SSD prices could spike after WD loses 6.5 bln gigabytes of NAND chips

theverge.com

32 pointswaynekerr4 comments

A little over a decade ago, before SSDs were commonplace, there was a HDD shortage caused by a flood in Thailand ruining factories used by some of the top storage brands. Here's the Backblaze side of the story detailing what it was like to weather this challenge: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze_drive_farming/

I preface my comment with that just to establish I remember what hard drive prices were like back then and what they were afterwards. The prices never really came down, at least not to what they had been, ever.

All that to say I expect this SSD shortage will play out the same way.

Prices didn’t come down because HDDs were becoming obsolete and on the way out. This is more akin to the DRAM price shocks that have occurred over and over since the 80s. Long term the price still trends down.

This seems a little less severe than the floods. Whole factories were never fully recovered from those floods.

This is a case of contamination at a single fab. It (likely) won't take long to be located and fixed.

At least this should free up some capacity on the lines that make SSD controller chips.

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