AI workloads pushed HDD revenue past $15B in the first half of 2026. Lab demos now show 8TB per disk, supporting the road to 100TB drives by 2030.
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The HDD industry is on pace for its highest revenue in over a decade. Total revenue in the first half of 2026 passed $15 billion, according to the August Digital Storage Technology Newsletter, setting up a run at $30 billion for the full year. That threshold has not been crossed since 2014.
The second quarter alone generated an estimated $8.5 billion in revenue, up 14.9% from the first quarter. Exabytes shipped rose 5.6% to 504.3 EB, with Seagate, Western Digital and Toshiba splitting the volume.
The revenue jump reflects a supply-demand imbalance tied to AI workloads. Data centers need the lowest cost per terabyte, and HDD still beats solid-state drives on that metric by a wide margin. The tight supply has let manufacturers push through higher prices and shift mix toward high-capacity drives, which carry better margins.
Engineers at the IEEE TMRC meeting in San Diego last week presented the latest areal density milestone: an 8 TB per disk lab demonstration using heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), up from 6.9 TB per disk in 2025. The paper, led by Steve Granz, showed the industry closing in on the density needed for 100 TB HDDs by 2030.
Both Seagate and Western Digital have publicly targeted 100 TB drives within four years. To hit that with 10 platters, the same count Seagate uses in its current 36 TB drive, the industry would need 10 TB per disk. Western Digital has talked about using 12 to 14 disks per drive.
Seagate tripled its head production facilities in Minneapolis in June. CEO Dave Mosley said on the company's earnings call that the expansion is not about shipping more units.
The product transitions Mosley described are a hidden cost of the capacity ramp. Each new density step requires more tool time and multiple passes, so factory expansion is needed just to keep throughput stable, not to grow unit volume.
Both Seagate and Western Digital have said they are prioritizing higher capacity per drive over unit growth. That strategy lifts revenue per drive and fits what data center buyers want.
The Digital Storage Technology Newsletter projected that full-year 2026 revenue could exceed $35 billion if the supply-demand imbalance holds. The TMRC demonstration of 8 TB per disk suggests the technology path to 100 TB drives is advancing faster than many in the industry expected.
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