Yeah I have no idea the direct cause. I didn't think that the SATA controllers for a hard drive took that much.

It could be a secondary effect; SSDs have gotten so expensive that people are willing to put up with spinners and thus there's an increased demand. No idea, I'm sure an economist or something will do a write up of the downstream effects of the RAM crunch causes eventually.

GenAI and/or smart glasses video? WD already sold their entire 2026 production of nearline drives for data centers.

I've seen lots of articles on HN of AI startups building massive drive arrays for mass storage.

AI runs on data above all else. Gotta feed the compute.