Just a couple of months after we highlighted upcoming storage device shortages, the situation has begun escalating rapidly, and not in a subtle way. What looked like a tightening supply chain is rapidly turning into a multi-front squeeze, and Samsung has recently decided now is the perfect time to reshuffle its production lines in a way that only deepens the problem.

Samsung has quietly begun reallocating parts of its NAND production in Korea back toward DRAM. Officially, the company calls it a “utilization adjustment.” Unofficially, it’s the clearest sign yet that Samsung is shifting its priorities to feed the ravenous AI server market, which is guzzling DRAM and HBM at record pace. NAND simply isn’t the star of the show right now.

Normally, a minor rebalancing like this wouldn’t cause a market convulsion. But because Samsung controls such a huge chunk of global NAND output, even a modest diversion sends ripples down the entire supply chain. That ripple has already become a wave: module makers are reporting thinner allocations, suppliers are hiking contract prices, and the first retail price bumps are starting to show up in SSD listings that, not long ago, were racing each other to the bottom.

Data-centre operators hit a brick wall with nearline HDD supply, and by “brick wall,” we mean backorders stretching into next year and, for some models, 2026. With big iron disks stuck in production purgatory, large cloud providers did what cloud providers always do: they bought everything else in sight. In this case, that meant enormous volumes of QLC and TLC SSDs. This is how you get the perfect supply-chain storm. HDDs are in shortage. NAND is tightening. Samsung is shifting output. AI is eating every memory chip that isn’t bolted down. And the biggest buyers on Earth are panic-stockpiling SSDs because they can’t get the HDDs they actually wanted.

The result? Retail SSD deals are quickly drying up, enterprise SSD prices are starting to jump by double digits, and availability is quietly slipping behind the scenes. The budget NVMe drives that spent the last few months being practically given away? Those days are over. High-capacity 2 TB and 4 TB consumer models have already started to creep upward, while enterprise 8–30 TB drives are seeing painful 25–40% hikes depending on who you ask, and how loudly they’re complaining.

Meanwhile, manufacturers are in no rush to save anyone. After several brutal years of oversupply and margin-crushing prices, the flash industry finally has leverage again. Nobody is racing to turn on more wafer starts or add new capacity when prices are rising all by themselves. Even if the suppliers wanted to, it would take 18–24 months before new capacity actually helps.

This is the first time in memory, no pun intended, that HDDs, DRAM, NAND, and even HBM are all tightening at the same time. It’s not a cyclical wobble. It’s a structural crunch, and AI is the match that lit the entire pile.

So yes, we mentioned earlier in the year, SSD shortages are not only coming, but they are already here. And thanks to Samsung’s reallocation move and hyperscaler hoarding, the squeeze is only going to get worse.