Seagate Technology’s headquarters in Scotts Valley, California.

Tony Avelar | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Data storage firm Seagate is working to develop a 100-terabyte hard drive by 2030, citing strong demand from data centers amid the artificial intelligence boom. BS Teh, Seagate’s chief commercial officer, expressed the company’s goal to launch such a drive — which would have about three times the capacity of its top-of-the-line hard drives — by that year. The largest hard disk drive Seagate currently produces is the 36-terabyte Exos M model, launched in January.

“You may be thinking, ‘Who would need it?'” Teh said, referring to the idea of a 100-terabyte hard drive. “Well, plenty.” He added, “I think there’s definitely strong demand. This is a key enabler for the industry to deliver the storage capacity required, as no other technology can produce this level of storage to meet market growth.”

Seagate has been positioning itself as a key player in the AI landscape in recent years, especially amid the emergence of foundational models being developed by major tech companies. While the AI boom has primarily benefited hardware firms producing graphics processing units, Seagate aims to carve out its niche in data storage.

Climate Concerns

However, the rise in data centers also raises environmental considerations. Significant amounts of power are required to operate these facilities. According to the International Energy Agency, a single ChatGPT query consumes an average of 2.9 watt-hours per request—nearly 10 times more than a typical Google search. If ChatGPT were used in the 9 billion internet searches conducted daily, this could lead to an additional demand of nearly 10 terawatt-hours of electricity each year.

Teh emphasized that Seagate is committed to addressing climate issues associated with AI’s energy use by increasing storage density in its hard drives and ensuring that its manufacturing processes are powered by renewable energy. “We focus on what we can influence, which is developing a sustainable way to manufacture our products,” Teh stated. “We target to ensure that all our factories utilize renewable energy during production.”

“With the product itself, we design it to have lower power per terabyte or to possess a higher density, so that when integrated into data centers, it requires less space and power, minimizing the number of drives needed to meet capacity,” he further explained.

It’s important to note that Seagate faces competition from other technologies, particularly solid-state drives, which rely on flash memory chips instead of magnetic platters for data storage. Nevertheless, Teh maintains that hard disk drives are “a much more sustainable device technology” in terms of embodied carbon compared to solid-state drives.