Enterprise and data centre storage clients are facing a new pricing reality, as NAND flash shortages continue to squeeze the market. According to a VDURA analysis shared by storage site Blocks & Files, high-capacity SSD pricing has accelerated far faster than the equivalent in HDD form, reshaping how new capacity gets planned and approved.
It seems that the ongoing NAND constraints caused by AI infrastructure buildup are starting to greatly impact the enterprise sector, as a new report from VDURA indicates that data centre refresh cycles are now in chaos due to SSD pricing volatility. VDURA reports that SSD prices are now 16 times higher than those of hard drives, forcing new deployments to favour hybrid SSDs and hard HDDs to reduce their cost per petabyte.
The company has indicated that between Q2 2025 and Q1 2026, 30TB TLC enterprise-grade SSD prices rose by a whopping 257%, marking a massive shift after years of stable prices. SSDs that cost $3,062 in Q2 of 2025 now demand nearly $11,000. For comparison, hard drive prices only increased by 35% in the same interval, making them valuable in deployments where capacity is more important than speed. This situation has especially accelerated last year, as the capacity cost difference between SSDs and HDDs went from 6.2x in Q2 2025 to 16.4x in Q1 2026.
VDURA also compared the total cost of multiple storage systems equipped with SSDs or a mix of SSDs and HDDs, finding that a three-year ownership of a mixed setup costs a third of the price of one with only SSDs, demanding $25.20 million instead of $5.99 million. The same configurations would have cost $2.19 million and $6.8 million respectively back in Q2 2025; that’s a 270% jump for SSD-only deployments.
“When quotes double or triple in a single quarter, resellers face the uncomfortable task of telling customers their approved budgets are no longer viable,” said Erik Salo, VDURA’s SVP of business operations. “Our goal is to bring transparency to this volatility and help the industry understand what’s driving it, how long it might persist, and alternative options.”
This new reality will force many clients to change plans, likely downgrading from SSD-only to hybrid deployments to remain within their budgets. This situation is unlikely to improve anytime soon, as NAND flash providers such as Kioxia predict the SSD shortage will likely extend into 2027.
