Western Digital Shows Path To HAMR

Western Digital’s Future in HDDs: A Look Ahead

Western Digital’s Investor Day

Western Digital held its investor day meeting on February 12, where the company discussed its status and strategy as a hard disk drive (HDD) company. The company is set to separate from SanDisk, which will focus on NAND Flash and SSDs, with the separation expected to be completed by February 21, 2025.

CEO’s Remarks

WDC CEO Irving Tan emphasized that the company remains a trusted partner to the world’s largest hyperscalers, OEMs, and other enterprise digital storage users. He discussed the company’s ongoing promotion of ePMR conventional magnetic recording, CMR, and UltraSMR, as well as future HDD technologies, including heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR).

2024-2028 IDC Global DataSphere Forecast

According to the 2024-2028 IDC Global DataSphere Forecast, 394ZB of data will be generated annually by 2028, with installed cloud storage expected to grow at a CAGR of 23%. This growth is largely driven by endpoint data storage, with nearline HDD growth expected to reach 23% CAGR, enterprise SSD CAGR of 24%, and tape at 11% CAGR.

AI Applications

AI applications using text, images, and video for training will require massive data lakes of cost-effective storage, driving an uplift in data center digital storage demand. This is expected to result in a 131% uplift in nearline HDD storage shipments to support AI workloads by 2028, in addition to a 15% CAGR of nearline HDD storage capacity to support more conventional computing applications.

WDC’s HDD Advancements

WDC has been pursuing advances in HDD technology for many years, with notable achievements in helium-sealed HDDs, ePMR, triple-stage actuators, OptiNAND, and UltraSMR HDDs. The company has also announced the development of HAMR HDDs, which could enable HDDs with up to 100TB storage capacities.

HAMR HDDs

WDC is taking a measured approach to introducing HAMR HDDs, which are expected to be accelerated through work with data center companies. The company has already begun hyperscale testing of its HAMR HDDs and plans to focus the majority of its budget and Capex on supporting the transition from ePMR to HAMR products.

Cost Comparison

WDC claims that its introduction of HAMR HDDs will enable the company to maintain a 6X lower cost per TB of data than flash memory from 2024 to 2030. The company also notes that overall upfront costs and operating costs for HDDs are 3.6X smaller than for flash memory-based storage in a standard hyperscale datacenter.

Growth Opportunities

WDC is exploring new growth opportunities, including HDD developments, AI compute, DNA, and optical storage technologies. The company is also continuing to expand its storage systems business, including HDD, flash, and networking products.

Conclusion

Western Digital’s investor day highlighted the company’s focus on HDDs and its plans for future growth. With the separation from SanDisk, WDC is poised to continue as a leading provider of HDDs, with a focus on advanced technologies like HAMR and other innovations.

FAQs

• When is the expected separation of Western Digital and SanDisk?February 21, 2025
• What is the expected growth rate of installed cloud storage from 2024 to 2028? 23%
• What is the expected growth rate of nearline HDD storage shipments to support AI workloads by 2028? 131%
• What is the expected growth rate of nearline HDD storage capacity to support more conventional computing applications? 15%