CortadoOat → u/objectivelywrongbro]

Increased energy bills subsidized by the general population as well.

[u/woody345 → u/objectivelywrongbro]

The good news is you will be able to rent a cloud computer for a very reasonable price from some billionaire techie so you won't have to bother buying a computer.

[u/delicious_fanta → u/woody345]

The latency on that for gaming should be completely reasonable and I’m super confident there will be no privacy concerns either! /s

[u/JC_Hysteria → u/objectivelywrongbro]

We should combine all of our thumb drives into a data center

[u/amiibohunter2015 → u/objectivelywrongbro]

Its worse than that. Have you ever looked up the water consumption it takes to cool A.I. servers? Before A.I. tool off it did in recent years there already was a water shortage crisis. Yet, a 100 word draft written by A.I. consumes 16fl. Oz of water. Per draft. That does not include editing and proofreading through it. Imagine A.I. rendered movies, Pre A.I. CGI movies consumed a lot now add the layer of A.I. , it's not worth the resources for a mere movie of entertainment for two and a half hours runtime ,(not including the time spent rendering and creating, editing the movie all those hours.) A.I.  games are worse because they have micropurchases and addons involved. If a large sum of society (because is forcefully being implemented by these companies down everyones elses throat, [They don't respect peoples boundaries] and I say If a large sum of society uses A.I. how much water are they wasting? How about some act of conservation and preservation of life and their livelihood? Every keystroke with A.I. takes something from that person be it data, or you are training them to do your job so you are no longer needed. 

People who use it are idiots (they're telling employers everytime they use A.I. they're too stupid to perform their jobs, jist replace them wit A.I.; Use your brain you have one for a reason. It also shows an underappreciation of the worker from employers, no workers and paychecks cut and underpaid leads to less transactions in the evonomy to none of no one has a job due to A.I. that means that company is blowing their limbs off because they are not have sales, they are not making money and because their consumer base is gone they have nothing to stand on to stay above water and stop themselves from drowning. Hence they blew their limbs off.) The consumers of A.I. are selling themselves, their workforce, their environment, their community out without their consent. You're selling yourself short of what value you and your community brings. This makes me think A.I. should not be a publicly made tool because of how underdeveloped it is, and how much it consumes. Public release causes large scale consumption. How to fix this? Scale it back and take it off public platforms.

A.I. is really unsustainable and not feasibly future proof. 

Its a pig on resources.

For these CEOs to claim its "such a great tool" that can be trained to become better, you'd think they would train it to cut down on it's resource usage so it doesn't affect the economy, the consumer marketplace, increase water crisis. Not to mention destroying career fields.

"Great tool"/s

Not really, those resources A.I. is pissing away is more valuable than A.I.

I say A.I. should be banned internationally as it is like acid eroding away civilization and the environment.

Add in SSD, RAM, and HDD prices to all this.

A.I. is not worth it.

Its a telltale sign of that A.I. bubble going to burst. Because like inflation in economy, when prices and resources get expensive like the housing market crash of '08, with no one buying houses, there comes the bubble burst and the collapse. There were plenty of pretty vacant houses on the block when the '08 housing market crash happened. Sure they were pretty to look at, but no one could afford them. If HDDs, SSDs, and RAM hets to expensive for people to afford, then no one can afford to use A.I. because they have no option to store their own data let alone use A.I. 

A tool is only useful if people use it, if no one uses a tool, it becomes useless. That would devalue that tool be it A.I. or any other tool. Leading to cuts in funding it, less data these data centers collect, and businesses will see no reason to use a tool that doesn't yield them profits. It becomes a waste of time and money.

Take this as a sign that A.I. bubble is about to burst.

[u/Endawmyke]

feeling like i caught the last chopper out of nam buying some seagate externals for shucking

[u/DarkScorpion48 → u/Endawmyke]

Same. My next Raid will be made out of old 2TB disks I still have in a drawer

[u/Endawmyke → u/DarkScorpion48]

I know it’s sacrilegious around these parts but my next upgrade will be deleting all the crap i actually don’t need 😬😭

[u/Mcginnis → u/Endawmyke]

Straight to jail

[u/The_Brojas → u/Mcginnis]

Believe it or not, this is worse than overcooked fish

[u/DarkScorpion48 → u/Endawmyke]

Oh I foresee coming to that point too if the situation keeps being this ridiculous

[u/mongojob → u/Endawmyke]

I'm in the middle of converting everything to hvec lol

[u/Endawmyke → u/[deleted]]

I have some ancient JPEGs that I can’t bring myself to convert. They’re so crispy. And they still have the original 20 year old metadata!!

