- Western Digital Targeted 40 TB HDDs at the end of 2026 using Hamr Tech
- Optinand and Ultrasmr will increase the capacity until Hamr -Record begins to drive growth
- Storage demand from AI Boom is expected to arrive at the end of 2026
Western Digital recently had an investor day with a primary focus on how it intends to supercharge hard disk capacity within a decade.
WDS Detailed Roadmap showed clear technological development from energy -assisted perpendicular magnetic uptake (EPMR) to heat -assisted magnetic recording (Hamr) and ultimately to warm Dot Magnetic Recording (HDMR), at which time it will target capacity over 100 TB.
By 2026, WD said its HDD capacity will reach 36TB-44TB thanks to Hamr technology using laser heating to temporarily lower the magnetic resistance (coercion) on the disk, allowing for significantly denser datacry.
Waiting for demand
In a recent conversation with PC WatchKimihiko Nishio, sales manager for Western Digital Japan, went closer to the company’s plans.
“Other companies have begun to adopt Hamr with 30 TB HDDs, but we believe Hamr’s true potential begins at 40 TB,” Nishio said.
“Until then, we continue to use technologies such as Optinand and Ultrasmr to increase the capacity of existing HDDs up to 40 TB.” Optinand, integrates flash memory with HDDs to increase capacity, performance and reliability, while Ultrasmr uses advanced error correction to pack data tracks more dense than traditional SMR.
“We are targeting the latter half of 2026 to release 40 TB drives,” Nishio said, adding that WD “is currently developing Hamr with that goal in mind.” He explained that while data rating is blooming, especially due to AI progress, the storage demand still collects.
“Right now there is a huge increase in demand for generative AI, but storage has not really benefited from it yet. Currently, the largest recipients are GPU servers. First, data is generated in large quantities and then it needs to be stored. This is where we expect storage demand is to increase.”
Western Digital is the timing of its production plans to coincide with this predicted demand. “We expect Spike to happen in the second half of 2026, which is why we adapt our Hamr-based HDD development with high capacity to that time frame,” Nishio said.
“Since Hamr production requires a complete revision of materials, starting production now, while demand is still low (eg for 40 TB drives), result in high costs. But we expect demand for 2-3 years the demand will increase, which allows us to offer them at reasonable prices.”
Nishio also shared Western Digital’s even more ambitious long -term vision. “As we look further ahead, we plan to release 100 TB drives in 2030, after which we will pursue even greater capabilities using new technologies,” he said.
