Hard drives on backorder for two years as AI data centers trigger HDD shortage — delays forcing rapid transition to QLC SSDs

Artificial intelligence has taken yet another victim. After GPUs and memory, storage is now facing a shortage as well, at least in the enterprise space. Production capacity for nearline storage, fueled by high-capacity server HDDs, is booked for the next two years. Cloud providers are switching to QLC NAND to avoid the lead times.