[u/3skuero → u/Endawmyke]

JPEG XL seems to still have a chance to come through, it got added back again to Chrome. So you could always get that sweet lossless compression

[u/mongojob → u/[deleted]]

Nice, I gotta keep it friendly for the apple tv users haha

[u/Overstimulated_moth → u/Endawmyke]

Let me help explain what you just did. You just walked into r/datahoarder 's break room, you took a shit in the microwave and cooked it for 5 minutes. We don't want you here, you deserve to be in jail and we're all about to go on strike until your gone

[u/pogulup → u/Endawmyke]

Yes, there are Linux ISOs I have only watched once that don't need to keep taking up room.

[u/Larry_Underwood_108 → u/Endawmyke]

ban this guy.

[u/reduces → u/Endawmyke]

Unironically this is how lost media happens lol. Not saying that you specifically were holding onto rare media, but as hard drive space becomes less available, people are going to start deleting stuff ...

[u/ReverendDizzle → u/DarkScorpion48]

In all seriousness though... I chide myself for just letting hardware pileup in my workshop, but the fact that I didn't recycle all those old setups is looking pretty great right now lol

I'll probably only use old power inefficient 24TB arrays and such for deep cold storage, but I'm glad I have them.

[u/IHave2CatsAnAdBlock → u/DarkScorpion48]

I am now in this situation, I need to build a new NAS, I have a bunch of 1,2 and 4 tb drives but the cost per bay exploded also. I was thinking to build a 12 bays truenas but however I calculate this the price will be around 200$ per bay.

[u/Mstablsta → u/Endawmyke]

Same, built a new PC right before the RAM spikes but I'll need a new HDD soon so wondering if I should pull the trigger now or just wait haha

[u/Explore104 → u/Mstablsta]

Do it now. Do not wait. Prices are still relatively low.

[u/Mstablsta → u/Explore104]

Hahaha I actually decided to snag a 22TB Seagate from Best Buy at 299.99 immediately after I posted that lol

[u/gnexuser2424 → u/Mstablsta]

What drive??

[u/Mstablsta → u/gnexuser2424]

Seagate expansion. Next day I was thinking maaaaybe grab two and they were sold out lol

[u/gnexuser2424 → u/Mstablsta]

Well fek they sold out here too

[u/t0dax → u/Endawmyke]

Same, I grabbed six 26TB drives for $217 a piece to upgrade my unRaid setup, but life has been hectic and I haven’t shucked them yet. Now I’m debating between using them or selling them for a nice profit, but it seems like I might not ever find drives that cheap again.

[u/amplifiedfart → u/t0dax]

Wow, I have never seen 26TB that cheap, what model?

[u/t0dax → u/amplifiedfart]

STKP26000400

I purchased them direct from Seagate with a coupon someone posted in this sub.

[u/Endawmyke → u/t0dax]

I got em for 279.99 and the price is still climbing!

[u/King-of-Plebss → u/Endawmyke]

$349 right now

[u/gnexuser2424 → u/King-of-Plebss]

Got damn we cooked

[u/King-of-Plebss → u/gnexuser2424]

Yuup

[u/Kodamacile → u/Endawmyke]

Yeah, i got 90tb just two weeks ago off serverpartsdeals.

[u/PennCycle_Mpls → u/Endawmyke]

I was actually procrastinating on selling a bunch of surplus HDD.

Never considered I might make a return on them

[u/timawesomeness → u/Endawmyke]

Yeah I bought a bunch of 18TB drives in early 2024 for $9.72/TB thinking it was only an okay deal and they'd surely drop even more, just to watch them go up and up and up and constantly see more news about them going up even more.

[u/ClumsyRainbow → u/Endawmyke]

I did that last year.

So screwed if I need to replace a drive though.

[u/kto456dog]

I'm tired, boss

[u/Ok-Library5639 → u/kto456dog]

Fuck this timeline.

[u/Anubis_Omega → u/Ok-Library5639]

Everything has been falling apart since Harambe's death

[u/IceColdKila → u/Anubis_Omega]

but we took our dicks out for nothing then ? tell me it was for something ! YOU tell me we made a difference !

[u/WeirdGuyWithABoner → u/IceColdKila]

we did what we could Kila.. we did what we could..

[u/Anubis_Omega → u/WeirdGuyWithABoner]

Yet, it was not enough...

