In an interview with TimesTech, Owais Mohammed, Sales Director – India, Middle East, and Africa, Western Digital, shared how the company’s renewed focus on HDD innovation is fueling next-gen data infrastructure. From scalable AI-ready storage to breakthroughs like HAMR and UltraSMR, he elaborated on the roadmap shaping India’s digital future—anchored in engineering excellence, sustainability, and the drive to deliver smarter, high-capacity solutions.
Read the full interview here:
TimesTech: With Western Digital having recently completed its separation, how is the renewed strategic focus on HDDs influencing the company’s long-term growth roadmap, particularly in emerging markets like India?
Owais: We are excited about the growing opportunities in India and around the world. As companies generate and store more data than ever – driven by digital transformation initiatives, growing GenAI use cases like text-to-image and text-to-video applications and continued cloud expansion – we’re seeing accelerated demand for scalable, high-capacity infrastructure to support business growth and fuel AI workloads. Afterall, AI is only as powerful as the data behind it and the majority of that data is stored on HDDs. This growth is expected to increase HDD exabyte shipments at a 23% CAGR from 2024 to 2028. With its rich history of delivering HDD innovations, Western Digital continues to pioneer reliable, high-capacity storage solutions to address the ever-growing data demands of the cloud and enterprise markets and deliver the scalability, TCO and sustainability needed to store the world’s data.
We have entered a pivotal new phase—one where our sharpened focus on HDD technologies empowers us to fully commit to the innovation and scale demanded by today’s data-first world. We believe that the future holds tremendous opportunity for us, and we are well-positioned to be the leader in data storage as we meet our customers’ storage needs today and into the future across markets – both developed as well as emerging.
TimesTech: AI applications are generating unprecedented volumes of data. How is Western Digital aligning its HDD roadmap—including planned launches like the 36TB to 100TB drives—to meet this exponential surge in demand?
Owais: With cloud growth and AI accelerating across every sector, from generative models to autonomous systems, the need for high-capacity, scalable, yet power-efficient storage has never been greater. At Western Digital, our HDD roadmap is specifically designed to deliver value today and in the future by relentlessly focusing on delivering the highest capacity point with best TCO in a predictable and scalable way.
We’re developing a number of significant technologies and innovations to handle the increasing needs of AI workloads. Our leading UltraSMR, ePMR and OptiNAND™ technologies are enabling drives up to 32TB today, with 36TB to 44TB by 2026——ideal for storing enormous training datasets, synthetic data, and inference results. Looking ahead, our HAMR roadmap is expected to deliver even more capacity, reaching 100TB by 2030. These technologies are being developed simultaneously, allowing our customers to make the transition to HAMR when most economically appropriate.
For us, it’s about more than just capacity—it’s about adding customer value and unlocking scalability, reliability, and sustainable economics in a world where data is doubling every two years. As India and other emerging markets build out their AI infrastructure, Western Digital is proud to provide the backbone for tomorrow’s breakthroughs—one terabyte at a time.
TimesTech: Can you explain how technologies like energy-assisted perpendicular magnetic recording (ePMR) and UltraSMR are helping customers manage high-density storage more efficiently and cost-effectively?
Owais: Western Digital’s history of continuously delivering HDD innovation have deepened this commitment to deliver the best storage capabilities to our customers today and going forward.
Years of innovation led to the introduction of energy-assisted perpendicular magnetic recording (ePMR). Western Digital engineers developed ePMR along with OptiNAND, to create higher areal density by applying energy to write bits of data closer together while reducing jitter. The technology was a promising answer to the challenge of packing more data onto an HDD platter without sacrificing performance or reliability. OptiNAND technology integrates an embedded flash chip with traditional HDD architecture to enhance capacity, performance, and reliability. It enables faster write speeds, improved metadata management, and greater areal density—delivering higher efficiency for data-intensive workloads.
