HDDs: Hidden backbone of flash storage success, says industry expert Azzi

An industry expert, Ghassan Azzi, Sales Director for Africa at Western Digital, has said that hard disk drives (HDDs) remain the vast foundation of the storage world. In a thought leadership piece, he provided an analogy for understanding the role of storage technologies in a data-driven world. He compared the vast landscape of data storage […]

An industry expert, Ghassan Azzi, Sales Director for Africa at Western Digital, has said that hard disk drives (HDDs) remain the vast foundation of the storage world.

In a thought leadership piece, he provided an analogy for understanding the role of storage technologies in a data-driven world.

He compared the vast landscape of data storage to an iceberg. “Flash storage is everywhere you look above the iceberg’s surface, from our phones to our kitchen gadgets. It powers autonomous vehicles, undersea drones, remote surgery, and other incredible use cases. But flash storage doesn’t always stand alone. It has an important partner: hard disk drives (HDDs) that lurk massively beneath the surface.”

Azzi highlighted that while flash storage often grabs the headlines, HDDs are the unsung heroes of the industry, storing vast quantities of data in the cloud. This data is generated by new and existing endpoints from industries, connected devices, digital platforms, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and large language model (LLM) innovations, as well as autonomous machines.

“This relentless creation of data ultimately finds its way to the cloud, which is underpinned by continued advancements in HDDs,” Azzi explains.

Azzi noted that it was easy to see why flash storage gets all the attention. “Flash is fast, small, tough, and can go just about anywhere our imagination takes us — whether it’s in outer space or deep underwater,” he said.

Advancements in NAND flash storage are pushing capacity to incredible ranges, making personal devices, IoT devices, drones, and robots more powerful than ever while keeping form factors manageable. An incredible amount of data can now be processed on the edge of the network, speeding autonomous decision-making and other automated processes out in the field.

“High-performance transports such as NVMe, NVMe-oF, and UFS are making it easier to speed up the transfer of data between devices or between a device and the cloud. This high-speed connectivity allows devices to talk to each other more fluently, share critical information, and perform carefully orchestrated operations much more efficiently and effectively.”

According to Azzi, HDDs power almost 80 percent of the cloud, citing an IDC report (Global StorageSphere Forecast, 2023–2027). “HDDs are the silent workhorses of today’s storage environments. They’re optimized for mass storage and give hyperscalers, cloud service providers (CSPs), and enterprises a scalable, efficient, and cost-effective option in the data center to store vast amounts of data.”

New innovations in HDD technology continue to drive higher capacity, low power, and performance. “Conventional magnetic recording (CMR) HDDs, for example, are pushing capacity up to 24 terabytes (TB) while shingled magnetic recording (SMR) HDDs are resulting in even greater densities up to 28TB,” Azzi said.

“Utilizing greater storage density results in reduced power, cooling, and real estate in the data center, helping organizations lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and meet sustainability and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) initiatives.”

Azzi emphasized that higher capacity HDDs let businesses store the same amount of data in less space while consuming less power. “Even an extra 15 percent or 20 percent of capacity in a drive is valuable and helps cloud providers meet the insatiable demand for storage.”