Western Digital, a storage solutions company, has announced the expansion of its platforms business and unveiled plans for larger and more efficient hard drives to support artificial intelligence (AI) worldwide. At its Innovation Day 2026, the company highlighted its roadmap to launch significantly larger hard drives. WD aims to release 40-terabyte (TB) drives in 2026, increase capacity to 60TB later, and eventually reach 100TB by 2029. These high-capacity drives are primarily designed for large cloud companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. Larger drives mean fewer physical units are required, which helps reduce costs and save space in data centres.
“If there is no HDD, there is no AI. Even today, 80% of the data centre's storage is on HDD,” said Owais Mohammed, Director Sales, MEA & India, Western Digital.
India’s data centre capacity is also expanding rapidly due to AI adoption, the rollout of 5G, and data localisation requirements. Industry projections suggest capacity could reach 9 gigawatts (GW) by 2032 and up to 14 GW by 2035.
The company said AI systems—used for training models, running chatbots, image generation, analytics, and more—produce massive volumes of data. This has created strong demand for storage solutions that are reliable, affordable, energy-efficient, and fast enough to support AI workloads.
WD is also working to make hard drives faster. According to the company, solid-state drives (SSDs) typically offer higher speeds but are significantly more expensive than hard disk drives (HDDs). To address this gap, WD has introduced new technologies that allow multiple parts of a hard drive to read and write data simultaneously. This innovation can double performance today and offers the potential for further improvements in the future. Another new design, expected around 2028, will further boost speed without reducing storage capacity. The aim is to narrow the performance gap between HDDs and SSDs while maintaining the cost advantage of HDD technology.
In addition, the company announced power-optimised drives designed for “cold” AI data—data that is not accessed frequently but still needs to be available quickly. These drives consume less electricity, helping data centres lower operating costs.
Beyond hardware advancements, WD plans to launch a new software platform with an open API in 2027. The platform is intended to help companies manage large-scale storage systems more efficiently and reduce the time required to deploy new technologies.