On top of that, the introduction of UltraSMR took the company’s leadership in SMR to the next level by innovating across data formats and architectures. UltraSMR is a next-generation hard drive technology designed to significantly boost storage capacity—offering up to 20% more than conventional CMR HDDs. By optimizing the way data is written, it enables faster scalability and lowers the cost per terabyte. Ideal for cloud providers and data centers handling large-scale workloads such as AI training, backups, and video archives, UltraSMR maximizes storage within the same physical footprint, enhancing both operational efficiency and total cost of ownership.
Thus, Western Digital’s latest generation of industry leading HDDs help cloud providers, data center customers and businesses scale to unprecedented heights. This unique combination of field-proven designs with the latest innovative technologies provides increased storage capacity without increasing the storage infrastructure, or physical footprint. The benefit of greater storage density within the same footprint is that data center operators can increase their overall capacity without adding new storage infrastructure, which would increase their CapEx spend. In addition, maintaining the existing footprint holds power requirements and cooling needs within current operating ranges, making the most of OpEx spend.
TimesTech: HAMR is a major breakthrough in HDD innovation. What role will this technology play in enabling customers to scale their AI and data-centric workloads in the near and long term?
Owais: We’re entering a new era where AI and data-driven technologies are pushing the limits of existing storage capabilities. At Western Digital, we are innovating with intent, recognizing that this pivotal moment demands forward-thinking solutions. We see HAMR—Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording—as an important technology that will empower our customers to scale even further, truly innovating at the right time to meet tomorrow’s demands.
Our HAMR development strategy is grounded in our proven track record of leading major technology transitions, such as the introduction of helium-filled drives. By simultaneously advancing ePMR, UltraSMR, and HAMR technologies, we are providing customers with the flexibility to adopt HAMR when it becomes the most cost-effective option. Customers are primarily focused on achieving the highest capacity with the best total cost of ownership (TCO) in a scalable and predictable manner, regardless of whether that solution is based on ePMR or HAMR. We anticipate that the economic benefits of transitioning to HAMR will become compelling at the 40TB+ capacity level, particularly at scale.
TimesTech: Innovation seems to be a cornerstone of Western Digital’s strategy. How does the company cultivate a culture of engineering excellence across its global teams to stay ahead in the storage industry?
Owais: At Western Digital, innovation is more than a value—it’s our core strength. We’ve built a culture of engineering excellence by equipping global teams with cutting-edge tools, continuous learning, and the freedom to explore bold ideas. Our collaborative R&D ecosystem spans seven global centers, powered by 275+ PhDs and over 4,500 patents—including 36 innovation entries from our India facility.
Innovation here is fueled by shared ideas and bold challenges, nurtured through initiatives like She Invents, which mentors women in tech to refine and patent their ideas.
Our world-class operational capabilities—from vertical integration to disciplined capacity management—ensure we deliver with quality and scale. Underpinning it all is our unwavering focus on ethics, sustainability, and governance.
TimesTech: What key storage trends and emerging technologies is Western Digital monitoring that could significantly shape the future of data infrastructure, especially in fast-growing markets like India?
Owais: Western Digital is closely monitoring numerous storage trends and emerging technologies which are expected to shape the future of data infrastructure, particularly in fast-growing digital economies like India. Here are a couple:
- AI-Driven Storage Optimization: With the rapid adoption of AI and machine learning, storage systems are evolving to manage massive datasets with high velocity and complexity. This trend would require development of flexible storage solutions that optimize storage, access, and analytics for AI workloads.
- Sustainability & Energy Efficiency: With ESG imperatives becoming central, Western Digital is investing in developing storage technologies that reduce power consumption and carbon footprint—especially important for markets like India, where energy efficiency is a growing priority in data center planning.
- Disaggregated Storage Architectures: To improve resource utilization and future-proof infrastructure, organizations are increasingly shifting toward disaggregated storage. Western Digital is advancing open, scalable architectures that decouple compute from storage—offering better performance, agility, and total cost of ownership, especially as data continues to grow exponentially.
Regardless of the trend, Western Digital remains committed to delivering the innovation, efficiency, and flexibility required to power the next generation of digital infrastructure across India and beyond.
