Hard drives… a bit of a topic at the moment, with RAM and hard disk prices going up and availability going down. From what I’ve read, the blame for the shortage and price increase largely falls on demand from AI data centres and their thirst for more of everything to power the latest models.
From my perspective, I have a large pile of drives, many of them now very old, with FireWire 400 and 800 connections that are next to useless for redundant playback rigs. The hard disks pictured are used for archive, bootable emergencies, swap drives, and playback drives. But increasingly I’ve been using the internal drive on my laptops for playback, making these external drives even more redundant. Looks like I’ll be doing a spring clean!
Going further into the AI data centre angle, myself and one of my long-standing clients decided to upgrade our main Pro Tools HDX computers and ordered new Mac Studios. When I paid my deposit, I was told there was no firm idea when the machines would ship — fair enough, I thought, I’m not in a rush.
A couple of months later I got a call, which I foolishly presumed was notice that our computers were shipping. Instead, the call was to tell me that the machines had been re-priced, and even though we’d ordered well before the pricing change, the computers were now £800 more. And just to fully test my resolve, they still didn’t know when they’d ship.
I am, and have always been, a massive Apple fan, and the fact that I’m sitting here today telling this story and not complaining underlines that I still am. It’s great tech, and I think it’s worth the wait. Although I am a little annoyed with the big AI boys — and you, Suno!
Anyone else sitting on a pile of dead FireWire drives waiting for their own spring clean?
