Western Digital is out of exhausting drives, as a result of AI (in fact)
Abstract created by Sensible Solutions AI
In abstract:
- Western Digital is totally offered out of exhausting drive manufacturing capability by way of 2026 on account of large demand from AI knowledge facilities.
- PCWorld experiences that onerous drive costs have surged practically 50% in simply 5 months as firms prioritize industrial purchasers over customers.
- This AI-driven scarcity may make exhausting drives more and more inaccessible for normal customers, just like Micron’s latest shopper market exit.
It seems just like the final six months of my job has simply been telling you about all of the alternative ways the “AI” trade is making life suck. And I’m only a man who writes about computer systems! I barely even contact on its environmental impression or psychological well being points. However I digress. Right here’s the newest method through which the “AI” trade is making life suck for all of us: “AI” knowledge facilities are gobbling up all of the exhausting drives.
Sure, exhausting drives. Spinning disks that maintain ones and zeroes. I can’t even keep in mind the final time I noticed a PC on a shelf that defaulted to exhausting drive storage—they’re actually solely related for customers who should retailer a number of terabytes of knowledge. However “AI” fashions want to carry plenty of knowledge, too, which is why Western Digital is now out of exhausting drives for the remainder of the yr. “We’re just about offered out for calendar yr 2026,” stated CEO Irving Tan within the firm’s newest earnings report.
In context, meaning offered out of manufacturing capability for 2026, as the corporate earmarks its output for varied prospects. You may nonetheless discover WD drives on digital storefronts and retailer cabinets, no less than for now. Nevertheless it appears the corporate is following within the footsteps of reminiscence and flash storage producers by prioritizing industrial provide over common customers. Right here’s a protracted quote from Tan:
“As AI capabilities broaden, cloud continues to develop as properly, and each are driving the search and demand for greater density storage options. On this new period the place AI and cloud dominate, Western Digital has taken a customer-focused method to managing this sturdy demand by working carefully with our hyperscale prospects, guaranteeing that we ship dependable, high-capacity drives at scale to provide them the perfect efficiency and complete value of possession.”
In the event you can’t parse the company communicate, meaning “we’re promoting quite a lot of actually large exhausting drives to knowledge facilities.” In line with the information elsewhere within the report, slightly below 90 % of Western Digital’s enterprise is now supplying drives to cloud storage, with solely 5 % of income coming from customers. It appears all too simple—nearly inevitable—that WD may simply exit the patron market completely. Reminiscence producer Micron did simply that, axing its Essential model of shopper RAM and storage, although the corporate insists it’s nonetheless promoting RAM to PC producers. Tom’s {Hardware} experiences that onerous drive costs are already leaping, up by nearly 50 % within the final 5 months. That’s not the nightmare spiral that RAM has seen, nevertheless it’s not factor, both.
As I stated, exhausting drives aren’t actually a priority in case you’re solely shopping for a typical laptop computer or desktop. However for customers who’ve a deep urge for food for knowledge, like those that roll their very own network-attached storage (NAS) for residence servers or streaming setups, or those that simply desire to maintain their large Steam libraries downloaded regionally, exhausting drives are nonetheless very related. And so they’re going to get lots quicker quickly, if nonetheless nowhere close to as speedy or environment friendly as flash storage. I’m wondering if we’ll ever have the ability to purchase these fancy future units on Amazon.
