💾 Western Digital’s CEO says HDDs are still central to AI storage with 80% of hyperscaler data on HDDs, 10% on SSDs, and 10% on tape.
That split reflects capacity economics and power per TB, since enterprise disks remain roughly 5x to 6x cheaper per TB than SSDs at scale and draw fewer watts per TB in bulk deployments.
Data centers tier AI storage so hot data sits on flash, warm and cold pools live on disks, and rarely touched archives go to tape, which matches how hyperscalers manage cost and performance.
AI demand is exceeding what manufacturers can currently produce or ship in a timely way, so buyers now have to wait much longer (months to over a year) for very high-capacity HDDs. (32TB HDDs).
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