Transcript:

Why Are Hard Drives So Expensive in 2026?
Transcript:
0:00
Welcome back to your Security Survival Guide.
I am Jeremy Vance and as always we are going through and trying to help business owners learn more about their security systems and how to save money and get more value out of it.
Today we are going to be looking at a very specific question, which is why are hard drives so expensive?
0:19
In 2026?
The price for hardware is going up 40 to 60% over what it was just last year.
So there’s a lot going on with this.
We’re going to break it down real fast.
Let’s go ahead and start with how we use hard drives in the security industry.
0:40
So the biggest thing that you will see is either a business owner, facility manager, IT manager, or even for your home is that the price of the NVR.
So the recorder unit for most camera systems that will sit either in like a data rack in your comms room or possibly in like a cupboard in your home.
1:00
But on the commercial side, it’s usually in a data rack.
Those prices have increased probably about like 20 to 30% overall.
And the reason being is that the hard drives are incredibly hard to get.
1:16
So there’s a few different reasons on why that is, but at the moment, the current reality for the hard drives is that I cannot go to some of my suppliers now and buy hard drives, just individual hard drives.
1:32
They’re only selling them with new recorders because they need to make sure they have hard drives for those new recorders to sell.
So if I wanted to add more storage to your recorder, to your server, I wouldn’t be able to get that from half of my suppliers.
1:47
Now I still have some suppliers that are selling them, just that we’re talking about brand new security industry grade CCTV hard drives.
It’s across the board.
But specifically for those, I do have a couple suppliers that’ll sell them, but the prices jumped roughly about 40% on that, which doesn’t help us at all really from trying to make sure that you have what you need.
2:13
So that’s kind of the new realities.
The price is fluctuating like crazy.
The suppliers are struggling to get supply.
And as such, they’re not selling naked individual hard drives.
They’re selling them as packages, which you don’t necessarily need as the end user and I don’t need necessarily as the security integrator.
2:34
So let’s talk real quick about why the hard drives are so expensive.
So the answer is AI.
It’s the problem.
Like everything right now in the world, the answer of what’s wrong here is usually AI, and that’s the case in this.
2:54
So there’s quite a few issues within the security industry with AI, everything from manpower loss to being reliant on technology that’s maybe not fully fledged out the way that a human being would be to hardware prices soaring that all kind of come down to that AI integration into our world.
3:17
It’s actually such a real issue that I have a robotics company that I have some equity in and we are actively not using AI.
So not using Brock or Gemini or any of the other ones within the brain and the processor of the robot security guard, which is a dog to robot dog.
3:37
And the reason we’re not using the AI is because we would rather have a high level integrated, very exact at what it does tool then something that can have issues that we don’t even anticipate for security.
3:53
We want things to be exact.
We want to know if I put in A, I’m going to get B.
If C happens, we’re going to get outcome B.
So we don’t use it for that.
Now, it doesn’t mean we won’t in the future, but at the moment, right now, it’s just not reliable enough for us to do it.
4:10
But everybody else is trying to shove AI and everything, even if it doesn’t fit.
And it has an odd side effect.
So the world using all these AIS and really there’s only so many server farms that host them and actually do all the processing and store all the data and all that kind of stuff.
4:30
They are mass buying hard drives, GP, us, other like materials that they need for those are also going into low supply because they’re just taking all the stuff and shoving these into these AI server farms.
4:48
And the larger companies are actually redirecting what they’re making to feed these high revenue contracts that these AI companies are giving.
So GPUs for like home computers are impossible to get at A at a decent price because GPU manufacturers are like, Oh, well, we make more money by making this and changing all our manufacturing to feed AI data farms and large AI companies similar with hard drives.
5:20
So it basically comes down to all of our resources are being dumped into these large AI farms and those AI farms are creating a ton of environmental heat and waste.
It’s this whole thing.
5:35
This is not the video for that, but that’s what’s going on.
I do suggest you go and actually look into that and see, do some, do some background research.
I’ll do it all for you.
Maybe I’ll do another video on that at some point.
So recently it’s becoming such an issue that SpaceX, so Elon’s space company, basically what they’re looking at is they’re looking at launching more satellites in the space than exist currently by like a large amount.
6:05
And those satellites sole purpose is to be space based AI data forms, right?
So that way the environmentally they’re not hurting the Earth in theory, even though they’re giant piles of trash floating around the Earth.
But yeah, so right now it’s so AI has taken such a focus off of everything else that humans are doing that we’re not even trying to come up with crazy ideas on how to get humans to Mars.
6:34
Instead we’re trying to figure out how to get AI in the space.
This is not a a commentary show on political or life or anything, but I do honestly hope that people are taking some of the dangers of the AI stuff seriously.
6:52
Like sci-fi writers in particular have been like screaming about this forever.
You have Dune, Battlestar Galactica, Blade Runner, even like Wally, Terminator.
They’re all stories about how AI and artificial intelligence harms humans and the the fabric of our society over time.
7:16
I do honestly hope if you haven’t read those books, go read those books.
Watch the movies.
