Mikeserv Support Forum

During a recent Q2 earnings call, WD’s CEO Irving Tan told shareholders, “we’re pretty much sold out [of hard drives] for calendar 2026. We have firm POs [purchase orders] with our top seven customers.” You read that correctly. Western Digital, the company you know as the producer of hard drives (if you know them at all) will not be able to sell you a new hard drive until at least 2027. And that’s a load-bearing “at least.” According to Tan on that same call, two of their agreements with these big buyers go to 2027 and another all the way into 2028.

Yes, our old friend the data center is back to make your life miserable in various ways. Hard drives offer more bang for your buck and storage efficiency than their SSD counterparts, so Western Digital’s cloud storage service is an entirely HDD affair. Furthermore, selling that service to its enterprise clients now accounts for 89% of Western Digital’s total revenue. The 5% of revenue chipped in by retail customers like us is clearly no longer even worth the headache.