Toshiba identifies key HDD market trends in 2025

The balance between capacity and cost, SRM technology and recycling, along with the rise of AI, video surveillance and enterprise HDDs in the AV environment are some of the trends that Toshiba Electronics Europe GmbH planned for next year.

The trends of hard disk market or HDD for 2025 have been analyzed by Toshiba Electronics Europe, that identifies a long history of this technology due to its ability to store large amounts of data economically, making them a good option in many areas, from data centers and cloud computing, until video surveillance, audiovisual y gaming.

Under this principle, Toshiba confirms that the strategic focus on seeking the balance between capacity and cost will continue to mark the evolution of the HDD market in 2025. Despite the temporary respite that the increase in SSD prices in 2024, due to demand for AI-enabled infrastructure, This company foresees that the long-term competitiveness of hard drives will depend on them offering increasingly greater capacity at a constant cost.

Another trend for 2025 is the Adoption of stepped magnetic recording technology (SMR), technique for writing data whereby data tracks are partially overlapped to increase overall storage density and capacity per platter.

Toshiba believes that SMR technology is now ready for greater market acceptance, what will allow store more data in the same physical space, and estimates that the industry uses it to more homogeneous workloads, with a buffer Optimized cache that absorbs short bursts of random writes; while CMR will be a specialized option for enterprise servers with different types of workloads.

As pointed out Rainer W. Why?, senior director of HDD business development at Toshiba Electronics Europe, “if CMR technology is like a V8 engine 4 liters with 300 horses and able to drive everywhere, SMR is more like a turbocharged engine. 4 cylinders and 2,5 liters; It is more compact and economical, but it may have certain limitations in certain driving scenarios”.

Rise of AI and video surveillance

Another trend that will impact storage for 2025 It's the rise of AI, given the need to have extensive data sets for analysis. From autonomous driving and smart factories to smart cities and other IoT enabled industries, The advancement of this technology has caused an increase in the HDD demand at the enterprise level and it will continue to be that way.

The expansion of video surveillance has also been driving the HDD market for years and will continue to do so in 2025. The sequential nature of security video data and their overwriting at some point makes HDDs the optimal option.

Besides, los Video surveillance systems use some type of AI-enabled analysis, which means you need to have more data and a reliable storage system for longer periods of time.

Environmental responsibility and recycling

Another trend for 2025 identified by Toshiba is awareness about hard drive recycling, particularly as large-scale decommissioning of first infrastructure deployment begins cloud. In view of what was installed in the second half of the last decade, a large wave of HDD material will have to be recycled.

In this sense, and given the importance of working with appropriate recycling organizations or value chains, Toshiba notes that service providers cloud are preparing for a significant influx of HDD materials that need to be recycled and anticipate that, in the coming years, hard drive suppliers are consolidated as an integral part of the process.

As Kaese states, “the physical weight of the cloud is tons of electronic products, of which more than half come from hard drives. However, HDDs are noticeably easier to recycle than other devices electronics because they only contain two or three different metals and, besides, compared to other products such as batteries, “There is no need to deal with toxic waste and complex compounds.”.

HDD empresariales en AV

Another trend that emerged years ago and that will gain weight in 2025 is the awareness regarding backup. In this regard, Toshiba reminds that it is not advisable to rely on the cloud as the only backup solution; the most prudent thing is to make backup copies using different methods and preserve, at least, and duplicate own data through alternative technology.

On the other hand, and while wireless connectivity to an external HDD has generated some attention, according to Toshiba it will not be a trend in 2025, mainly due to cost factors. However, los portable hard drives with USB type C connector will become an expected standard.

Finally, Toshiba sees as an unexpected trend in 2025 the popularization of High Capacity Enterprise HDDs (16TB, 18TB is 20TB) between users requiring substantial local storage. This trend is shared by professionals who work in the sector audiovisual fans of gaming, who prefer to store their data locally, since transferring them to and from the cloud would take too much time.