Storage Sticker Shock: How A.I. Data centers are driving up the cost of hard drives
SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- There's an unconventional, new impact of A.I. data centers that average Americans might take for granted, and tech experts are sounding the alarm.
Think of the technology you use every day: your smart phone, tablet, Apple watch, desktop computer, etc. Those things wouldn't work without storage and memory.
As much as people use this technology, A.I. data centers do too.
The data centers are massive warehouses filled with rows and rows of physical storage; the same kind of storage that powers our everyday lives.
Right now, there's a storage war between data centers and regular consumers.
They both need storage, but data centers have more buying power, which leaves customers paying the price.
For many, the names for different computer parts are just gibberish, but for South Bend Computer Repair owner Bryton Miller, it's his livelihood and passion.
"Probably like thirteen, fourteen, I was getting interested in ripping them down, and building them, and from there a couple years ago I started my business and started just doing it for everybody," explains Bryton Miller.
At his business, just as the name would suggest, Miller inspects broken computers and parts and fixes them up.
"For the most part, it's all the same issue, but it's a matter of how you take care of them," Miller says.
One of the most common issues is computer hard drives that need replacement.
Those storage hard drives run a computer's operating system, like Mac OS or Windows 11.
They're home to all data, so they're imperative. "That's a very common part to go down," says Miller.
As he shopped around for replacements in recent months, Miller started to notice prices surging.
"Probably in November-ish, I was like 'What is happening?'"
The cost of the most common hard drives, he estimates, across the board has easily doubled in price, but some, even tripled.
"We've seen a huge jump in price in general," Miller admits.
Even though Miller deals mostly with the type of drives built into your laptop or desktop, this sticker shock also goes for external storage.
Those are used for storing large files like photos and videos.
Just one example is an eight-terabyte hard drive by SanDisk for sale right now on Amazon for $1,069.
Just three months ago, the same drive was going for $469 dollars; that's a 128 percent price jump.
According to reports from multiple online technology blogs, Western Digital, a leading, national hard drive manufacturing company, announced just this past week that its hard drive supply for 2026 is already wiped, thanks to massive A.I. deals.
That means you won't find a lot of hard drives on store shelves.
"I've bought from them plenty of times before," says Miller. "They usually have good pricing and all that, so I'm not going to be surprised if I see that go up next year. Wow, that's surprising news."
That storage will go to fill up the rows and rows inside these massive A.I. data centers.
ABC57 spoke with Thomas Coughlin, a storage analyst and consultant based in California, who tracks the latest storage and memory trends on his Forbes blog.
"The demand for storage and memory has like gone through the roof faster than people can increase the manufacturing capacity, and as a result, the prices are higher," explains Coughlin.
Despite the boom of data center developments in recent years across the country, he says demand isn't always this high.
"People were actually trying to cut production and not make as much stuff, and that was only three years ago," Coughlin says.
In fact, it reached a new low just a few years ago.
"We go back 2022-2023, we had the exact opposite thing happening; that people had data centers and other people had built up inventories of memory and storage to support their workloads and so they had these inventories, and all of a sudden after the Covid pandemic was wrapping up, because of the uncertainty in the supply chain, people had bought more than they needed and it took a couple years basically to burn off that inventory," says Coughlin.
It's hard telling just how long this extreme high might last.
Coughlin says one thing is for sure though. As long as there's A.I. in our future, there needs to be storage infrastructure, too.
"You need storage, you need memory," Coughlin says. "This is the fuel that powers Artificial Intelligence and everything else we do in electronics."
"It's not like the A.I. data centers are going to slow down, like if anything; they're just starting," Miller says.
So, what does this mean for the day-to-day technology user?
Simply, now is not the time to be in the market for a new computer or an updated storage system if it's not necessary.
"When a customer is really needing a data transfer and their drive is failing, it's a question where. I'm not even bringing that up. . . but if it's like a question of 'Hey, I want to upgrade for the future', right now is not the best time," says Miller.
As far as Miller at the repair shop, he says it's just part of the ebb and flow of working in the ever-changing technology space.
"It's not easy to deal with, but demand fluctuates, so it's going to happen," Miller admits.
With this increased price of storage, you can also expect the prices of common technology to go up too.
According to TrendForce, PC prices could increase by at least 15 percent this year, and smartphones up 10 percent.
HP, Dell, and Lenovo are some common name brands that have already announced price hikes.