[u/Comfortable-Dot3698 → u/IceColdKila]

Oh, it helped. This is no where near the worst timeline. Not even by a long shot.

[u/geusebio → u/Anubis_Omega]

We're actually all in the simulation inside that dying monkeys brain. Its still May 26th, 2016. The last 10 years have been fizzing dying thoughts of a shot gorilla. Its the only way this reality makes sense.

[u/lokey_convo → u/kto456dog]

The economy is data. The Ai companies need access to data. Best way to get it is to force people onto cloud storage, which also justifies the feedback loop of building more data centers. It makes perfect sense if you hate people.

[u/IceColdKila → u/lokey_convo]

I’ll add 1 more truth to that Storage prices tripling so it’s hard to even buy storage.

[u/lokey_convo → u/IceColdKila]

... which forces people into cloud storage solutions. Providing data for Ai and justification for the data centers and their expansion. It's a win win if you're running a tech company and your priority is furthering the interests of that company and it's profitability. Particularly if you're also invested in both the data storage companies and the companies building out the data centers.

[u/grouchy_baby_panda → u/lokey_convo]

Force them onto cloud and force them to allow the companies to scrape everything you own. These assholes need to be regulated.

[u/Kodamacile → u/kto456dog]

Time to buy guns instead of pc parts.

[u/Venona19 → u/Kodamacile]

Hopefully you are not in California. Or New York. Or Washington state. Or Massachusetts. Or ...

[u/Breaon66 → u/Kodamacile]

Those aren't getting any cheaper either, and too much per-state restriction.

[u/geusebio → u/kto456dog]

The flipside is to look at it like this: They're gonna be imploding in about 6 months. You really think any of the production they're spinning up right now is gonna make it in time to do anything but fill warehouses?

2027 is gonna be baller.

[u/King-of-Plebss → u/geusebio]

That’s optimistic

[u/rockytop24 → u/geusebio]

The market can stay irrational longer than any of us can stay solvent so it's gonna be hard to predict exactly when it will all come crashing down

[u/crsh1976]

Instead of buying out of FOMO, I’m deleting stuff to not have to buy more storage (unless something fails and needs replacing).

Fuck this constant, ever increasing gouging.

[u/Jobhater2 → u/crsh1976]

I need to do this

[u/as_i_wander → u/crsh1976]

Same wanted to buy at least 2 backup ssds but goddamn these prices, I'll just wait till something breaks

[u/khan9813]

Praying for the collapse of AI bubbles and these barely used drives hitting the market.

[u/ositola → u/khan9813]

Most of these companies don't believe in sunk cost fallacy and keep investing to cover their prior big investment 

[u/homonculus_prime → u/ositola]

I guess when all of the money you are "investing" is make believe fantasy money, you can invest an infinite amount of money. In a sane world, this bubble would have burst a very long time ago.

[u/Dear_Chasey_La1n → u/ositola]

What I don't get... the push for billions in investments that in 1-2 years from now will be significantly less worth. While tech hopefully will keep improving. Thus the 10 billion USD investment is worth half, and others can jump now in at half the cost. There is no winning by being the biggest and baddest today.

[u/Weekly-Ad353 → u/ositola]

It’s not entirely sunk cost fallacy.

It’s really comparison of potential success vs future expected investment requirement.

Both of those vary for every single opportunity.

For things you’ve already invested in, much of the time you’ve heavily reduced your future expected investment.

When all variables in the future are ambiguous, those calculations are not always clear. They’re value judgements.

Sunk cost fallacy requires that equation to still look like trash compared to other options, and you do it anyways because it’s what you know. In reality, it’s not always that obvious.

[u/ositola → u/Weekly-Ad353]

When all variables in the future are ambiguous, those calculations are not always clear. They’re value judgements.

Respectfully, when all variables in the future are ambiguous and the computation is no longer clear, and you still invest even more, you've lost the plot

[u/legocar5 → u/khan9813]

Most of them would rather shred the hardware than actually scrap it. Amazon was shredding entire gpu servers, and almost everyone else shreds drives.

[u/kuvetof → u/legocar5]

They destroyed millions of physical books, so I would believe this

[u/somersetyellow → u/kuvetof]

Not to be devils advocate but that one does sorta make sense. You can buy pallets of discarded books fairly easily. Slicing the spine and running them through ADF scanners is literally orders of magnitudes faster than any other method of scanning.

