WD unveils roadmap for 100TB+ hard drives as AI data boom explodes

The AI revolution is creating an insatiable demand for data storage, and WD (formerly Western Digital) has just revealed how they plan to keep up.

At Innovation Day 2026, the storage giant showcased a massive roadmap that includes a clear path to 100TB hard drives by 2029.

With 40TB drives already heading to customers for testing, the company is using a dual-track technology approach to scale capacity while introducing "High Bandwidth Drive" technology to narrow the performance gap with SSDs.

As data centers evolve to handle massive AI workloads, traditional spinning disks are getting a high-tech overhaul to ensure capacity never becomes a bottleneck.

TLDR

Western Digital (WD) is rebranding and unveiling a roadmap for 100TB+ hard drives to meet the growing data demands of AI. WD showcased new technologies, including High Bandwidth Drive and Dual Pivot, to enhance performance and power efficiency. The company aims to maintain IO-per-TB performance as drive sizes increase, targeting 60TB on ePMR and 100TB on HAMR by 2029. WD also plans to launch an intelligent software layer in 2027 to help mid-scale companies manage petabyte-scale data, making AI infrastructure more accessible.