From PC World: It kind of feels like the last six months of my job has just been telling you about all the different ways the “AI” industry is making life suck. And I’m just a guy who writes about computers! I barely even touch on its environmental impact or mental health issues. But I digress. Here’s the latest way in which the “AI” industry is making life suck for all of us: “AI” data centers are gobbling up all the hard drives.
Yes, hard drives. Spinning disks that hold ones and zeroes. I can’t even remember the last time I saw a PC on a shelf that defaulted to hard drive storage—they’re really only relevant for consumers who have to store multiple terabytes of data. But “AI” models need to hold lots of data, too, which is why Western Digital is now out of hard drives for the rest of the year. “We’re pretty much sold out for calendar year 2026,” said CEO Irving Tan in the company’s latest earnings report.
In context, that means sold out of production capacity for 2026, as the company earmarks its output for various customers. You can still find WD drives on digital storefronts and store shelves, at least for now. But it seems the company is following in the footsteps of memory and flash storage producers by prioritizing industrial supply over regular consumers. Here’s a long quote from Tan:
“As AI capabilities expand, cloud continues to grow as well, and both are driving the search and demand for higher density storage solutions. In this new era where AI and cloud dominate, Western Digital has taken a customer-focused approach to managing this strong demand by working closely with our hyperscale customers, ensuring that we deliver reliable, high-capacity drives at scale to give them the best performance and total cost of ownership.”
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