SSD prices in yet more trouble as two of the biggest hard drive makers have already sold out their 2026 stock

Amid soaring SSD prices, slower-but-cheaper mechanical hard drives may have offered an attractive reprieve for anyone wanting to embiggen their PC storage on a – and I know it’s increasingly difficult to use this word without breaking down into desperate laugh-crying – budget. Unfortunately, that probably ain’t happening either, as leading HDD manufacturers Western Digital and Seagate have both revealed that they’ve already sold “pretty much” all of their mechanical drive stock that was allocated for 2026.
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SSD prices in yet more trouble as two of the biggest hard drive makers have already sold out their 2026 stock

Disk averse

[A Seagate Barracuda hard drive, sitting on top of a PC.]

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

News

by James Archer
Hardware Editor

Published on Feb. 18, 2026

28 comments

Amid soaring SSD prices, slower-but-cheaper mechanical hard drives may have offered an attractive reprieve for anyone wanting to embiggen their PC storage on a – and I know it’s increasingly difficult to use this word without breaking down into desperate laugh-crying – budget. Unfortunately, that probably ain’t happening either, as leading HDD manufacturers Western Digital and Seagate have both revealed that they’ve already sold “pretty much” all of their mechanical drive stock that was allocated for 2026.

As spotted by German tech site Heise, the admissions (or boasts, depending how you look at it) came during WD and Seagate’s respective earnings calls in January. WD CEO Tiang Yew Tan said that in addition to maxing out production for 2026, "robust commercial agreements" for 2027 and 2028 are already in place with major buyers, while Seagate’s CEO William Mosley claimed the company’s HDD output capacity is "fully allocated" through the rest of this year.

Naturally, the bulk-buying of these hard drives – which is already causing shortages and heighted prices for home PC users – is being performed by the same entities that are driving the ongoing SSD and RAM shortages. Namely, big tech companies wanting to build and kit out enormous data centres from which to run their AI products, like those genAI tools that game devs hate and publishers are banning. Cool! This industry-wide rush has, for months, been causing a DRAM chip shortage that’s managed to widely knacker PC component availability, gouge prices, delay Valve’s new Steam Machine, and kill off Crucial. Seems we can add hard drives to the list of casualties, a development that also spells more bad news for SSD prices. If mech drives aren’t available as a cheaper alternative, that’s yet more demand being piled on SSDs, which would inevitably make supplies even scarcer and ticket prices even heavier.

For now, at least, a quick canter through the Internet shops suggests that hard drive supplies haven’t yet dried up entirely, and they’re still cheaper than equivalent-capacity NVMe SSDs. Still, they are snared in the same pricing trap: this 1TB Seagate Barracuda is £80 at the time of writing, but was £52 at the end of January, and £43 in December 2025. And with replacement stock having apparently been flogged to Microsoft and the like, don’t expect that to drift back down anytime soon.

I recently asked some specialist hardware manufacturers, as part of an upcoming feature, whether they’d advise PC upgrade seekers to take the money hit now or wait until things (hopefully) calm down in 2027. Responses were mostly mixed, but everyone agreed – as do I – that if you can keep going with your current components, SSD or HDD storage included, you probably should.

*Original source*