Storage and Archival

Hard drives, flash, tape and glass · AI storage and the 2026 shortage · Flagship: Seagate HAMR

AI is draining the world's storage supply. Seagate's 44 TB HAMR drives are sold out through 2028, and a 30 TB enterprise SSD costs more than six times what it did a year ago. Memory fabs are coming to Idaho, New York and Indiana, but no flash fab operates in the US.

Capacity per device in 2026: hard drives up to 44 TB, high-capacity QLC SSDs at 122.88 TB with 245 TB due, LTO-10 tape at 40 TB and Microsoft Project Silica glass at 4.8 TB; exabytes shipped per quarter by Seagate and Western Digital; and the price of a 30 TB enterprise SSD rising from $3,460 to about $22,600 CAPACITY PER DEVICE, TB, 2026 0 100 200 300 QLC SSDSolidigm, Kioxia 123-246 Hard drive, HAMRSeagate Mozaic 4+ 44 LTO-10 tapeNative 40 Glass, Project SilicaResearch only 4.8 HARD DRIVE EXABYTES SHIPPED, JUNE 2026 QUARTER Western Digital231 EB Seagate218 EB PRICE OF A 30 TB ENTERPRISE SSD Q3 2025$3,460 August 2026$22,600
Largest HDD
44 TB
Largest SSD
245 TB
HDD, one quarter
449 EB
30 TB SSD price
6.5x in a year
Hub
Workloads

What it is

Where the World's Data Sits

Storage workloads keep data on hard drives, flash, tape and, experimentally, glass, from hot data read every second to archives touched once a decade.

  • Hard drives still hold most cloud data by volume; Seagate and Western Digital shipped 449 exabytes between them in the June 2026 quarter.
  • Flash: high-capacity QLC SSDs of 122 to 245 TB feed AI clusters, where data has to move fast.
  • Tape: LTO shipped 160 exabytes in 2025, and shipments rose 57% in Q1 2026 as AI archives grew.
  • Glass: Microsoft's Project Silica stores up to 4.8 TB per glass tablet for more than 10,000 years; research is complete but no product exists.

AI

AI Training Needs Fast Storage and Lots of It

  • Checkpoints: training runs save their full state regularly so a failed job can restart. On large clusters these saves hit storage all at once; see AI Training.
  • AI storage vendors: VAST Data raised $1 billion at a $30 billion valuation in March 2026, with a $1.17 billion CoreWeave deal.
  • Shortage: NAND prices rose 85% to 90% in Q1 2026 alone. A 30 TB enterprise SSD went from $3,460 in late 2025 to about $22,600 in August 2026. Hard drive output is allocated to customers through 2028.

Flagship

Seagate's HAMR Drives

  • Drives: Mozaic 4+ drives use heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), where a laser heats each spot on the disk as it writes, to reach 44 TB per drive. Seagate plans 50 TB and more.
  • Volume: 218 exabytes shipped in the June 2026 quarter, 195 of them to data centers, up 43%.
  • Sold out: nearline drive output is largely allocated through 2028, and customers are negotiating for 2029 and later.
  • Made in the US: Seagate builds recording heads at its wafer fab in Bloomington, Minnesota, and in Northern Ireland, with drive assembly in Asia.

Supply

Memory Comes Back to the US; Flash Does Not

  • Micron: its first Boise, Idaho fab is due to produce wafers in mid-2027, and vertical construction has started in Clay, New York. Both make DRAM and HBM, not flash.
  • SK hynix: broke ground on a $4 billion HBM packaging plant in West Lafayette, Indiana in August 2026, with production in 2029.
  • Flash: no NAND flash fab operates in the US; Micron makes its NAND in Singapore.
  • China: YMTC lifted its NAND share to about 13% in Q1 2026 and is doubling capacity in Wuhan; CXMT is expected to pass Micron in DRAM by the end of 2026, by SemiAnalysis' estimate.

Tiers

Storage Tiers

Storage and memory tiers
TierLeading productsCapacityVolumeWhere it is made
Hard drivesSeagate Mozaic 4+ HAMR; WD ePMR and UltraSMR40-44 TB449 EB a quarter, two makersHeads: Bloomington, MN and Northern Ireland; assembly in Asia
QLC SSDSolidigm D5-P5336; Kioxia LC9122.88-245.76 TBNAND market ~$46B a quarterKorea, Japan, China, Singapore
TapeLTO-1030-40 TB native160.3 EB in 2025Japan (Fujifilm, Sony)
GlassMicrosoft Project Silica2-4.8 TB per pieceResearch onlyn/a
DRAM and HBM (memory)Micron; SK hynixn/aShortage through 2026US: Micron Boise, ID from 2027; SK hynix, IN from 2029

Record

Dataset Record

Dataset
Storage capacity, shipments, prices and US manufacturing
Sources
Seagate and Western Digital earnings, Counterpoint, Solidigm, Kioxia, LTO Program, Microsoft Research (Nature, 2026), VAST Data, TrendForce, Micron, SK hynix, Blocks and Files
Last verified
October 2026