They’re, they’re easier to digest, but it is a problem and we’re feeling it on a very practical sense inside the security industry and anybody who tries to buy either hard drives or GPUs, right.
7:34
So that’s kind of what that is there.
So from the security side, we have to be a little bit problem solving because we don’t have.
So if you were to go into AI, if I was going to Gemini and I’d be like, Hey, what is my solutions for getting more hard drives?
7:56
Hey, I, I did this the other day, literally came back and said that you should probably wait until 2028.
Don’t buy any hard drives until it settles and then the price will go down, which is a cool idea if you are not doing anything important and you can wait two years for hard drives.
But if we’re setting up security systems to keep people safe, it’s not a situation where you can go, oh, just wait until 2028, just hold out till then.
8:20
Also from a business point of view, how am I supposed to actually be able to support my business if I can’t sell products?
So that is a a solid question.
So there’s two things really that we can do.
8:36
So the first is obviously the price fluctuations.
We can buy them where we can buy them and on charge that price to the client, which means that you end up paying more for the same thing that you would have got last year, right, Especially if we’re looking into like 12 terabytes and higher drives, it’s just expensive.
8:56
The second option is that there are so in America, so I’m in Australia, I’m in Brisbane.
Currently we we cover Brisbane and Melbourne mainly.
So in America you have far more of this, but in Melbourne we have also found a company that refurbishes enterprise level hard drives that are no longer in use and then basically resells them.
9:17
So you’re buying a a second hand refurbished hard drive is basically what you get.
Now the big difference there is instead of getting your longer warranty like your three-year, five year warranty is they’re only giving them out with year long warranties.
Now the good news is from an electronics point of view, if something is going to fail due to faultiness, is it to happens before one year?
9:38
However, that does mean that your longevity of that drive is not guaranteed.
Hard drives, for people who don’t know, are a mechanical device.
It actually has spinning stuff inside of it.
So it does have, in fact, the lifespan.
So when you refurbish it, we’re able to extend that lifespan and we’re able to put it back into production, but it’s not at the same rate as a brand new one because a brand new one will obviously have no wear and tear.
10:04
So just be aware of that.
So that’s the second one.
So we can get cheaper hard drives to keep the price reasonable on security systems.
However, they do come refurbished, so that is the other.
So those are your two options really.
Buy new at a higher price or buy refurbished with a slightly shorter warranty.
10:24
So right now we’re currently for my clients, because a lot of them are higher end situations, we’re just buying at a higher price.
But we have actually bought a few of the refurbished ones as well too and those actually seem to be working just fine.
Granted, they haven’t made it to a year yet because this is a fairly new problem.
10:42
So grain of salt with that, but we’ll keep you guys posted.
If I do find that that is just a bad idea and it doesn’t work, I’ll make a video of that because it is something that it’s important for everybody to kind of be in this together.
So.
So what’s the conclusion to all of this?
10:58
The reality is that none of this is going to change anytime soon.
The hard drive companies have switched manufacturing to be producing drives for AI farms GPUs as well.
They’re literally reducing the amount of factory space to making GPUs for consumer use and dedicating more of that to AI data farm.
11:25
They make more money from those contracts than they do from marketing and selling to consumers.
So we find ways around the problem, whether it’s we have to buy a higher, find specific suppliers that have supplies in stock and kind of we do a bunch of like shopping around and we have to buy them at a higher cost.
11:42
Or we find refurbished drives from enterprise level companies that take enterprise drives that are basically decommissioned, refurbish them out and put them back into circulation as refurbished devices.
There’s no perfect answer there.
12:00
However, both of those are decent enough answers for a security system that is going to be able to give us alerts if something fails, like hard drive fails.
So again, if you do have a like a recorder and you’re reusing drives on there, usually you have roughly one drive for every 8 cameras or so.
12:19
So if you have a larger system and you’re using RAID, which is just a way for it to kind of do emergency redundancy, you’re, you’re not going to be in danger if one hard drive fails, we’ll be able to swap that hard drive out.
12:34
Keep all your data.
It’s just we have to be aware that this is a real problem that is happening and supply is fluctuating and low.
So why are the drives so expensive?
AI, that is why the drives are expensive.
Now if you do have questions or if you want to work with us, please by all means reach out.
12:53
We cover Brisbane and Melbourne mainly, but we do Australia wide and I have no problem talking to anybody worldwide as well too, because that sounds fun.
But basically feel free to reach out.
We can have a conversations, my initial conversations with people and networking and doing even site audits are usually free for the first one, depending on your location.
13:16
Make sure you subscribe to the video.
If you’re seeing this as a short or you’re seeing this in your in my Spotify feed, make sure that you actually follow and comment and do all that stuff because it does help us out a ton.
Thank you for listening to my wonderful ramble at the end that I have to do.
13:32
But I want you guys to know that we’re keeping an eye on these situations as well, not just what the crime rates are in Brisbane, not just what the best way are to make it the most deterrent available, but also what is happening with the hardware side on the back end so that everybody is in the loop and we all know what’s going on because let’s be honest, communication solves about 90% of the problem.
13:59
So you guys have a very good day and we will talk to you soon.