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When Hardware Gets Expensive, Archives Feel It Too

The memory crunch has companies keeping hardware longer. Archives are in the same squeeze, and here's what I'd check before signing for storage this year.

Tim Stockhaus, Founder and CEO · 2 min read
Rows of disk archive racks in a dim room, most drive lights dark

On Monday, Paul Kunert at The Register wrote about how the memory crunch is changing the way companies buy hardware (The Register). Memory costs have more than quadrupled this year. Businesses are keeping equipment longer, and refurbished kit is getting a second look now that it comes with warranties of up to three years.

4×+Rise in memory costs this yearThe Register
Sold outWestern Digital hard drive output for 2026PCWorld
Up to 3×Normal price for 18 TB and larger enterprise drivesNetwork World
$7.99Wasabi per TB a month since July 1, up from $6.99Wasabi

That story is about servers and laptops, but archives are in the same squeeze. In February, Western Digital’s CEO said the company was “pretty much sold out for calendar year 2026” (PCWorld). By May, the biggest enterprise drives, 18 TB and up, cost as much as three times their normal price (Network World). Cloud storage followed. Wasabi raised its list price to $7.99 per TB a month on July 1, up from $6.99 (Wasabi).

For a laptop or a server, holding on a bit longer is a sensible way to ride this out. An archive is harder. It keeps growing while you wait, and the storage contract you sign this year can run five or ten years. So before you sign anything, here’s what I’d check:

  1. Is the rate locked for the whole term?Read the price-change clause. A low starting rate doesn’t help much if it can be raised partway through.
  2. What’s the minimum storage term?Wasabi and AWS Glacier Instant Retrieval both bill a 90-day minimum, so moving or deleting data early still costs you (Wasabi, AWS).
  3. What will it cost to get your data back out?Jon Brown, an analyst at Omdia, says some organizations have paid $90,000 to $120,000 in egress fees to move a single petabyte out of the cloud (LTO Program).
  4. If you’re buying hardware, how long is the quote good for, and how long are the drives expected to last?

When replacements are expensive, hardware that lasts longer is worth more.

The Register’s piece makes a point that carries over to archives: when replacements are expensive, hardware that lasts longer is worth more. That’s the idea behind disk archives whose drives spin down when they’re idle, so they use little power and wear slowly.

It’s also why we built Meta8 the way we did. The rate is locked for the full term, and once the term is up, the same monthly rate carries on, renewed a year at a time. There are no egress fees. And Meta8 OnPrem is there for teams who would rather own the hardware outright. If you’d like to compare the options for your own archive, there’s a calculator on our Meta8 page.

See what your archive would cost on Meta8, Amazon S3, Glacier Instant Retrieval and Wasabi over your own term.

Open the Meta8 calculatorOr book a free archive assessment

Tim StockhausFounder and CEO, Meta Martis

Sources

  1. Paul Kunert, “Memory crunch makes refurbished kit look a lot less secondhand,” The Register, November 9, 2026.
  2. Michael Crider, “Western Digital is out of hard drives,” PCWorld, February 17, 2026.
  3. “Hard drive shortages are putting the squeeze on enterprise storage buyers,” Network World, May 13, 2026.
  4. Wasabi, “May 2026: Wasabi pricing” and pricing FAQ.
  5. AWS, “Understanding S3 Glacier storage classes.”
  6. LTO Program, “Cloud repatriation isn’t all it seems,” May 2026, quoting Jon Brown of Omdia.