SSD prices could be driven up after a recent manufacturing disaster

If you’ve been looking to buy an SSD, you may want to act quickly before prices begin to sting. A recent contamination disaster at two of Western Digital’s manufacturing facilities has led to the loss of of approximately 6.5 exabytes of NAND flash. To put that in perspective, that’s 6.5 million terabytes of flash storage gone. That number could also be even higher, as it’s only taking into account the loss on Western Digital’s part, and not its partner’s, Kioxia. This is a huge blow to the SSD market and will likely cause an increase in price of NAND memory. Western Digital’s Yokkaichi and KitaKami manufacturing facilities were affected. The company is now working with its partner Kioxia to “restore the facilities to normal operational status as quickly as possible.” It’s an unfortunate turn of events and this has happened just as SSD prices were beginning to fall. PC hardware just can’t catch a break as prices keep g…