Getting a new hard-drive is going to be pretty hard in the next couple of years. Heck if tariffs didn’t prevent you from getting one in your price range, this news definitely will. Western Digital released a current report that tells consumers that they’ve already sold out their entire stock for the next couple of years. Why? We’ll tell you, and it’s not something a lot of people are going to like.
Western Digital says its hard drives are essentially sold out through all of 2026, with some long-term supply agreements already extending into 2027 and even 2028. But this surge in demand isn’t coming from everyday PC users or gamers. Instead, it’s being driven largely by AI data centers and cloud computing companies that require massive amounts of storage.
During a recent earnings call, Western Digital CEO Irving Tan explained:
“We’re pretty much sold out for calendar 2026. We have firm purchase orders with our top customers and long-term agreements extending into 2027 and 2028, covering both storage volume and pricing.”
Cloud-related business now dominates Western Digital’s revenue. The company’s VP of Investor Relations noted that roughly 89% of revenue comes from cloud customers, while consumer sales account for only about 5%. That shift highlights how AI development and cloud services are reshaping the storage market.
AI systems require enormous datasets to train and operate, and many cloud providers still rely heavily on traditional hard disk drives (HDDs). Despite the rise of SSDs, HDDs remain the most cost-effective and efficient solution for large-scale data storage. That economic advantage is helping drive the current hard drive shortage.
That demand could mean tighter supply and potentially higher prices for everyone else. Traditional hard drives are still the most affordable way to store huge amounts of data. That means that AI businesses are going to need as many drives as possible. As AI continues to expand, storage hardware will start facing the same kind of shortages we’ve already seen. With GPUs and other tech components some people have had an incredibly hard time securing even a personal PC. If you want a nice gaming PC that will stand the test of time, at least for a few years before you have to upgrade, you SOL.
