HDD scarcity

[madires]

HDD manufacturers sold out their production for 2026:
- Western Digital is already sold out of hard drives for all of 2026 — chief says some long-term agreements for 2027 and 2028 already in place - https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/hdds/western-digital-is-already-sold-out-of-hard-drives-for-all-of-2026-chief-says-some-long-term-agreements-for-2027-and-2028-already-in-place
- Seagate Is Sold Out Through 2026, CEO Says - https://finance.yahoo.com/news/seagate-sold-2026-ceo-says-183110537.html?guccounter=1

Presumably same situation at Toshiba.

[Halcyon]

Just checking my supplier levels in Australia, a lot of WD consumer drives are out of stock, but some models still have fairly healthy stock levels. ETAs for additional stock seem to range from 20/02/2026 to 06/03/2026. Plenty of 2.5" consumer drives though.

WD/Seagate enterprise drive stocks look a little better, again with ETAs of end of February 2026 for some out of stock models.

[BadeBhaiya]

Rats! I was just looking to get back into long term archival and beef up my NAS so I was eyeing a few seagate surveillance 2TB spinners. Bad time to buy HDDs I assume?

[Halcyon]

Rats! I was just looking to get back into long term archival and beef up my NAS so I was eyeing a few seagate surveillance 2TB spinners. Bad time to buy HDDs I assume?

Just give it a bit once manufacturing kicks into high gear and stock levels are up. Might be able to grab some good deals.

[madires]

And try to avoid used HDDs sold as new (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/general-computing/heads-up-used-seagate-enterprise-hdds-sold-as-new).

[Haenk]

Just give it a bit once manufacturing kicks into high gear and stock levels are up. Might be able to grab some good deals.

I doubt they are ramping up manufacturing as the initial high request might fall flat as soon as the AI hype bubble bursts - or the companies consolidate.
Manufacturing a HDD is not trivial, and establishing a new facility likely takes a couple of years.
(There will still be datacenter demand, so factory shutdowns are unlikely either.)

[krish2487]

I doubt they are ramping up manufacturing as the initial high request might fall flat as soon as the AI hype bubble bursts - or the companies consolidate.
Manufacturing a HDD is not trivial, and establishing a new facility likely takes a couple of years.
(There will still be datacenter demand, so factory shutdowns are unlikely either.)

I seriously doubt that is likely to happen any time soon.. well.. atleast it wont burst... maybe deflate...
The entire US economy is propped up on the hype cycle.. and I think someone somewhere in the govt has seen this as well..
If I were in their shoes, I would be shitting bricks now... and do everything to ensure the bubble doesnt burst..

[Analog Kid]

Are we talking about "real" hard drives (i.e., spinning disks) or them solid-state thingies here?

[Psi]

Are we talking about "real" hard drives (i.e., spinning disks) or them solid-state thingies here?

Real spinning drives.   

NZ is the same, most stuff is out of stock.

[madires]

SSDs aren't doing much better:
The SSD market is facing its next shock, with NAND shortages and price explosions practically a foregone conclusion. - https://www.igorslab.de/en/the-ssd-market-is-facing-its-next-shock-nand-shortages-and-price-explosions-are-practically-a-foregone-conclusion/

And the impact will hit us all. For example, a German hoster just announced price increases by around 30% for their cloud/virtual servers, mainly because of much more expensive RAM and SSDs.

[Psi]

I can still buy SSDs here, especially NVM ones. but SATA SSDs  seem to be getting low.
My server has plenty of free space atm but i am pondering getting a 6 or 8TB just so i have a spare for the next year or so.
I did notice a pending sector on one of my old 2TB drives. Zero reallocations, just 1 pending sector so its probably nothing to worry about yet.

I can get Seagate IronWolf drives, anyone know what the quality of those is like?
I usually stick with Western Digital but happy to go with Seagate if they are ok now??

[Cyclotron]

I can still buy SSDs here, especially NVM ones. but SATA SSDs  seem to be getting low.
My server has plenty of free space atm but i am pondering getting a 6 or 8TB just so i have a spare for the next year or so.
I did notice a pending sector on one of my old 2TB drives. Zero reallocations, just 1 pending sector so its probably nothing to worry about yet.

I can get Seagate IronWolf drives, anyone know what the quality of those is like?
I usually stick with Western Digital but happy to go with Seagate if they are ok now??

I have a few IronWolf drives spinning and haven't had issues. I also have had a long preference for WD. HGST was my big favorite for a long time. I still have 8 of them spinning for 10 years now. WD gobbled up HGST, though.

