AI doesn't just want to generate images; it wants your storage, too, as two hard drive manufacturers have announced they’ve already sold out for 2026, just two months into the year.
Both Western Digital and Seagate Technology – two of the manufacturers dominating the hard disk drive (HDD) market globally – made the announcements earlier this month during Q2 company earnings calls.
Speaking on their respective calls, CEO of Western Digital, Tiang Yew Tan said: “We’re pretty much sold out for calendar year 2026,” and Seagate CEO William Mosley shared: “Our nearline capacity is fully allocated through calendar year 2026.”
To clarify, the ‘sellout’ doesn't mean you can’t go and buy a portable hard drive to store your photos on; currently, these are very much still in stock at retailers for consumers.
But what it does mean is that, thanks to the rapid expansion of AI and cloud-based services needing vast amounts of data storage hardware, manufacturers have already maxed out their ability to produce more hard drives this year.
Going forward, Seagate Technology and Western Digital are unlikely to prioritize consumer demand, which could mean that HDDs and solid-state drives (SSDs) become scarce in the near future.
In fact, both manufacturers have made it clear that their sights are firmly set on reaping the rewards of serving the AI overlords.
Tan said: “We also have in place robust commercial agreements with three of our top five customers, two through calendar year 2027 and one through calendar year 2028."
While Mosley explained, "Further out, demand visibility is strengthening based on the long-term agreements in place with major cloud customers through calendar 2027.”
AI is also behind the shortage of global random access memory (RAM), creating a knock-on effect that’s driving up prices of hard drives. RAM is an essential component of AI infrastructure, needed to process massive amounts of data, and manufacturers are reallocating capacity towards higher-margin enterprise clients.
While Seagate Technology and Western Digital – two of the three leading hard drive manufacturers – have announced sellouts, Toshiba, the third major player, has been quiet.
The company is no longer listed on the stock exchange, meaning only basic financial information is publicly available, and it doesn't provide long-term outlooks like its competitors.
But there may be hope for consumers in SanDisk. A well-known storage brand, the former subsidiary of Western Digital, officially broke away from its parent company in 2025 and, as yet, hasn't announced reaching manufacturing capacity. In fact, my colleague, Paul Hatton, highly rates the SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD V2.
For photographers, the news is further proof of the growing expense of hard drives in the age of AI. Along with the increasing price of hard drives, memory cards have gone up in cost in 2026 as well.
So, like a fox that's broken into a turkey pen, it seems like AI is set to snatch and grab as much hard drive capacity as possible. Perhaps you and I should get our hands on some extra storage before our next big shoots.
You might also like…
Read our reviews of the Lexar SL500 and PNY EliteX-PRO SSD, two top-tier portable storage devices.
