Hard Drives at the Heart of AI Innovation

By Futoshi Niizuma, Vice President for Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) Business, Seagate Technology

APAC is at the forefront of artificial intelligence (AI) innovation, with investments in AI and generative AI projected to reach US$110 billion by 2028. As the region solidifies its position  as a global AI hub, one major challenge emerges: managing the massive data growth fuelling this AI future.

In this AI-driven era, data is the business currency, and hard drives act as the vaults storing this valuable resource. The rise of generative AI (GenAI) has further accelerated data creation. Unlike traditional AI, GenAI is not merely a consumer of data, but also a powerful creator, generating everything from richer media to larger files –  leading to unprecedented exabyte growth.

Storage is the Key

This data explosion isn’t just a byproduct of AI; it’s a cycle where AI and data continually fuel each other’s growth. Storage is an integral part of AI workflows and the backbone of data preservation that AI relies on.

With multimodal large language models (LLMs) and vision models emerge, along with compliance and regional mandates, data is becoming richer and more complex. While clouds remain the epicentre of AI innovation, the edge and endpoint generate vast data volumes for workloads such as visual effects and scientific research. Local storage is essential for speed, privacy, and compliance. As AI continues to proliferate, storage will be required everywhere — in every environment, location, and use-case — to manage massive datasets and ensure trustworthy AI.

Take the healthcare sector, for example: AI-powered diagnostic tools rely on vast datasets for early disease detection and personalised treatment plans. These tools generate and process high-resolution medical images, patient records, genomic data and real-time monitoring data from wearable devices. Without scalable storage solutions, managing and preserving these critical datasets would be impossible, and potentially disrupting healthcare outcomes and stalling innovation.

Given the pivotal role storage — especially hard drives— play in AI innovation and unlocking value in untapped proprietary data, business leaders must prioritise a strategic storage approach within their AI plans.

The Critical Role of Hard Drives

As AI models proliferate, the primary focus has often been on finding the right data and ramping up computing power. However, as exabytes of data continue to accumulate, the challenge of effectively storing this vast amount of information becomes increasingly urgent. While AI workloads require a combination of memory and storage technologies, at scale, the backbone of AI is built on hard drives.

Hard drives are indispensable in AI storage clusters due to their scalability, cost-efficiency, and sustainability. Seagate’s analysis of IDC’s Cloud Infrastructure Index 2023 shows that hard drives store 90%[1] of exabytes in the world’s largest data centres. Furthermore, 90% of enterprise exabyte workloads include AI data retention, analytics, and backup – tasks that require high capacity, yet relatively moderate data processing time. These workloads are best suited for hard drives, thanks to the drives’ cost-per-terabyte advantage.

Recent advancements in hard drive areal density have significantly enhanced both AI performance and energy efficiency. They tripled storage capacity in the same footprint or deliver 2.6 times better power efficiency and 3.5 times[2] reduction in embodied carbon per terabyte. These innovations make hard drives essential and capital-efficient for delivering the AI exabytes to data centres handling diverse workloads across various industries.

Optimising AI Storage

Given the pivotal role storage—especially hard drives— play in AI innovation and unlocking value in untapped proprietary data, business leaders must prioritise a strategic storage approach within their AI plans. Feeding AI’s massive data appetite is only one part of the equation – businesses must also focus on maximising data efficiency and sustainability. To fully harness AI’s potential, businesses need to:

• Plan for Long-Term Data Growth: The rapid pace of AI adoption demands scalable storage solutions capable of managing exabytes of data effectively.
• Optimise Total Cost of Ownership: Leveraging hard drives for high-capacity tasks such as AI data retention and backup ensures both cost-efficiency and operational resilience.
• Align with Sustainability Goals: Investing in energy-efficient storage technologies supports responsible growth while meeting regional environmental targets.

The Future of AI Hinges on Storage

AI is revolutionising industries across APAC and delivering measurable economic value. Recent research suggests that Gen AI could contribute an additional US$4.5 trillion in economic value to the largest economies in APAC by 2038 — a clear sign that AI is here to stay.

At the heart of this transformation is storage. As AI drives innovation, data drives AI, and storage drives data. Advancing storage architecture will be critical in realising AI’s promise, empowering businesses to stay ahead in this transformative era.

[1] Seagate’s analysis of IDC’s Multi-Client Study, Cloud Infrastructure Index 2023: Compute and Storage Consumption by 100 Service Providers, November 2023.

[2] 10TB to 30TB capacity upgrade comparing Exos X10 to Exos Mozaic 3+ 30TB hard drive, max operating power and weight.