If you’re thinking of buying a high-capacity hard drive, you’ll want to act sooner rather than later. Prices are steadily increasing, with AI being the driving force behind them.
As reported by TrendForce, Seagate recently announced that it needs to increase the price of its enterprise and consumer hard drives due to heavy demand. Inflation is partly to blame, but the main culprit for the shortage comes from longer manufacturing times. This means that Seagate has to charge more than it has in previous years. However, the source also reports that it’s not just one manufacturer, as the spike also impacts CPU and GPU costs.
Supply shortages could last anywhere from the remaining quarter to potentially the end of 2024, given current market analysis. In terms of how much more you can expect to spend, current estimates range between 5% and 10%, depending on capacity. However, this has also spread to NAND flash, so we could also see some of the best SSDs rise in price as demand outweighs supply.
Western Digital appears to be in a similar position as the second manufacturer behind the leading options for gamers, creatives, and AI large language models. As machine learning and deep learning become more sophisticated and in demand when paired with some of the best graphics cards, the needs and usage of large amounts of data and storage have changed. We’ll likely see huge HDDs and faster SSDs creeping up in price as end users get more familiar with AI utilization, so buy soon to avoid being stung.