As data centre capacity has attracted nearly $70 billion in investments this year alone, demand for high-capacity hard disk drives (HDDs) is on an uptick, with the technology continuing to store nearly 80% of data in large-scale facilities despite the growing adoption of flash storage, a senior executive at data storage firm, Western Digital said.
“About 80% of data stored in data centres today is still on HDDs,” Owais Mohammed, Sales Director India, Middle East, and Africa, Western Digital, said in an interaction with Fe, highlighting the technology’s continued relevance as Indian organisations expand cloud and AI workloads. The company declined to provide a geographic revenue split but described India as a key strategic market.
Hyperscale data centres
In hyperscale data centres, performance-sensitive or frequently accessed data is typically stored on enterprise-grade Solid-State Drives (SSDs) to enable faster access, while less frequently used data is housed on more cost-efficient enterprise HDDs. This tiered storage model is designed for operators to balance performance and costs. This could be custom specific as per capacity, availability, resilience and recovery requirements of specific applications and workloads.
Nearly a year after completing its separation from SanDisk, the company said the split has allowed it to make more targeted investments in the HDD business, re-engage partners and sharpen focus on enterprise and surveillance storage.
Strength of continuity
The company said that the strength of this continuity is reflected in the performance immediately after the split, with 27%year-over-year revenue growth and close to $599 million in free cash flow. The executive added that the move has worked well for both the flash and hard-drive businesses.
Western Digital said surveillance storage, sold under its Purple and Purple Pro HDD brands has emerged as its largest revenue contributor, driven by smart city projects, public infrastructure and enterprise security deployments. For hyperscale and enterprise customers, the company supplies its UltraStar HDD lineup along with JBOD and JBOF storage systems designed for data centre environments.
However, India remains heavily dependent on imports for external storage hardware, including HDDs, SSDs, portable drives and memory products. While local brands such as EVM and Zebronics are starting to address this gap by designing products suited to Indian conditions, they continue to rely on global supply chains for critical components like NAND flash, DRAM and storage controllers.
Western Digital described India as a key market, with engineering, customer support and sales teams based in Bengaluru, distribution operations managed from Mumbai, and field teams spread across regions.
Mohammed said the company works with global hyperscalers through corporate engagements and is increasing interactions with India-based cloud and data centre operators.
The company expects FY26 to be a strong year for enterprise storage, given the data centre investments, rising data generation and increased surveillance spending across India.
