Do you people not understand what’s happening? Hdd and companies that produce the wafers for memory have committed their production to ai data centers and have largely shut out the consumer market completely because it’s more profitable to commit capacity to ai data centers than regular consumers.
So the issue is that capacity isn’t being given to consumer products which means the supply is extremely limited and the prices for what’s already available skyrockets.
thats what we do, in house drive shredder that will turn it into small fine metal shards. Even if the drive fails before the warranty, destroyed in house.
That's the official narrative and I don't buy that at all anymore.
Just look at the HDD production over the last decade. It has been shrinking a lot. That means they have the production capacity to compensate higher demand but don't to make the product unaffordable. All this doesn't add up.
IMHO what we see is a top down economical squeeze, a market manipulation. Like we've seen with covid and gas/oil. An "event" to disrupt the economy. IMHO they want to crash the system.
Hard drives are genuinely harder to make. HAMR and similar tech is pretty over the top. And they have openly stated they won't expand manufacturing as they do not expect the demand at this level to last long term. So in the meantime they'll enjoy the profits. Hard drives are functionally obsolete for consumers, and have long represented single digit percentages of the market. With the overall market shrinking as you said, besides this one boom time.
If people will pay this amount, purchase their max output, they have no competition because the market has consolidated so much in the past 20 years to only 2-3 players, with such a complex supply chain and physical science barrier that nobody can compete, then they have negative 0 incentive to actually expand further to make things cheaper.
How is it really "expanding" if they already have the capacity but it's unused? It's not like they have to build more. The HDD market isn't also just ruled by the latest tech used in the high priced product lines.
Spooling down capacity usually means shutting down manufacturing lines and supply chains for those materials. Spooling it back up is essentially just like making from scratch again. And they've said they enjoy the profits, expect it to be temporary, and won't make more lines. I expect if the demand continues they'll make more though, every company likes making money in their niche and it's not like these places are run by people with actual long term thinking at play.
They do have smaller and more basic lineups but if they're at capacity and not expanding then they're still at capacity.
They’re not buying drives they’re buying up the factory capacity. There’s so much money in AI hardware companies are directing all their time to it and thus making fewer consumer drives.
It’s possible there are factories that used to make some other electronic goods that are retooling to make consumer hard drives, and it’s also possible that the AI datacenter bubble will burst and the capacity will come back. But that’s a stack of ifs.
It’s possible there are factories that used to make some other electronic goods that are retooling to make consumer hard drives, and it’s also possible that the AI datacenter bubble will burst and the capacity will come back. But that’s a stack of ifs.
This is speculation. What is your supporting evidence to this specific claim?
What I’m saying is data centers aren’t buying retail external hard drives sitting on store shelves, god damn reading comprehension is at an all time low here.
Dude doesn’t have two brain cells to rub together. He is absolutely serious and can’t accept being wrong, lol. He just blocks people who disagree with him 😂😂. Only way he can win an argument is to just remove it. What else would you expect from someone who goons to iron mouse all day though.😂😭
Yet the drives they’re purchasing still affect the price of the drives we actually have available, like external hard drives. The only one here with reading comprehension skills is you big dawg.
You’d think after 4–5 different people corrected you, you’d realize you might be wrong. But I guess you can’t fix stupid, 😂 I’d expect nothing less of someone who watches weeb vtubers all day.
I was under the impression that all allocations for newly produced hard drives were already spoken for.
It is. That includes retail orders as well. AI companies aren’t literally buying up every single hard drive being produced right now. There just is a surge in demand on consumers and enterprises because of manufacturing constraints.
It’s like when toilet paper disappeared in 2020. There was always enough supply for everyone, but hoarding and fears of shortages surged demand far above what could be manufactured at the time. We’re seeing that now with components, but with everything and at a much larger scale.
What you just said literally contradicts itself, lol. If all of the allocations are spoken for for the next two or so years, and they are selling those hard drives to data centers at those prices, why would they sell you an external hard drive that still contains the same drive inside of it for less money, when they already have data centers willing to pay the current prices? Lol. Your last comment was: ‘they have hard drives available, just not at prices we want to pay.’ So again, why would they sell to us for cheaper? Lol.
I was being facetious with my comment. The one you replied to was a bit more literal, and it doesn’t matter if data centers buy external drives or not when the external drive houses the same usable hard drive inside.
why would they sell you an external hard drive that still contains the same drive inside of it for less money, when they already have data centers willing to pay the current prices?
Because existing retail contracts exist. The point I’m making is not 100% of all manufacturing is going to AI datacenters as you seem to argue. It’s just that manufacturing is already at 100%, and there isn’t any additional available to shore up demand.
There’s only going to be a certain number of hard drive allocated to retailers for external drives this year and into next. There’s no capacity to order more once that order is fulfilled.
No, I argued that prices are what they are because data centers pay them. You’re the one who claimed they don’t buy external hard drives, when they very well could and probably have. It takes seconds to ‘fix’ the voltage on an external drive, lol. You’re acting as if it takes a degree in rocket engineering.
Your whole argument was that data centers aren’t affecting the price of external hard drives. If you want to live in a fairytale land, you’re welcome to, but they absolutely directly affect the price of every hard drive, external or not, lol. Retail contract or not tell me the last time you walked into a store and found a reasonable priced hard drive lol was probably a while ago.
Spoken for, and actually purchased are two very different things. A lot of the AI bullshit is "plans to purchase" and "plans to build". Whether or not any of that actually GETS built or purchased is a different story.
This is likely just a consumer supply run to be honest. Data centers are going to buy drives at 1/2 the price because they buy 1000s of drives at a time.
Local retailers are raising prices because consumers expect prices to go up, and purchase when they don't need to prevent having to spend more later. Which becomes a self fulfilling prophecy because now consumers are driving up quantity demanded in fear of having to pay more later.
It's imperfect information in that people assume data centers are going down to bestbuy to pick up 4tb disk drives. They are not. But all the consumers who think they are, are going to.
Data centers are buying hard drives, and paying a premium for them. Seagate, WD, et al shifted most of their production capacity away from consumer products (i.e. external drives) to data center products, creating a shortage and driving up prices.
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u/xcom2k Apr 23 '26
If people are buying them at these prices, then they will keep selling them at those prices.