Artificial Intelligence unexpectedly boosts demand for hard drives

The rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies in the global technology market has caused an unexpected turn in the data storage segment. Traditional hard disk drives (HDD), which have been pushed aside by SSDs in recent years, have now become essential products for large data centers. According to The Elec, due to the need to expand AI infrastructure, major manufacturers of HDD components have begun to sharply increase their production capacity. This is reported by Ixbt.com reports .

Japanese industry giants such as TDK, Resonac, and HOYA are expanding the production of magnetic heads, platters, and glass substrates for hard drives. This situation is explained by the growing need for cheap and reliable storage for the massive amounts of data processed by AI systems. Experts note that although HDDs have almost lost their place in the personal computer segment, their importance is being restored in the corporate sector.

New technological race and the 100 TB milestone

According to the analytical agency TrendForce, the supply of enterprise-level HDDs will grow by an average of 23 percent annually from 2025 to 2030. Such a high rate is pushing manufacturers to set new capacity records. Currently, market leaders such as Western Digital, Seagate, and Toshiba are actively working on creating hard drives with a capacity of 100 TB.

In particular, Western Digital is currently testing 40 TB drives and plans to mass-produce them in the second half of this year. The company aims to introduce 100 TB HDD models by 2029. Seagate has already begun supplying devices up to 44 TB based on HAMR (Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording) technology to cloud service providers.

Changes in the production chain

The increase in demand is having a positive impact on the entire component supply chain. Resonac announced that it will increase the production of magnetic platters from 160 million to 210 million units per year. HOYA Corporation is investing approximately 50 billion yen in the construction of a new plant in Vietnam to produce glass substrates for HDDs. Companies such as JX Advanced Metals and Nitto Denko are also expanding the production of materials for magnetic coatings and flexible printed circuits.

Why is HDD chosen instead of SSD? The main reason is economic efficiency. While SSDs are used for fast computing in modern data centers, HDDs are used to store massive data sets and backups. The fact that the cost per terabyte of storage remains significantly lower for HDDs allows AI companies to optimize costs.

This trend may indirectly reflect in the Uzbekistan market as well. The popularization of high-capacity hard drives in the modernization of local server infrastructure and data storage systems will serve to stabilize storage costs in the corporate segment. In the coming years, 30-40 TB drives are expected to become the standard.