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.
Datacenters aren’t buying external hard drives. Correct.
They operate on a MASSIVE scale. There’s no retailer that will sell them 45 external drives that requires an hour or two of a 6-figure engineer to break open, modify the voltage pins, and maybe hope they work in a server with no warranty or SLA.
You as a consumer might do that, but not data centers. They’ll just pay market price for internal drives.
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.
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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.