Breathing New Life Into Spinning Disks While Laying Future For Flash Storage

For all the talk about the growing strength of the flash storage market compared with the market for spinning disks, Western Digital makes a strong case for continued investment in hard drives, with a focus on large-capacity, slower enterprise-class drives where the company expects that a cost-per-terabyte of about one-tenth that of flash will keep those drives spinning into the far future.

Michael Cordano, WD’s president and chief operating officer, told CRN the San Jose, Calif.-based company’s investment in hard-drive technology, particularly a $300 million investment in developing the damascene recording head technology it says it needs for MAMR, or microwave-assisted magnetic recording, hard drives to move into the 80-TB and beyond range, is only part of where the company is investing.

Cordano discussed the company's investments and touched on the ongoing dispute between WD and rival Seagate over the future of the Toshiba flash storage business in which WD has been an active joint-venture partner for years.

Here's what Cordano had to say about the future of storage media and the future of Western Digital.