Western Digital (WD) has shared a plan to increase HDD storage space, with the goal of releasing 40TB hard drives by the end of 2026. However, this is just a single step on the way to 100TB hard drives in the far future.
This is a huge leap, and it’s possible because of Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) technology. HAMR technology is an important part of WD’s long-term plan to reach and exceed 100TB hard drives within the next ten years. For now, the company is using other technologies like OptiNAND and UltraSMR to increase storage space as much as possible until HAMR becomes more affordable and matches expected customer demand.
HAMR uses laser heating to temporarily lower the magnetic resistance of the hard drive’s disk. This will mean significantly denser data writing, translating to higher drive storage capacities. Western Digital believes its true potential begins at 40TB.
OptiNAND integrates flash memory with HDDs to boost capacity, performance, and reliability. It essentially combines HDDs’ high capacity with flash memory’s speed and reliability. UltraSMR (Ultra Scalable Magnetic Recording) uses advanced error correction to pack data tracks more densely than traditional SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording). It’s basically a method to increase storage density on the existing HDD technology before transitioning fully to HAMR.
The company has chosen to wait before fully adopting HAMR. While some competitors are already using HAMR in 30TB drives, WD believes the technology will be most effective at the 40TB level. Additionally, starting large-scale HAMR production before demand rises would lead to much higher costs.
This expected rise in demand is tied to the rapid growth of AI. WD predicts that storage needs will grow significantly in the second half of 2026 due to the increasing amount of data created by AI applications. The company is timing its development of high-capacity HAMR-based hard drives to match this expected demand, which will help keep costs down and make the best use of resources.
Kimihiko Nishio, sales manager for Western Digital Japan, told PC Watch, “Right now, there’s a huge surge in demand for generative AI, but storage hasn’t really benefited from it yet. Currently, the biggest beneficiaries are GPU servers. First, data is being generated in large volumes, and after that, it will need to be stored. That’s where we expect storage demand to spike.”
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This careful timing is an important part of WD’s plan to reach its long-term goal of offering hard drives with more than 100TB of storage by 2030, using Heat Dot Magnetic Recording (HDMR) technology. HDMR, which some expect to be the next major advancement in hard drive technology, will use nano-patterned magnetic storage to increase data density and capacity further than ever before.
Seagate, WD’s biggest competitor, has already released a 36TB HAMR drive and announced plans for a 60TB model. Making things more complicated, Seagate recently bought Intevac, a company that makes specialized HAMR manufacturing equipment. Intevac’s technology is used by most hard drive manufacturers worldwide, including WD, which could create a supply chain issue.
This is basically a long way of saying that 40TB hard drives are possible and considered one step in getting to 100TB. The companies that are in the race for 100TB just want to make sure there is a financial incentive to make hard drives. While you or I may not need them, AI companies will likely be purchasers of the technology since AI uses so much memory.
Beyond traditional hard drive technology, WD is also working on more advanced storage solutions. The company is researching DNA-based and ceramic-based storage, which could offer extremely high storage density and long-term data preservation for archival purposes. So, places like medical research facilities, science labs, libraries, and more could use these storage options.
