“We have found that the preferred 28-30TB drives are just not available or at very high price,” Founder Brewster Kahle told 404 Media. “We gather over 100 terabytes of new materials each day, and we have over 210 Petabytes of materials already archived on machines that need continuous upgrades and maintenance, so we need to constantly get new hard drives.”
The Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia and a host of related projects, told 404 Media roughly the same thing. “We see the primary impact in the purchase of memory and hard drives but also in terms of lead times on server deliveries and our capacity to place future orders,” a Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson told them.
Gartner believes there will be a shortage in traditional hard drive as well as SSDs through at least the first half of 2027. “Things might loosen up a little bit in Q4 of 2027, but the storage demands are so large because hyperscalers for AI are commandeering all of the storage because they’re willing to pay for it, and that is squeezing everyone else in the world,” said Joseph Unsworth, senior research analyst with Gartner.
In the seller’s market, the advantage will always go to the customer with the deepest pockets and willing to make the largest purchase. That inherently favors hyperscalers, who buy in mass quantities versus enterprises and SMBs, Unsworth said.
