AI storage crisis pushes hard disk drive wait times to nearly a year

AI workloads are creating an unprecedented storage crisis, with ultra-high-capacity hard disk drives now facing wait times of nearly a year and Western Digital implementing immediate price increases across its entire HDD portfolio. The surge in AI inference services from hyperscale cloud providers like Google and Oracle is generating massive data volumes that are overwhelming global storage infrastructure, forcing the industry to reconsider traditional storage strategies.

What you should know: The storage shortage is most severe for the largest capacity drives, creating a supply bottleneck that could persist well into 2026.

• 32TB and larger HDDs now have lead times exceeding 52 weeks, compared to just a few weeks previously.
• 30TB HDDs like the Seagate Exos Mozaic+ remain readily available, but anything larger requires over a year-long wait.
• External hard drive shipments may face additional six to ten-week delays as Western Digital shifts to ocean freight.

The big picture: AI’s explosive growth is fundamentally reshaping data center storage economics and forcing cloud service providers to reconsider their infrastructure strategies.

• Nearline HDDs—drives designed for bulk data storage that don’t need frequent access—are experiencing severe supply shortages.
• Limited production growth among HDD manufacturers has left them unable to handle the rapid, AI-fueled spike in storage needs.
• North American cloud service providers are accelerating SSD adoption for warm data workloads and even considering SSDs for cold data storage.

Why this matters: The storage crunch is driving up costs across the board and forcing difficult trade-offs between capacity, performance, and budget.

• Western Digital cites “unprecedented demand” as justification for immediate price increases across all HDD products.
• Enterprise SSD contract prices are predicted to rise 5-10% in Q4 2025.
• SSDs offer faster read/write speeds and use about 30% less power than nearline HDDs, but are more expensive and have smaller capacities.

Key challenges ahead: The shift to alternative storage solutions creates new technical and financial hurdles for organizations.

• Using SSDs for cold data—rarely accessed but archived long-term—is not financially prudent for most use cases.
• Cloud service providers planning to use QLC SSDs for cold data must update data systems, check software compatibility, and carefully track costs.
• Rising costs affect not only large enterprise deployments but also smaller organizations seeking storage-intensive applications.

What the experts say: TrendForce, a market research firm, warns that the AI-driven storage shortage will continue affecting buying strategies well into 2026, with high-capacity QLC SSD shipments projected to see rapid growth as the market adapts to the new reality.