3 ms·

Are these the picks and shovels? Is the profitability of these electronics manufacturers more likely than the companies that are buying up all their future inv

Are these the picks and shovels? Is the profitability of these electronics manufacturers more likely than the companies that are buying up all their future inventory?

smashface 9mo 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.
- mrweasel 9mo 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 9mo 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.
  - digiown 9mo 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.
    - zozbot234 9mo ago
      For "cold" archival storage you would want to use tape, which is far cheaper per TB at scale.
      - digiown 9mo ago
        I don't mean that type of archive, but rather "just in case" data like "last month's scrape of this website" after we scraped it 5 more times this month or higher resolution versions of book scans. You might want to still be able to dump it out quickly if you need it. Money is no object for these companies and the cost of HDDs is more than low enough for the flexibility they provide.
      - pixl97 9mo ago
        If demand for hard drives is this high then it sounds like there wouldn't be near enough tape around either.
        Fnoord 9mo ago
        This is why I am buying a couple of LTO 6 tapes. Thus far I've been able to buy 4 for approx 120 EUR, 2,5 TB each. They have been around 30 EUR each the past years, and still are approx such price (leaning towards 35 EUR though). I bought a second hand drive for about 500 EUR, and a HBA for it.
        zozbot234 9mo ago
        Tapes are great for true cold storage (will easily last many decades!) but they will wear out significantly with more intense use: you only get a couple hundred passes total over their full data capacity, either read or write. In practice, you still need plenty of big hard disks to act as nearline storage for practical use, and the tape only rarely does storage and retrieval in bulk. This is also why you see mechanical tape libraries with tens or hundreds of tapes for a single read/write unit: you don't really need more than that.
        9mo ago
  - kalleboo 9mo 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.
    - gck1 9mo ago
      SPD is out of stock as well for all their high capacity, manufacturer recertified drives. Got the 20TB Seagate recert in May 2025 for $239. Now it's $500 and out of stock [1]. Got another 28TB Seagate recert in Sep 2025 for $398. Now it's $482 and out of stock [2]. Same drive, but seller refurbished is also OOS, but at $700. I sure hope everything in my homelab NAS outlives the AI bubble. Otherwise, I'll have to shut it down, as getting a replacement for ANY part inside it is going to be stupid expensive. I'm at least thankful I went for DDR4 motherboard instead of DDR5. [1] https://serverpartdeals.com/products/seagate-exos-x20-st20000nm007d-20tb-7-2k-rpm-sata-6gb-s-3-5-hard-drive https://serverpartdeals.com/products/seagate-exos-x20-st2000... [2] https://serverpartdeals.com/products/seagate-exos-st28000nm000c-28tb-7-2k-rpm-sata-6gb-s-512e-cmr-3-5-recertified-hard-drive https://serverpartdeals.com/products/seagate-exos-st28000nm0...
      - kalleboo 9mo ago
        Yeah AI killed that market just like everything else. I'm sure the supply of used drives has also dried up as the equation of "cost per TB of power and rack space" vs "cost per TB of replacing with newer, denser drives" has gone haywire.

Are these the picks and shovels? Is the profitability of these electronics manufacturers more likely than the companies that are buying up all their future inventory?

smashface 9mo 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.

mrweasel 9mo 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 9mo 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.
- digiown 9mo 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.
  - zozbot234 9mo ago
    For "cold" archival storage you would want to use tape, which is far cheaper per TB at scale.
    - digiown 9mo ago
      I don't mean that type of archive, but rather "just in case" data like "last month's scrape of this website" after we scraped it 5 more times this month or higher resolution versions of book scans. You might want to still be able to dump it out quickly if you need it. Money is no object for these companies and the cost of HDDs is more than low enough for the flexibility they provide.
    - pixl97 9mo ago
      If demand for hard drives is this high then it sounds like there wouldn't be near enough tape around either.
      - Fnoord 9mo ago
        This is why I am buying a couple of LTO 6 tapes. Thus far I've been able to buy 4 for approx 120 EUR, 2,5 TB each. They have been around 30 EUR each the past years, and still are approx such price (leaning towards 35 EUR though). I bought a second hand drive for about 500 EUR, and a HBA for it.
        zozbot234 9mo ago
        Tapes are great for true cold storage (will easily last many decades!) but they will wear out significantly with more intense use: you only get a couple hundred passes total over their full data capacity, either read or write. In practice, you still need plenty of big hard disks to act as nearline storage for practical use, and the tape only rarely does storage and retrieval in bulk. This is also why you see mechanical tape libraries with tens or hundreds of tapes for a single read/write unit: you don't really need more than that.
        9mo ago
- kalleboo 9mo 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.
  - gck1 9mo ago
    SPD is out of stock as well for all their high capacity, manufacturer recertified drives. Got the 20TB Seagate recert in May 2025 for $239. Now it's $500 and out of stock [1]. Got another 28TB Seagate recert in Sep 2025 for $398. Now it's $482 and out of stock [2]. Same drive, but seller refurbished is also OOS, but at $700. I sure hope everything in my homelab NAS outlives the AI bubble. Otherwise, I'll have to shut it down, as getting a replacement for ANY part inside it is going to be stupid expensive. I'm at least thankful I went for DDR4 motherboard instead of DDR5. [1] https://serverpartdeals.com/products/seagate-exos-x20-st20000nm007d-20tb-7-2k-rpm-sata-6gb-s-3-5-hard-drive https://serverpartdeals.com/products/seagate-exos-x20-st2000... [2] https://serverpartdeals.com/products/seagate-exos-st28000nm000c-28tb-7-2k-rpm-sata-6gb-s-512e-cmr-3-5-recertified-hard-drive https://serverpartdeals.com/products/seagate-exos-st28000nm0...
    - kalleboo 9mo ago
      Yeah AI killed that market just like everything else. I'm sure the supply of used drives has also dried up as the equation of "cost per TB of power and rack space" vs "cost per TB of replacing with newer, denser drives" has gone haywire.