AI data center demand causes hard drive shortage, hampers web archiving
surging demand from ai data centers has created a global shortage of high-capacity hard drives. internet archive, wikimedia, and academic archivists report extreme price spikes and procurement difficulties. this hardware constraint is raising the operational costs of storing the web.
Data centers training large language models are buying high-capacity hard drives at record volumes, causing a shortage and price surge that impacts web archiving. The Internet Archive, Wikimedia, and academic researchers now struggle to secure necessary storage hardware. This trend highlights how AI infrastructure demands are colliding with digital preservation efforts, driving up costs for organizations that maintain historical data.