The rapid growth of the AI market has caused unexpected problems. Due to a shortage of NAND memory and hard disk drives (HDD), the price of high-capacity storage devices has tripled in some places. This situation is particularly affecting organizations dedicated to preserving digital heritage, such as the Internet Archive. This is reported by Ixbt.com .
The Internet Archive currently stores nearly 210 petabytes of data and adds 100 terabytes to its archive daily. However, founder Brewster Kahle notes that finding 28–30 TB drives has become extremely difficult, and available ones are being sold at much higher prices than usual.
The Wikimedia Foundation is facing similar challenges. Representatives of the organization are expressing concerns not only about storage device shortages but also about server supply disruptions and uncertainties in planning future purchases.
An additional problem is the restrictions websites are placing on bots. Site owners, fearing that their data will be scraped without permission to train AI models, are blocking all types of bots, including useful ones that serve to preserve digital history.
As a result, archival projects are facing a serious crisis due to both expensive equipment and technical barriers to accessing data. This situation limits internet data security and the ability to preserve digital memory for future generations.
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