It is the best time so that your PC does NOT break. Or the console. Wave Steam Deck. We have been talking for weeks about how the explosion of data centers for AI has made burst the consumer market of RAM. The SSDs were nextand it was logical to a certain extent because they share technology. What perhaps was not expected was that the new components to increase in price were conventional hard drives, HDDs.
And in the midst of cloud fatigue, AI is going to claim a new victim: the NAS.
Western Digital, the symptom. It was during the presentation of results for the second fiscal quarter of 2026 when Irving Tan, CEO of Western Digital, commented that the company had sold practically its entire catalog by 2026.
We have already seen this with RAM memory, and it indicates that there are already confirmed orders for 2027 and 2028 (supporting the assertion of other authoritative voices in the industry that this crisis still has some time left).
Components that do not exist for something that does not exist. The HDDs that WD is talking about are not those with 2, 6 or 8 TB for the consumer market, but rather those with 20 or 30 TB capacity. Onwards. For now, if you want another 4 TB to store games on your PC, you will have no problem finding a drive at an appropriate price/GB ratio. Now, when we talk about having “everything sold” it is not that there is not a single album left on the shelves, but that what they have not produced yet is already sold.
This is something that is happening with other segments, such as with RAM itself (with hoarders) and with SSDs. To give a quick example: if Western Digital is capable of producing two million 30 TB HDDs per year and only the xAI data centers They buy two million 30 TB HDDs for a data center that they have not yet built, WD no longer has production capacity and the waits begin for the others.
One of the bosses of SMICthe great Chinese foundry, dropped recently the issue that components that have not yet been produced are being sold to power data centers that have not been built to give life to a technology that no one knows exactly what it will be like in the future. Or if it’s even a bubble.
The innards of an HDD. And that HDDs are running out is logical for two reasons. The first is because, just like the SSD and memory industry is dominated by three companies (Samsung, Micron and SK Hynix), HDDs are commanded by three others (Toshiba, Western Digital and Seagate). All three have begun a conversion to new technologies to create denser disks, which implies moving money from the “old” factories to the new processes.
But it also means that if they have a certain production capacity, scaling up to create more isn’t as easy as clicking a button. Not so immediate either. The second reason is that there are HDDs that have a NAND drive inside as cache memory. That is to say: if there is a shortage of flash memory, there is a shortage for everything, and the companies that manufacture HDDs also experience the delays and price increases in the industry.
Second youth. What is undeniable is that HDD manufacturers are doing well in this situation in terms of income. We told it a few months agowhen at the end of January it was already seen that the shares of Seagate and Western Digital were beginning to skyrocket by 148.38% and 156.09% respectively. The thing is that they have not stopped increasing since then because, although memory and SSDs are crucial in data centers, HDDs also have a lot to say.
The price per GB makes the cost per capacity extremely attractive, and the AI generates a lot of information that must be saved and for which a very high transfer speed is not needed. Also for the information you consume during training. That has to be stored somewhere, and HDDs are the best option.
NAS. And you will tell me: and that doesn’t matter to me, as a user. And it’s a great question because yes: that 20 or 30 TB HDDs become more expensive may not matter to you if until now you thought of this component as the storage of a PC, but…and if you want to set up a NAS? A trend in recent months is to escape subscriptions. There are too many and increasingly expensive, and for everything, and a NAS is a great alternative.
Basically, it is a PC with a huge storage capacity with which you can build a private cloud. Do your photos Google Photos? To the NAS. Your private Netflix digitizing your DVDs and Blu-Ray? To the NAS. ¿Your private Spotify ripping your CDs and vinyls? To the NAS. And all this accessible at any time, without paying subscriptions and without problems with data leaks.
But of course, to have a private cloud it is necessary to have teras and teras of storage, and that is where those more “professional” hard drives can become impossible not only because of price, but because, at some point, they will no longer exist.
Don’t let what we already have be broken. And the worst thing is that there is only one solution: go through the price hoop, unless you entrust yourself to what you believe in so that your PC, laptop or Steam Deck does not break (whichEU is also having supply problems due to the RAM memory crisis).
As I said before, it is going great for companies because they are selling everything, but for users, although we assume a much smaller percentage of income, this situation has overwhelmed us like a freight train. If at least the train was loaded with RAM tablets and we could get some, it wouldn’t be bad.
Images | Western Digital, Xataka
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