After, RAM, SSD, GPUs, now HDDs what else is there left to sell out? Power supplies, fans? In a way this feels a bit absurd for these AI centers to hog HDDs. As pointed by others neither training nor inference require HDDs and storing raw data should not require that much. So my hypothesis is that it is a double whammy of overall declining consumer sided HDD demand, leaving data centers as main source of demand and a…
WD and Seagate confirm: Hard drives sold out for 2026
151–160 of 205 posts
Re: WD and Seagate confirm: Hard drives sold out for 2026
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
We useless eaters are to be priced out of life soon enough.
Truer than even you dare to admit. How many useless living humans do you know? They go somewhere. Something happens to them. Whatever it is it’s about to happen to 30% of the population. What’s the opposite of survivor bias?
It takes a profound lack of empathy to refer to your neighbors as "useless living humans"
Re: WD and Seagate confirm: Hard drives sold out for 2026
#153I'll go against the grain and claim this might be a good thing long term. Yes, it sucks also, I was planning to expand my NAS but guess I'll figure out how to compress stuff instead. Which goes into why I think this might be good. Developers have kind of treated disks as "oh well" with binaries ballooning in size, even when it can easily solved, and there is little care to make things lightweight. Just like I now fig…
Think that's more of a "silver lining" instead of the overall trend being a "good thing long term." It's still pretty terrible.
Yeah, true, that's more aligned with what I was thinking and more accurate. Thanks :)
Re: WD and Seagate confirm: Hard drives sold out for 2026
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the result of the long-planned desire for consumer computing to be subscription computing. Ultimately, there is only so much that can be done in software to "encourage" (read: coerce) vendor-locked, always-online, account-based computer usage; there are viable options for people to escape these ecosystems via the ever growing plethora of web-based productivity software and linux distributions which are genuin…
What can we do? Serious question. It's so hard to grasp as a problem for the lay person until it's too late.
I guess we can support open hardware projects like RISC-V, and homegrown chips. DIY chips will be expensive and very limited at first, so hopefully hobbysts will prioritize efficiency while they get better.
Fortunately we won't ever see a shortage of monitors and input devices, because then how would we consume the rent-a-remote-desktop services.
Re: WD and Seagate confirm: Hard drives sold out for 2026
#155It's not clear if they are going to redistribute production lines in favor of hyper-scalers - are we going to see fewer SATA drives on the market?
Re: WD and Seagate confirm: Hard drives sold out for 2026
#156Everyone: things suck, better move my stuff on a small home server. The hyper-scaler mafia: NOT ON MY WATCH! The only silver lining is that newer devices will have to scale down memory, so developers will have to ditch memory-sucking frameworks and start to optimize things again.
I’m just afraid that prices of $everything will go up soon and will not come down anymore, like they did after Covid. If it’s temporary I can live with it. I guess this was inevitable with the absolute insane money being poured into AI.
> If it’s temporary I can live with it. I guess this was inevitable with the absolute insane money being poured into AI.
Hyperscalars refresh hardware and firesale old stock.
~2028 is going to see a lot of high power refurb supply hit the market.
Re: WD and Seagate confirm: Hard drives sold out for 2026
#157Save us, China.
It just goes to show how totally corporations have captured western aligned governments. Our governments are powerless to do anything (aside from some baby steps from the EU). China is now the only solution to fix broken western controlled markets.
Cynicism in unhelpful, and it's not correct. This has nothing to do with governments and everything to do with market economics. This sort of thing happens every few years in computing.
Re: WD and Seagate confirm: Hard drives sold out for 2026
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m just afraid that prices of $everything will go up soon and will not come down anymore, like they did after Covid. If it’s temporary I can live with it. I guess this was inevitable with the absolute insane money being poured into AI.
> If it’s temporary I can live with it. I guess this was inevitable with the absolute insane money being poured into AI. Hyperscalars refresh hardware and firesale old stock. ~2028 is going to see a lot of high power refurb supply hit the market.
Do they? When I was at AWS in 2019-2021 there were some servers in the fleet— not many, but they definitely existed— which dated to before 2010. Maybe it depends on the type:class, but I think hyperscalers run hardware until it dies, then junk it. Where have you seen hyperscaler hardware for sale?
Re: WD and Seagate confirm: Hard drives sold out for 2026
#159Next on the data centers' menu: jet engines https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/how-jet-engines-are-...
Re: WD and Seagate confirm: Hard drives sold out for 2026
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Truer than even you dare to admit. How many useless living humans do you know? They go somewhere. Something happens to them. Whatever it is it’s about to happen to 30% of the population. What’s the opposite of survivor bias?
It takes a profound lack of empathy to refer to your neighbors as "useless living humans"
Furthermore, it's usually just plain dangerous.