Western Digital announced immediate price increases on all HDDs and slower shipping speeds in shift to...

[remixedcat]

Western Digital announced immediate price increases due to demand and is changing shipping strategies. They are now shifting to sea based transport instead of air based transport in a shift to be more carbon neutral. 

This has been met with controversy, in what has been described as unprecedented in an age where shipping speeds should be decreased as much as possible to get hard drives into workstations and servers as fast as possible, as well as many businesses facing economic challenges. 

Here's the press release from the company:

Many have announced switches to Seagate or Toshiba Hard drives due to these changes. 

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

Na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na, hey, hey, hey, goodbye..

[remixedcat]

yup, glad I went for the Seagate Exos X18 16TB!! I was so close to getting a WD Ultrastar HC550. I pickind a winna!

[+thexfile Subscriber²]

All corporations will increase their prices because they have to show a profit for the shareholders. 😕

[neufuse Veteran]

not surprising went to order more Seagate Exos 28TB drives.... they went up over $150 some sellers want almost $300 more for them compared to what i paid half a year ago

[neufuse Veteran]

On 17/09/2025 at 11:15, neufuse said:

not surprising went to order more Seagate Exos 28TB drives.... they went up over $150 some sellers want almost $300 more for them compared to what i paid half a year ago

Yikes, even mfg refurbished 28TB drives are $420 that's about the "new" price a half year ago

[remixedcat]

On 17/09/2025 at 00:16, thexfile said:

All corporations will increase their prices because they have to show a profit for the shareholders. 😕

that doesn't excuse the 2nd part tho.... you wanna make the drives ship quicker for increasing demand not slower

[nekrosoft13]

On 17/09/2025 at 12:41, neufuse said:

Yikes, even mfg refurbished 28TB drives are $420 that's about the "new" price a half year ago

28TB drive is no longer considered a consumer product.

a good loyal consumer stores their files in cloud and pays yearly subscriptions.

 

people that buy large drives (i'm one of them) are not your typical consumer, with drives getting larger and more and more consumers using mobile devices and storing everything in cloud. prices for hard drives will constantly go up.

HDD became a niche products, prices won't go down.

[+Eternal Tempest MVC]

Been reading articles indicating this was probably going to happen. Potential to SSD's in the future too since data centers demand may out pace HDD availability.

Not always ideal, but you can get large drive(s) more affordable with the trustworthy datacenter drive resellers that sell one's cycled out that are in good condition (with crazy power on hours) that typically come with a 3-5 year warranty.

Just be mindful of data backup, aka get 2+ and have them in Raid 1 or other configuration that protects your data when one fails.

Another option is the "portable" usb large HDD's and remove them from the enclosure. Unless these go up in price too.

[neufuse Veteran]

On 17/09/2025 at 17:46, nekrosoft13 said:

28TB drive is no longer considered a consumer product.

a good loyal consumer stores their files in cloud and pays yearly subscriptions.

 

people that buy large drives (i'm one of them) are not your typical consumer, with drives getting larger and more and more consumers using mobile devices and storing everything in cloud. prices for hard drives will constantly go up.

HDD became a niche products, prices won't go down.

who said I was talking about consumer products? Why would a consumer be buying a bunch of 28tb drives...... put the pieces together... we have tens of hundreds of TB's of archive storage in pretty big SAN's with these drives..

[nekrosoft13]

On 17/09/2025 at 19:28, neufuse said:

who said I was talking about consumer products? Why would a consumer be buying a bunch of 28tb drives...... put the pieces together... we have tens of hundreds of TB's of archive storage in pretty big SAN's with these drives..

there are still consumers that buy large drives, but that is a more and more rare these days.

Since the market for large drives is shrinking, prices will go up

[Kelxin]

" in an age where shipping speeds should be decreased as much as possible to get hard drives into workstations and servers as fast as possible"

 

....    Huh????  That sentence doesn't make any sense.  That should be shipping speeds should be increased....

[remixedcat]

On 19/09/2025 at 00:43, Kelxin said:

" in an age where shipping speeds should be decreased as much as possible to get hard drives into workstations and servers as fast as possible"

 

....    Huh????  That sentence doesn't make any sense.  That should be shipping speeds should be increased....

The one time that my S22 plus's tone tool failed me