2026 Storage Market Update: Supply Tightness and Pricing Shifts
Several enterprise HDD models we commonly deploy — for example, 12TB Seagate Exos — are broadly unavailable across most North American distributors. Even 8TB+ enterprise drives are on backorder, and firm delivery timelines remain difficult to obtain.
At the same time:
- SSD pricing is currently running 2–3× typical levels
- Memory pricing has increased significantly
- Lead times are very long
- Manufacturers currently have no intention of increasing production quickly. They have been stung in the past and don't want a price collapse.
This reflects demand growth meeting production capacity that was not recently expanded.
What Manufacturers Are Indicating
Recent public commentary from major HDD manufacturers suggests that production capacity for 2026 is largely committed through firm purchase orders, with some long-term agreements extending beyond that. These commitments are to large hyperscaler's like Google, ChatGPT and Anthropic.
This appears to be a demand-driven shift rather than a short-term disruption.
What This Means for Planning
The procurement environment has changed compared to prior years.
If production capacity is being committed well in advance at the manufacturer level, downstream effects are obvious:
- Smaller channel inventory buffers
- Less predictable availability
- Greater pricing sensitivity
- Shorter quote validity periods
Organizations planning infrastructure over the next 12–36 months should factor this context into budgeting and scheduling.
Possible Impact on Cloud Pricing
Cloud providers rely on the same underlying storage supply chain. The current demand seems to be coming from the AI platforms, not general cloud computing. Everything is AI buildout right now. It's really a huge undertaking and is impacting everyone.
If HDD, SSD, and memory input costs remain elevated — and production is largely allocated through longer-term agreements — infrastructure costs at scale may be affected over time. That does not necessarily translate into immediate price increases, but sustained component pressure typically influences long-term pricing models.
How Dataforge Is Approaching It
We are responding pragmatically:
- We do maintain our own stock.
- Working with alternative suppliers, including Europe and vetted refurbishment channels
- Performing in-house testing and validation on refurbished enterprise drives
- Continuing hybrid storage designs with SSD performance tiers and HDD capacity tiers and perhaps a mix of cloud and on-premise if required.
- Dataforge is able to work with un-managed cloud providers as well. We can develop them in to fully managed platforms. This can save a lot of money and provided supply if needed.
- We can also work with large bay arrays of smaller disks (that are more available). CEPH has really been great here, it is very versatile.
Systems designed with a higher proportion of SSD storage can provide a buffer for the future, as SSDs tend to last a lot longer than HDD.
Interesting enough, the supply of SSD is not near as bad as HDD. However, the SSD price tag is very high at the moment.
Bottom Line
The storage market is adjusting to sustained demand growth from AI hyperscalers with no current capacity upgrades scheduled in the short term.
This is a period of realignment. Thoughtful planning, flexible architecture, and proactive procurement will reduce uncertainty over the next few years.
References
-
WD and Seagate confirm: Hard drives for 2026 sold out — Heise Online (Feb 2026)
Both Western Digital and Seagate CEOs confirmed on earnings calls that nearline HDD capacity is fully allocated through 2026, with long-term agreements extending to 2027–2028.
https://www.heise.de/en/news/WD-and-Seagate-confirm-Hard-drives-for-2026-sold-out-11178917.html -
Memory Price Outlook for Q1 2026 Sharply Upgraded — TrendForce (Feb 2026)
Industry research firm TrendForce revised DRAM contract price increases upward to 90–95% QoQ and NAND Flash to 55–60% QoQ for Q1 2026, driven by AI and hyperscaler demand.
https://www.trendforce.com/presscenter/news/20260202-12911.html -
Global Memory Shortage Crisis: Market Analysis — IDC (Feb 2026)
IDC's VP of Data and Analytics documents the structural reallocation of DRAM and NAND manufacturing capacity toward AI infrastructure, calling it "the end of an era of cheap, abundant memory and storage."
https://www.idc.com/resource-center/blog/global-memory-shortage-crisis-market-analysis-and-the-potential-impact-on-the-smartphone-and-pc-markets-in-2026/
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