AI cloud companies have guzzled up so much HDD storage that they might be coming for our SSDs next
Oh the times they are a-changin'. A few years ago, I don't think I'd have predicted that HDDs, of all things, would be selling out, but here we are. According to TrendForce's investigations, "nearline" HDDs are "facing severe supply shortages", which is pushing cloud providers towards QLC SSDs.
Nearline HDDs are ones used for infrequently accessed data, acting neither as cold (long-term) nor hot (rapidly accessible) storage but something in between. They're primarily used for data such as backups. The AI boom has meant there's more of this storage in demand than before, to keep previous AI training data and model roll-backs, for instance.
One recent example of this increased demand comes from Western Digital. The company recently split from its SSD arm, Sandisk, to focus entirely on HDDs. TrendForce relays a notice from the company that was "spotted by industry sources" and explains that there is "unprecedented demand for every capacity in our portfolio."
Consequently, WD "will be gradually implementing price increases on all HDD products, effective immediately." It will also expand its "use of ocean freight", which will increase transport time by a few weeks but "significantly reduces emissions compared to air transport."
If a few weeks seems a long time, you're perhaps not understanding the scale of the demand, as TrendForce explains that "lead times for high-capacity HDDs have now extended to nearly one year." I suppose a few extra weeks isn't too much extra.
Given there seems to be no letting up on the AI freight train, CSPs might not be content waiting so long for HDDs and might therefore start buying up QLC SSDs.
These SSDs are of course faster than HDDs, and they also consume less power, but they cost more. They're not as fast as your average consumer SSD today, though. 'QLC' means 'quad-level cell', which means they can store four bits of information in each flash cell. Most of the best SSDs for gaming or general use that you'll find will be TLC ('triple-level cell') SSDs that are faster than QLC ones and tend to last longer, too.
It's worth noting that that might change, though, as we're seeing talk of some pretty impressive improvements to QLC storage. It could be that some future QLC SSDs will be quick enough (and remain cheap enough) to be great value propositions for gamers.
Current QLC SSDs, though, are certainly a next-best bet for large collections of warm storage, if high-capacity HDDs aren't available. TLC is unnecessarily fast and expensive when QLC is on the market.
As such, there shouldn't be a direct impact on storage for consumer SSDs such as the ones we slot into our gaming rigs. But the key word there is "direct", because if the component and chip market in 2025 has shown us anything, it's just how connected market effects are. For instance, if storage companies start gobbling up QLC SSDs for warm storage, others who were using QLC SSDs for hot storage might shift to TLC, causing those stocks to shrink, too.
The other side of the coin, of course, is that more money being poured into SSDs rather than HDDs could mean more resources are put into flash storage and SSD production. Though it would presumably take a while for us to see the effect of that increased production capacity.
In the short term, I'd place my bets on less SSD stock and higher prices, though hopefully it being restricted to QLC NAND will mean it doesn't affect our gaming PC and gaming laptop storage too much for now.