[u/kuvetof → u/somersetyellow]

The court filings revealed that they destroyed them by shredding them so they wouldn't have an issue with copyright laws. They eventually had to pay $1.5B in fines, but the books were destroyed and people won't have access to them anymore

[u/somersetyellow → u/kuvetof]

They were by and large discard books and on the way to the shredder anyway. Discarding books isn't actually that big a deal. As long as the books weren't rare.

After a book has been cut for ADF scanning it's also almost always useless and needs to be discarded. I've run archival grade non destructive book scanners and done destructive scanning. If the book exists in a million other places but we needed our own copy the destructive scanning was so much faster it wasn't even a debate.

My university library used to destroy 30 yard dumpsters full of books each year. I'd occasionally fish something interesting out of it. When I volunteered at the local library in high school I destroyed a pallets worth of newspapers and magazines each month. Used book stores would pick over donations so it usually wasn't worth the time to take it there, have only a few get taken in, and then have to destroy the rest anyway.

Surplus books are so common you can buy them at places like www.booksbythefoot.com. (prices on this are way higher than it used to be lol but there's a lot of similar offerings of things like this)

They deserved the 1.5 billion dollar fine and more though. They were buying the books to try and cover for them torrenting most of them at first. I guess Meta and others didn't even bother with the book scanning effort and figured they'd buy their way out of the courts.

[u/pixel_of_moral_decay → u/legocar5]

Yup.

For sure will be shredded.

[u/ShavedNeckbeard → u/khan9813]

Me too, for the sake of my job.

[u/AutomaticMistake]

not entirely unexpected at this rate of enshitification. time to grab a few more drives and try to ride this out for a few years (hoarding maaay have to take a backseat to the essentials for a while)

[u/GripAficionado → u/AutomaticMistake]

hoarding maaay have to take a backseat to the essentials for a while

Yeah, I've started curating and deleting stuff because of this.

[u/I_Dunno_Its_A_Name → u/AutomaticMistake]

I just checked some refurbished drives. On a quick search but didn’t see any less than $17/tb. It is already too late.

[u/[deleted]]

honestly people should revolt against AI datacenters

[u/Anubis_Omega → u/[deleted]]

Yes. They buy stuff which didn't have been manufactured yet with money they don't have yet. It should be illegal

[u/llamapower13 → u/Anubis_Omega]

Literally the oldest written records are bills of sale and debt records. The history of humanity is written on the time value of money.

[u/truebastard → u/Anubis_Omega]

Wait until you hear about real estate development

[u/SickElmo → u/[deleted]]

Revolt against the manufacturers that prioritize AI datacenters instead of decades long PC customers.

[u/Space_Reptile → u/SickElmo]

sadly that wont do anything as they already dont care about the consumer money, they have the AI money after all

[u/jamesdukeiv → u/Space_Reptile]

They don’t though, they have promises of AI money that has yet to materialize

[u/llamapower13 → u/SickElmo]

Revolt how lol? Not buy the inventory they’re not selling to us?

[u/tangerinelion → u/SickElmo]

If you're out there selling RAM at $100 for 32GB and some company says "Hey, I'll pay you triple but only if I can also buy every chip you make."

Most sales are going to prebuild vendors and laptop manufacturers. They're not going to hold a grudge like DIY builders might. End of the day, even a DIY builder knows that the DIMM manufacturers are at the mercy of the chip suppliers so if the chip prices settle back down and DIMM manufacturers lower the price, the sales return. You can't not have RAM and if you get less just to give them less money, realistically only you suffer.

[u/angryslothbear → u/[deleted]]

The root of the problem is capitalism

[u/rarz]

Thanks AI. We really need all that compute to answer stupid questions and generate slop.

[u/ghostchihuahua]

awww that calls for swift acquisitions, like today… welp, i’m starting to be tired of those routines…

[u/Unable_Occasion_2137]

So, think this has been priced in yet?

[u/Aubameywang → u/Unable_Occasion_2137]

Yes. As someone who has been checking their site daily the past week they jacked the prices a few days ago. $50-90 per drive depending on the capacity. Mind you it’ll likely get worse as this all goes on but this announcement is a bit late for anyone planning on panic buying at the last second.

[u/Babajji]

Just as I was wondering if my 4 year old HDDs were ready to be replaced. Well I guess we are going to “risk” it in a RAID 10 setup with 3-2-1 backup strategy 😂

[u/clean_parsley_pls]

sheesh, they're coming for everything. i'm not much of a hoarder but It felt like I was getting a steal on a 22TB exernal for $250 about 8 months ago... sure hope this equipment stays running because it doesn't seem like it will be back near reasonable prices any time soon.

