At their recent Storage Field Day presentation, Western Digital led with a startling estimate. They project that by 2023, 103 zetabytes worth of IoT data will be produced. This is to say nothing of the ever increasing video and other data constantly being generated. Much of their presentation was how Western Digital was working to provide ever increasing storage densities across all mediums. It was not lost on Joey D’Antoni during the event that a lot of this work seemed to be driven by demand from hyperscalers, who will increasingly carry the growth of stored data. Developments with multi-actuator drives and zoned storage were shown to be key in how Western Digital will provide for the industries storage needs in the future.

Joey D’Antoni has attended his second Storage Field Day event, and combined with his extensive experience in IT, it gave him a chance to take stock of the current state of the storage industry. He sees the industry separating among those who need or create ultra fast storage like NVMe, and those that cater to higher density storage required by hyperscalers. What he heard from companies like Western Digital at Storage Field Day was that far from being an endangered species, the spinning hard drive is here to stay, with disk manufacturers working to provide ever increasing density and reliability. This is being done with innovative new writing technologies on disk, and by adding multiple actuators on a drive. Doing this provides the advances in density needed to continue to make spinning disks relevant across the industry.