Report: Seagate, Western Digital Hike HDD Prices Amid Surge In Demand
by Anton Shilov on April 24, 2024 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- Seagate
- HDDs
- Western Digital
- HDD
Seagate Technology has reportedly notified its customers abouts its plans to raise prices on new hard drive orders and for demands that exceed prior agreements, echoing a similar move by Western Digital, which increased its prices earlier this month. These changes come in response to a surge in demand for high-capacity HDDs and constraints in supply due to decreased production capabilities of both Seagate and Western Digital, reports TrendForce.
According to industry insights reported by TechNews, the sector anticipates that the scarcity of high-capacity HDD products will persist throughout the current quarter and possibly extend over the entire year. It is forecasted that HDD prices will rise by 5% to 10% in Q2 2024 alone and could increase further as a reault of the ongoing challenges faced by the storage industry.
The primary driver behind Seagate's decision is increased demand for high-capacity HDDs, which are used to train AI models. This demand spike, coupled with a reduction in production output from hard drive makers, has created a significant supply-demand imbalance. As a result, Seagate has decided to adjust their pricing strategy to manage the situation. Further exacerbating the issue are global inflationary pressures which continue to inflate costs across the board, which also contributed to the company's decision to increase prices, Seagate said in a message to clients published by TrendForce.
Seagate emphasized that its reduced production capacity has been a major challenge, hindering the company's ability to fulfill customer demands fully and promptly.
"As a result, we will be implementing price increases effective immediately on new orders and for demand that is over and above previously committed volumes," the alleged memo from Seagate reads. "Supply constraints are expected to continue and as such we anticipate that prices will continue to increase in the coming quarters."
Earlier this month Western Digital also informed its customers about price hikes for its HDD and SSD products. This notification was based on similar issues — higher than anticipated demand across the whole product range and additional supply chain challenges affecting the electronics sector. Western Digital's announcement made it clear that these disruptions are likely to continue, prompting further price adjustments.
Sources: TrendForce, TrendForce, TechNews
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ballsystemlord - Wednesday, April 24, 2024 - link
And they say that spinning rust/HDDs are dead.Threska - Wednesday, April 24, 2024 - link
Nope. Doesn't suffer from charge dissipation.https://youtu.be/xA9Xq7hb6Q0
ballsystemlord - Wednesday, April 24, 2024 - link
I never said anything for or against "suffering from charge dissipation."I watched the YT video, and I'd like to note 2 things the author was probably not aware of:
1: 600TBW is a rather large number, even for today's TLC drives. QLC drives are rated even lower.
2: As someone who's had to help another gentlemen with his QLC drive which was written to extensively, I'd like to point out that although the drives might not fail outright once they reach about 1/2 of their rated P/E cycles, they start to throw lots of errors. This is because of the substitution of proper (lower) P/E ratings in favor of using advanced error correction algorithms. This results in a lower lifespan IRL than the YT-er calculates. If what I said was wrong, then manufacturers wouldn't typically go for 3 year warranties. Instead, they'd typically have 5, 7, or 10 year warranties.
ballsystemlord - Wednesday, April 24, 2024 - link
Addendum to point 1:Manufactures have actually been decreasing TBW values during the last few years. The YT-er isn't wrong. His info is dated. You used to be able to get TLC drives rated at >1600TBW for the 1TB model. Now it's down to 600TBW or less for the 1TB model.
Dizoja86 - Friday, April 26, 2024 - link
~600TBW endurance at 1TB is still common for TLC. You can also get 1TB TLC drives with ratings of 1250TBW, so it's not a thing of the past.ballsystemlord - Saturday, April 27, 2024 - link
Well, I can't say I'm reading up on SSDs like I did at the time, so it's possible that there are some with 1250TBW. But bear in mind that my above comments were for normal drives. Not pro/enterprise models nor for extremely expensive ones ( > 15c/GB ).nandnandnand - Wednesday, April 24, 2024 - link
Down for several quarters:https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomcoughlin/2023/11/0...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomcoughlin/2024/01/3...
If AI keeps HDDs relevant, cool I guess.
ballsystemlord - Wednesday, April 24, 2024 - link
It might be down right now, but it's expected to go up according to your source. Also, down is relative since demand is so high right now that, as this article points out, manufactures are doing pricing adjustments.GeoffreyA - Thursday, April 25, 2024 - link
Prices going up? *Round of applause*Kakti - Saturday, May 4, 2024 - link
From article:"Seagate emphasized that its reduced production capacity has been a major challenge, hindering the company's ability to fulfill customer demands fully and promptly.
"As a result, we will be implementing price increases effective immediately on new orders and for demand that is over and above previously committed volumes," the alleged memo from Seagate reads."
Call me crazy, but how exactly will increasing prices help the company's ability to fulfill customer demands? Wouldn't, I dunno, PRODUCING more HDDs help fulfill the orders? So Seagate reduced production volume despite forecasts for increased demand, and when that increased demand shows up, they increase prices rather than increase production at least to the level they were previously at.
What a joke. And where the hell are the 25gb, 40gb, 50gb drives that were projected like 5 years ago to arrive shortly?
SMR was a total flop
HAMR could also be a dud wtih helium slowly leaking out and the heads purportedly dying after roughly 7 years
The first hit on amazon when typing in "western digital" is for a 4 TB drive. Why are these companies even MAKING 4TB spinning rust a this point? It's absurb that both Seagate and WD have models for literally every even number of TB drives. 8 TB and 10 TB drives should've ceased production like two years ago. Or just make like one 6 TB for OEMS, and the next size up is 18 TB - 20 TB. Instead they make every size under the sun, and likely have inventories and massive pricebreaks for their volume customers, making them even less attractive.