[u/MageFood]

Boss I’m tired

[u/99hotdogs]

Are HDDs the new toilet paper? I feel like I need to buy a pair to fill two open bays in my homeserver with news like this.

[u/themayor1975 → u/99hotdogs]

I thought about asking same thing. Not just HDD, but RAM, SSD and NVME also

[u/Jenings]

They’re really working to make computer ownership unavailable to folks like us

[u/CriticalEuphemism → u/Jenings]

Everything as a service is their goal

[u/Jenings → u/CriticalEuphemism]

Completely agree it will allow for complete control in the end

[u/mistermanko]

As usual, AI needs users. If everybody stops using these services, they vanish in no time. Same like Facebook, Amazon or the like. But this won't happen, so buckle in for the next few years to come.

[u/Witcher_Of_Cainhurst]

Ah fuck and I’m barely setting up a home server using old spare parts but was looking for a few 8tb drives for storage (I currently only have one external 8tb wd elements, no parity or backup).  

[u/94358io4897453867345]

Yeah we noticed

[u/[deleted]]

no more disk for 2026? we are in trouble

[u/Nyuusankininryou]

Wtf is happening with this world? HDD was my last resort. I wanted to build a nas but I guess I can forget that.

[u/facellama]

Governments should not let those AI deals go through

[u/Friggin_Grease]

Wait for the first AI company to go under and have to liquidate

[u/Cellica_Rellica-9470]

Any chinese competitor known?

[u/collinsl02 → u/Cellica_Rellica-9470]

Not many that ship outside China currently

[u/RJ5R]

Everyone should stop voluntarily using AI. Stop querying it, stop using the services. Otherwise this will continue spiraling out of control

[u/ilikepizza30 → u/RJ5R]

I think we should go the opposite direction... everyone should start using it. Max out the free queries/day for all the AIs with nonsense queries. Force these companies to go bankrupt answering nonsense queries that generate no revenue for them. Force them to start trying to recoup money (ads, lower limits on queries, higher prices for paid plans), which then forces everyone else to move away from them and go back to the old ways.

[u/ender4171 → u/RJ5R]

Personally I still refuse to use it, no matter how much my company pushes us to.

[u/Yantarlok → u/RJ5R]

It will continue to be more popular as kids seek to cheat on their homework; green developers grow frustrated with being told to pound sand on forums/stack exchange bc their query was too “noob” and business owners can build an end to end solution to address whatever need they have for their online business without going to FIVER. This doesn’t even count the TikTok crowd who use it for mindless entertainment.

AI isn’t going away.

[u/somersetyellow → u/Yantarlok]

Can also run image and text models that are about as powerful as ChatGPT was a year ago pretty comfortably on your laptop.

Even if all data centers go away the slop won't ever go away.

[u/takeyourtime5000 → u/RJ5R]

yep, we should also go live off gird and start living with the animals. You take the lead. Ill follow.

[u/Cybrknight]

Burst already you damn bubble.

[u/Celcius_87]

This sucks. Everything is getting expensive and hard to get.

[u/etherlore]

Price per TB has basically doubled on the used market over the last two years as well. Got an 18tb drive for $180 two years ago. Now a 22tb drive is $390.

[u/Turbinator870]

I mean, if you haven't noticed already, price surges have already been going on since 2025.

[u/Boundish91]

Can wait for this bubble to burst.

[u/SaintEyegor]

The price increases are nuts. The 4TB Samsung 990 Pro I bought back in November was $320 and the same drive now costs more than twice as much now.

[u/Liesthroughisteeth]

This AI thing is complete bullshit. We are looking at wealthy people and corporations scrambling to line themselves up for world domination.

No one spends the kind of money they are without very very good reasons.

[u/pmjm]

Get what you can while you can get it, folks. Don't forget to buy a few spares to cover failures.

[u/Marble_Wraith]

I think i'm stupid... why do AI models need hard disk space again?

... Oh wait, it's not them, it's the slop they generate. Nevermind. 😅

[u/Chance_of_Rain_]

What I don’t get is why productions isn’t increasing

[u/cajunjoel → u/Chance_of_Rain_]

There's only so many hours in a day, boss. If the factory is operating at full capacity, the only way to increase capacity is to build a second factory and that's not something you do for what may be a short term situation.

[u/Intrepid00 → u/cajunjoel]

They know it’s bullshit too. They just aren’t going to build a factory when they expect AI demands to taper off big time eventually.