[BadeBhaiya]

Is there any real difference between 3.5" and 2.5" drives in terms of longevity? ChatGPT swears either type will last as long as the other but i somehow don't buy it. Assuming adequate cooling, no mechanical movement etc conditions

[stj]

this is all about the push for global digital ID/Wallet and total tracking.
monitoring EVERYBODY 24/7 will require huge ammounts of storage and processing - thats why you see a push for datacenters now.

all i can add is that you better hope for a global crash or ww3 because these datacenters will form a new level of slavery!

it's also why nobody can get reasonable DDR5 ram - even phone makers cant get the stuff!
and i'm NEVER buying an NVIDIA prooduct again - EVER.

[Sal Ammoniac]

The AI hype is putting price and availability pressure on RAM, FLASH, hard drives, GPUs, electricity, and water as mega data centers are being built at a breakneck pace to meet the hype.

I was at the local Microcenter yesterday and many SSDs and hard drives were out of stock, and some SSDs now cost 2-3x what I paid for the same item last year.

I'm hoping the AI bubble bursts quickly and prices and availability go back to normal.

[Psi]

Is there any real difference between 3.5" and 2.5" drives in terms of longevity? ChatGPT swears either type will last as long as the other but i somehow don't buy it. Assuming adequate cooling, no mechanical movement etc conditions

Any stats for it will be skewed as 2.5" drives go in laptops which are dropped a lot.

I would imagine 2.5" have some advantages by just being smaller and spinning slower.
But because they spin slower and read slower I tend to stay away from them.
There might be some disadvantages having tinier read heads that maybe more likely to get damaged though.

[stj]

2.5" drives have a shorter lifespan because they are built cheaply - most dont spin slower than 3.5"
i had a 2.5" WD-Black that died after about 7 years of light use - i think the heads failed.
it was 7200RPM btw.

i have lots of 3.5" drives 2-3 times older that run fine.
scsi drives run even when the bearings sound like a coffee grinder - they built that class of drive much better.

as for the AI bubble perpetuated mostly by NVIDIA and ORACLE or whatever dodgy-larry elison is calling his company now.
it's not connected with the massive push for datacenters directly.

[Psi]

2.5" drives have a shorter lifespan because they are built cheaply - most dont spin slower than 3.5"

Even the 2.5" that don't spin slower have a slower angular velocity over the head due to being smaller. So they are still slower.

[Cyclotron]

I prefer to pick up SAS drives for my home storage, as they outlast SATA drives by a good bit. I assume they are built better, since SAS is what enterprises use, but it's just an assumption, and I don't even have real data to back up my opinion on longevity or the reasons.

Sorta makes me want to go research it.

[madires]

You can buy 2.5" SAS enterprise HDDs for servers.

[dmendesf]

Does SAS drives works with normal SATA controllers or a special controller is needed? Just curiosity, I stopped using spinning rust for all purposes long ago (even backup) as I don't have so much data and SSDs are much faster and shock proof.

[M0HZH]

SATA controller works only with SATA drives
SAS controller works with both SAS or SATA drives

A 12G SAS controller that can run in HBA mode is like £20 and cables/adaptors are a few £ more.

Used SAS HDDs and especially SAS SSDs are cheaper (and much more reliable) than equivalent desktop drives, worth investigating if you need large storage now.

[Cyclotron]

SATA controller works only with SATA drives
SAS controller works with both SAS or SATA drives

A 12G SAS controller that can run in HBA mode is like £20 and cables/adaptors are a few £ more.

Used SAS HDDs and especially SAS SSDs are cheaper (and much more reliable) than equivalent desktop drives, worth investigating if you need large storage now.

100% what M0HZH said. I buy used SAS drives, and it's been a good deal. Often spending as little as 25 USD for an 8TB drive in an auction (YMMV). I find them reliable, and since they are hot-pluggable and enterprise-grade, I can easily swap out a drive when it happens.  I currently run both of my NAS systems in RAID-Z2 mode with 2 parity drives to allow for the extended rebuild times of large-capacity drives while retaining redundancy.

The last NAS I built was 3 years ago with used 8tb SAS drives, and so far, none have failed.

[madires]

Gamers Nexus: The Hard Drive Cartel | Criminal Conspiracy & Price Fixing


TL;DW:
- manufacturers of suspension assemblies have created a cartel

[DiTBho]

You can buy 2.5" SAS enterprise HDDs for servers.

the problem is: where?

• Amazon? I don't trust(1)
• eBay? I don't trust(2)
• Local resellers? they no more sell HDDs, only SDD and NVME
• ...

(1) I watched a few YouTubers who purchased something like qty.16 Seagate EXOS hard drives from Amazon to build a NAS and filmed the build process ...

but frankly ... I doubt I can be so lucky:
+ I recently bought a glass water bottle... it was shipped in an unprotected envelope and arrived broken.
+ I bought a steel bicycle bottle and it arrived dented as if it had been hit with a hammer...

if I bought a hard drive... how would it arrive? Fried? With fish and chips? 

(2) with the exception of one seller, whom I trust, but who only sells SCSI 36/70GB LE/LVD SCA/80 HDDs as HP PA-RISC parts