No storage is safe from price hikes -- Seagate raises hard drive prices, blaming inflation and market forces

Seagate Exos X20 20TB
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Seagate has announced in a letter to its major customers that it will be raising prices, effectively immediately, across its suite of hard drive products. The move comes in response to competitor Western Digital sending a nearly identical letter to its customers a week before Seagate. Seagate is now joining the rest of the computer storage industry, where prices are rising across the board.

In a letter dated April 18th, Seagate outlines a return to previous demand highs, low manufacturing capacity, and a generally inflated state across the world market as being major factors in its decision to raise prices. The company further warns customers that additional price increases will come in upcoming quarters. The full letter can be seen at TrendForce.

Seagate's announcement to hike prices will come as no surprise to those who have been following recent developments across the hard drive space. Storage manufacturers have been complaining about reduced NAND Flash production for months, and have found everything from the Taiwan earthquake to AI to blame for disruptions in supply chains and rising prices. The largest players in the market, Western Digital and Samsung, control commanding leads in the HDD and SSD markets respectfully, and have an increased ability to set the price trends for their markets. Samsung alone holds 41% of the enterprise SSD market and has been leading the market towards price increases since the end of 2023.

As hard drives are becoming a crucial part of future AI workflows, the hard drive manufacturers of the world stand ready to receive a famously high-spending industry. That said it's unclear whether these industry-wide price increases are entirely based on corporations struggling with issues outside of their control. It wouldn't be surprising to see some extra profit-taking being baked in, after years of falling prices and demand caused many of these companies serious struggles. 

Regardless, if you're looking to upgrade your storage, the best time to do so increasingly becomes today. Technically, the best time was sometime last year, as we warned. But decent deals can still be found on SSDs and hard drives, which we've collected for you here. And if news of continual price increases has you wanting to shake something, you're not alone; check out this hard drive vibrating device that shakes HDDs apart in under a minute. 

Dallin Grimm
Contributing Writer

Dallin Grimm is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware. He has been building and breaking computers since 2017, serving as the resident youngster at Tom's. From APUs to RGB, Dallin has a handle on all the latest tech news. 

  • hotaru251
    literally any company: "inflation"

    meanwhile every company is having record profit :|
    Reply
  • Math Geek
    i seem to recall not too long ago when they all cut production SPECIFICALLY to drive up prices.

    i don't think the word inflation means what they think it means...
    Reply
  • vanadiel007
    So when a major retailer lists drive at anywhere from 20 to 40% off regular price, it's wrong?
    Reply
  • bcweir
    Admin said:
    Storage manufacturer Seagate sends out a letter to big customers warning of incoming price hikes for its suite of products, blaming inflation and increased demand.

    No storage is safe from price hikes -- Seagate raises hard drive prices, blaming inflation and market forces : Read more
    Raising prices when your market is already flooded with hardware. Good luck with that.
    Reply
  • thestryker
    Realistically consumer HDD prices have been up for around 6 months or so. This sounds more like a targeting the high volume customers as consumer volume has plummeted the last few years. Got to keep the myth of unending margins somehow.
    Reply
  • Notton
    hotaru251 said:
    literally any company: "inflation"

    meanwhile every company is having record profit :|
    Seagate seems to be a genuine exception
    https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/STX/seagate-technology-holdings/revenue
    I figured Neodymium magnets were driving up costs, but the pricing for that rare earth is down, so I am guessing it's the cost of everything else that goes into a HDD.
    Reply