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Good news for data center operators and digital hoarders alike: Hard drives are going to get a lot larger, and cheaper per byte, according to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
IEEE’s latest roadmap for mass data storage projects maximum hard disk drive (HDD) capacity rising to 40 terabytes by 2025 and 60 terabytes by 2028. By comparison, the largest HDDs available as of October 2024 max out at 32 terabytes. (ExaDrive holds the all-time record so far with a 100 terabyte flash drive, but at the jarring price of $40,000 each.)
The cost of storage will likely fall as well, according to IEEE. They predict the cost per terabyte for HDDs will fall from $13.6 in 2022 to just $3.46 by 2028.
Chris Opat, SVP of cloud operations at storage platform Backblaze, told IT Brew that there’s a “triangle of tension” when selecting storage devices: input/output operations per second (IOPS) competing between read, read/write, and erase cycles. Hard drives with different specifications, including speed and capacity, may be better suited for different types of workloads.
“Those three have to peacefully coexist for the customer to have a performant experience,” Opat said. Higher density drives might not be an ideal use case for large quantities of small files, because the high number of erase and read operations “ultimately could starve out the drive from the ability to service the end user.”
Another example: Opat noted the rise of AI apps has created significant demand for “fast storage in close proximity to compute slash GPU resources,” which is primarily filled by NVMe flash drives.
The main impact of much larger HDDs for Backblaze, according to Opat, would be the ability to expand storage capacity without the corresponding increase in physical footprint. Backblaze has already been replacing lower-density HDDs with 22 terabyte models and will likely take advantage of any future increases to capacity, he added.
“Rent prices and kilowatt pricing on the [co-location] markets have gone up a shocking amount over the last 18 to 24 months,” Opat said. “We have to do everything we can to protect ourselves against stranding space and power, but also against us using it inefficiently.”
It remains to be seen whether the projected increase in HDD capacity will meet increased demand. The data center market remains red hot, with operators currently competing for real estate, hardware, and utilities.
“The more we can make the platform dense from a drive perspective, using approximately the same amount of power draw, the better for us to not have to keep expanding and expanding,” Opat said.