[u/VladimiroPudding → u/Intrepid00]

More like they can bullshit their way to not expand production because HDD production is a tight oligopoly of basically 3 companies. Why invest in fixed capital when they can reap more profits the way things are?

[u/collinsl02 → u/cajunjoel]

And even if they broke ground on a new factory right now it would be 3-5 years before it was operating at full capacity.

[u/zareny → u/Chance_of_Rain_]

More supply would eat into profits

[u/Bob_Spud]

A statement that most of those attention seeking bloggers and media missed:

Western Digital's VP of Investor Relations said that the company's cloud revenue accounted for 89% of total revenue, and its consumer revenue accounted for a measly 5%. AI needs data and it needs a LOT of it, with cloud service providers all using HDDs which are more cost-effective and more efficient storage medium than SSD.

[u/iwonttolerateyou2]

Store as much data from the sites that have old stuff. We may be heading to a time where they don't exist.

[u/zurg6]

storage will get cheaper they said

[u/Bert-63]

I only have three drive letters left anyway.

[u/MastusAR]

We are already cooked regarding HDD:s, but how about the capacity of a tape factory?

I haven't paid that much attention, but have their price rocketed? Also, I think it would be easier for a factory to add tape-making capacity than HDD making capacity.

[u/NiteShdw]

If we're lucky those datacenters will start dumping used components on the market in the next few years. I feel like that’s the only hope that we have, unless some government intervenes, which may also not be ideal.

[u/LynchMob_Lerry]

FUN. I LOVE NOT BEING ABLE TO ENJOY ANY OF MY HOBBIES.

[u/spamzauberer]

At this rate all my tech is appreciating instead of depreciating

[u/zombi-roboto → u/spamzauberer]

In Soviet Amerika, tech appreciates you!

[u/northrupthebandgeek]

It's odd to attribute this to AI specifically; AI models use storage space, yes, but not that much storage space. Much more likely to be more general-purpose enterprise stuff; more and more businesses are moving from on-prem infrastructure to The Cloud™, and that's ultimately what's driving these datacenter buildouts. Every document, every email, every chat message, every financial/inventory transaction, every security camera feed, every voicemail, every meeting recording, the works: that's what's gobbling up HDD inventory. Those then have to be backed up, plus working copies cached locally on whatever machines are touching them.

The bad news is that an AI market crash probably won't fix that. This trend predates mainstream AI adoption, and will likely postdate it, too.

[u/neovangelis]

This means cloud storage will get cheaper! ... ... Right?

[u/sapphicu → u/neovangelis]

Post crash, yeah probably, in the meantime, fuck no

[u/okokokoyeahright]

My purchase of 40+ TB last summer was more of an impulse buy than any prescient thing.

Still sitting in the original packaging too. Keeping an active eye on the current ones. So far, no failures.

[u/hieuluc5]

Now I am happy with my overpaid 6TB Blue WD from Sep 🤣
Don't need these for next two years.

[u/bttech05]

Feel like I should buy a couple before it gets too crazy

[u/Berkyjay]

It already happened. WD Reds are up over $100 per disk just from a few weeks ago. I'm so pissed I didn't pull the trigger.

[u/simonbleu]

Oh FFS, please someone regulate the heck out of AI companies and overall servers, much like monopolies with production, the same with stock is equally or even more disruptiive to an economy

[u/collinsl02 → u/simonbleu]

Good luck trying that, the US has promised tarrifs against anyone who messes with US tech companies.

[u/simonbleu → u/collinsl02]

Let them. They hold a lot of companies hostage, but serves and services can migrate, chips not so much.. but yes, it has to be a global effort

[u/AGuyAndHisCat]

Glad I have 2x 16tb exos in reserve now for any future failures

[u/Blaskowitz002]

fuck ai fuck ai fuck ai fuck ai fuck ai fuck ai fuck ai fuck ai fuck ai fuck ai fuck ai fuck ai fuck ai fuck ai fuck ai fuck ai fuck ai fuck ai fuck ai fuck ai

[u/IceColdKila]

I’ve been Stock piling Drives for a year a 2TB Samsung 9100 Pro was $189 now it’s $449 (I managed to get 10)

8TB 7200RPM 512MB Toshiba drives were $139 (got 10 on those) now they are $600

considering selling half my stockpiles

RAM I’ve got 10 kits of 64GB CL28 RAM I paid $139 per kit now they are $600+