Seagate ships 30TB drives to meet global surge in data center AI storage demand
'Today, approximately 90% of the world's data is stored in just 10 countries. However, data gravity is increasingly pulling networks to the edge as nearly 150 countries adopt data sovereignty requirements, and AI workloads continue to expand. Datacenters—on-prem, private, and sovereign—are leveraging AI to unlock the value of their proprietary data,' said Melyssa Banda, SVP of Edge Storage and Services, Seagate. 'Our 30TB drives are designed to support these rapidly growing trends, delivering the capacity, efficiency, and resilience needed to power the AI workloads.'
Industry leaders are aligning around the fundamental data management and infrastructure shifts:
"Hyperscalers and enterprise data centers are in the early stages of an all-out arms race to develop AI infrastructure resulting in rapidly increasing capex spending on performance-oriented hardware," said Ed Burns, Research Director, Hard Disk Drive and Storage Technologies at IDC. "While not often associated with performance such as low latency, the highest capacity HDDs are a critical strategic asset in the AI development process, filling the need for mass capacity storage of the foundational data essential to building and improving the highest quality AI models in the market today and into the future. Enterprise customers are seeking ways to improve the density of their data centers, lowering power consumption and square footage requirements while ensuring storage continues to meet strategic requirements, and Seagate's new 30TB Exos product is the highest density hard drive offered in the industry today. Hyperscale and enterprise data center customers looking for optimal performance and cost tradeoffs for mass-capacity storage will benefit from Seagate's HAMR product roadmap, which is poised to accelerate areal density growth rates for HDDs in the years to come."
HPE forecasts the on-prem AI market will grow at a 90% CAGR, reaching $42 billion within three years. [1]
NVIDIA describes AI factories as 'data centers reimagined to manufacture intelligence at scale,' essential for transforming data into real-time insights across the AI lifecycle. [2]
As AI becomes central to business strategy, modernizing storage is not optional—it's foundational.
30TB Hyperscale-Grade Exos & NAS-Optimized IronWolf Pro Arrive Just in Time for On-Prem AI
Edge AI is no longer a future concept—it's happening now. According to IDC, industries such as retail, manufacturing, and financial services are actively deploying AI at the edge for video analytics, predictive maintenance, and fraud detection. This shift is accelerating the adoption of disaggregated storage architectures, which decouple compute from storage to enable more flexible, scalable infrastructure.
The Seagate Exos M 30TB drive is built to meet increased demand for high-capacity, energy-efficient storage—empowering organizations to scale storage, optimize data placement, and support real-time edge analytics without compromising performance or sustainability.
As AI-powered applications proliferate, on-premise NAS systems are evolving into intelligent data hubs—supporting advanced workloads such as video analytics, image recognition, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and inferencing at the edge. The convergence of AI, IoT, and hybrid cloud is fueling demand for high-capacity, high-integrity NAS solutions that can manage large, unstructured datasets with low latency and high throughput.
Recent market analysis projects the global NAS market to grow at a CAGR of over 17% through 2034, driven by digital transformation and the rise of AI and big data analytics. [3]
'QNAP NAS systems are increasingly used for on-premise AI workloads—enabling enterprises to run local AI models and leverage RAG and LLM technologies to process and analyze local datasets,' said Dhaval Panara, Product Manager, QNAP. 'By integrating Seagate's IronWolf Pro 30TB drives, we deliver petabyte-scale, high-integrity storage that ensures fast access, reliable performance, and scalable infrastructure at the edge.
'With AI workloads increasingly moving to edge environments, reliable high-capacity storage becomes critical for local data processing. Seagate's IronWolf Pro 30TB drives provide the robust foundation UGREEN NAS systems require—delivering massive scalability and the operational stability needed for local AI applications,' said Evan Li, Head of International Business, UGREEN.
Availability:
The Exos M 30TB & 28TB and IronWolf Pro 30TB & 28TB drives are available now through Seagate's online store as well as Seagate's authorized resellers and channel partners worldwide.
Pricing: $599.99 - Exos M & IronWolf Pro 30TB; $569.99 - Exos M & IronWolf Pro 28TB
For more information, please visit Seagate online store:
IronWolf Pro: https://www.seagate.com/products/nas-drives/ironwolf-pro-hard-drive/?sku=ST30000NT011&store=1
Exos M: https://www.seagate.com/products/enterprise-drives/exos/exos-m/?sku=ST30000NM004K&store=1
About Seagate Technology:
Seagate is a global leader in mass-capacity data storage, having delivered over 4.5 billion terabytes of capacity over four decades. From edge to core to cloud, Seagate builds trust in data by delivering scalable, sustainable, and secure storage solutions. Learn more at www.seagate.com.
[1] HPE and NVIDIA: A partnership driving the next generation of AI innovation | HPE
[2] Data Center Solutions: AI Factories | NVIDIA
[3] https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/network-attached-storage-nas-market
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