Comment by smashface

9 days ago

If AI continues at this trajectory, sure, likely to the picks and shovels.

If AI has a bubble burst, you could see a lot of used hardware flood the market and then companies like WD could have a hard time selling against their previous inventory.

12 comments

smashface

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mrweasel  9 days ago

The problem is more likely that companies like WD doesn't know if this will be a bubble or not. Currently they can milk the market by raising their prices and just rely on their current production facilities, maybe expand a little. If there's going to be crash, then it's better to have raised the price, even if just temporarily, rather than being left standing with excessive production capacity.

If it's long term, it would be better to be the front runner on additional capacity, but that's assuming continuous growth. If it all comes down, or even just plateaus, it's better to simply raise prices.

trueismywork  9 days ago

Given how hard AI is on I/O, while restarting if hardware might go second hand. I dont see hard drives go second hand. Most hardware that we get might be used beyond redeeming even at free price.

  • kalleboo  8 days ago

    Actually used hard disks have gotten pretty popular in the past few years, with sellers like ServerPartDeals building up a reputation by selling drives that are properly tested and recertified. As long as you have redundancy and backups by all accounts they hold up pretty well.

  • digiown  9 days ago

    I don't think the HDDs are being used for any intensive loads. They have too much latency for most of that. It's probably just archival storage for their scraped content and generated slop.