Shredding The Future

Even more interesting, there is one component that has a very different reason behind the shortage. Hard disk drives and flash drives. Server storage devices are even harder to acquire driving price increases of more than 400%. This storage demand is primarily due to the industry generating more data. By 2025, annual data generation reached 147 zettabytes, more than all data ever created before that year. This increase in data is a factor driving the demand but it is not the main reason for the elevated prices. Rather, decades-old drive destruction policies are behind the majority of storage supply shortages and price increases. This is not only bad for business, it is bad for the planet.

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