Western Digital: Hard drive is the undisputed storage leader 20 comments
Image: Western Digital
Hard drives are also seeing an update via the AI boom. In the data center, mechanical mass storage is an integral part of the Investor Day announced by Western Digital and also explained why. First and foremost, memory is still much cheaper than SSDs and this is unlikely to change in the medium term.
Irving Tan described the HDD as a “clear leader in storage” during his presentation at Western Digital’s youngest Investor Day. The point of view is certainly not neutral, after all, after the division of the SSD division (Sandisk), Tan will presume as CEO and Western Digital again a hard drive manufacturer who wants to sell them.
The current trend is good because hard drives are in high demand in the data center and are an integral part of it. Cloud server and AI boom ensure growing demand. It looks very different in the client sector, where HDDs are being replaced by SSDs in almost all areas.
In the cloud segment, not only the need for hard drives, but also enterprise SSDs (ESSDs) and tape (tape) memory, according to Tan. However, both types do not reach the huge proportion of hard drives to cloud storage in the foreseeable future. While ESSDs provide quick access to frequently used data (hot data) and serve as intermediate memory, data that is rarely or no longer used ends up (cold data) on tape. Western Digital describes the lion’s share of data in the cloud as “cool data” and this lands mainly on hard drives, which form a cheap compromise of fast and expensive SSDs as well as slow tapes.
The hard drive as the most important mass memory in the cloud (image: Western Digital)
Hard drives are still undefeated with costs
Even though SSDs bring advantages over conventional hard drives in the server in terms of energy and space, the high purchase price remains the significant disadvantage of fast SSD technology. If the performance isn’t absolutely necessary, it’s not worth it. Western Digital calculates that total costs (purchase + business), total cost of ownership (TCO), are greater than a factor of 3.6 for SSDs.
The capital expenditure (CAPEX) in Nand-Flash in 2015 to 2024 was approximately $50 million per exabyte. Western Digital’s hard drive business is valued at just $1.2 million per exabyte.
Additionally, hard drives are expected to score in terms of CO2 emissions. Semiconductor production is known to be a huge energy guzzler, along with NAND chips in SSDs.
The price gap between HDD and SSD remains
Even though prices per storage space from terabytes to SSDS have decreased significantly over the years, hard drives are still much cheaper. Western Digital assumes that the ratio of approximately six times the price per terabyte will remain the same in ESSDs compared to HDDs by 2030 (June 2029 to June 2030).
At price per TB, hard drives are still a long way off (Image: Western Digital)
Growing hard drive sales and rosy outlook
Finally, Western Digital and Seagate, which together share around 80% of the global hard drive business, were able to increase their sales again and, thanks to higher prices, above all.
Hard drive sales in 2nd Fiscal Quarter 2025 (increase from prior year) Seagate Western Digital hard drive sales $2.169 billion (+57%) $2.409 billion (+76%) hard drive sales $13 million (+12%) $13.5 million (+25%) HDD-ASP $167 (+40%) $172 (+41%)
The professional association IEEE predicted last October that hard disk drives would boom in the years to come.
In a week, Western Digital is a pure-play hard drive maker again
If something does not come to an end, on February 21, 2025, today in a week, the spin-off of the Flash and SSD division should be completed. From this point on, Western Digital is once again a hard drive manufacturer and the Flash business is once again handled by Sandisk, as it was before it took over.
Both companies promise benefits for the future of this stage. David Goeckeler will take over management of the new Sanksisk, who is still CEO of Western Digital.
Topics: Hard Drives Server Storage Western Digital Business Source: Western Digital
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