Supplier Catching Up: A Year's Worth of Server Hard Drives Sold Out Ahead of Time
In the rapidly evolving world of technology, a series of developments are impacting the prices and availability of hard drives and Solid State Drives (SSDs).
Two major manufacturers, SanDisk and Micron, have already raised the prices of NAND flash chips, with SanDisk increasing prices by ten percent and Micron considering a potential rise of up to 30 percent. Other manufacturers, including Samsung, Seagate, SK Hynix, and Western Digital, are expected to follow suit in the coming weeks.
The shift in production from retail to server models could lead to potential price increases for both HDDs and SSDs in retail. This shift is driven by the construction of new data centers for AI hype, particularly for inference servers, which are contributing to the current shortages for HDDs and SSDs used in servers.
Trendforce reports delivery times of up to a year for large quantities of nearline class hard drives in Asia, exacerbated by Western Digital's decision to ship hard drives by sea instead of air, resulting in longer delivery times.
The shortages are not just limited to HDDs, as SSDs, despite their higher costs, could be an alternative for cold storage due to shorter delivery times compared to hard drives. However, the price increases initially only affect high-capacity QLC chips, not consumer TLC chips.
Micron has suspended its own price information for a week to determine new prices, while Trendforce reports that Western Digital will immediately raise the prices of all hard drives.
Interestingly, the demand for HDDs and SSDs used in servers is driven by the construction of new data centers for AI hype, yet Trendforce reports that HDD manufacturers have not significantly increased their production capacity in recent years, despite the increasing demand from AI servers.
Server operators are considering using SSDs for cold storage due to the long delivery times for hard drives, a shift that could further impact the availability of HDDs in the retail market.
In conclusion, the tech market is currently experiencing price hikes and shortages for hard drives and SSDs, primarily due to increased demand from AI servers and insufficient preparation by manufacturers. Consumers may see changes in prices and availability of these storage devices in the near future.
