AI Cleared out Western Digital's Hard Drive Supply for 2026

[BLUEVOODU]

@SpartanEvolved shared this with me the other day.   And I think this is insane!

According to this PCMAG article, It appears AI has cleared out Western Digital's inventory for 2026:
https://www.pcmag.com/news/ai-demand-clears-out-western-digitals-hard-drive-supply-for-2026

"We're pretty much sold out for calendar 2026. We have firm POs [purchase orders] with our top seven customers," Irving Tan, WD CEO, said during the company's latest earnings call.

Here's another interesting quote from the linked article:

A significant chunk of WD's revenue comes from enterprise clients. About 89% came from cloud businesses, and just 5% came from regular consumers, said Ambrish Srivastava, the company's vice president for investor relations.

Sold out for 2026?!!  Adding this into the RAM supply issues due to AI (topic linked)... I think we should be asking "what's next?"  Not sarcastically... but really - what's next?

It also appears that Sony is going to "potentially" push the PS6 back to 2028-2029 due to these issues (not too sad about the PS5 being around longer lol)... and this will push up other console prices such as the Nintendo Switch 2.  Topic on the PS6 coming soon.

What are your thoughts?  Post it up!

[retro junkie]

@BLUEVOODU
If all of that is sold out, you can be sure to add to that list the main processors too. And probably many other parts that make up any computer. I am so glad I have around ten working computers laying around here, which includes laptops and desktops. In that bunch I have two Chromebooks, two Macbook Pros, one Lenovo edge, two Mac minis, one old think pad running a modern version of Linux, a lenovo  tower that needs a power supply, a MacBook core Duo running linux, and an old MacBook pro 15inch that I am not sure if it can still be used online. I have much to fall back on just in case because it is no telling how long this "AI crusade" will last. I expect the sales of any type of computer hardware will be affected.

[Grindspine]

I snagged a 6TB WD Black 7200 RPM spindle drive for mass storage and a WD Black nvme drive (technically now under the Sandisk name) for my new PC just in time.

[BLUEVOODU]

I snagged a 6TB WD Black 7200 RPM spindle drive for mass storage and a WD Black nvme drive (technically now under the Sandisk name) for my new PC just in time.

@Grindspine - Yeah you did... I'm not sure the 7200 RPM drives will have stock issues... but that NVME... I wouldn't doubt that's going to get hit hard.

I really don't want to see a 4-5x on NVME pricing as well as RAM.  That's going to be insane... INSANE.  I'm glad I just happened to snag my more powerful gaming laptop last September 2025.  I was going to balk and wait until this year.  I'm glad I pulled the trigger ... lucky really.

[CreepinDeth]

These days, I definitely recommend even just having a 1TB spinning hard drive in your system. I use mine as my download drive.

If I have anything to download, then it goes there. That way I'm not wasting write cycles on my NVME drive. This should help it last longer.

Also, if you like to record any game sessions, I would also put recordings there. Depending on how you setup OBS, or other recording software, the files can eat up a lot of write cycles. I'm not sure if this is fine for streaming though. I don't stream so I can't say for certain using an HDD wouldn't hurt your performance.

If a file is something that I would like to keep permanently, then I'll make a copy on my SSD.