10 storage technologies that want to replace hard drives

10 storage technologies that want to replace hard drives Features Wayne Williams published From enterprise storage to cold archives, these ideas rethink how data is stored Hard disk drives are still integral to data storage, but despite getting ever larger and faster , their role has narrowed over the years. Once the default choice for almost every workload, HDDs are now increasingly confined to areas where capacity and cost per TB matter more than speed, latency, and energy use. The move hasn’t happened overnight of course. Flash storage has become cheaper, denser, and more reliable, and data centers are under pressure to cut power consumption, cooling demands, and even physical footprint. At the same time, the volume of data being generated keeps growing, forcing operators to rethink how and where information is stored. As a result, a wide range of technologies are being explored as alternatives to hard drives and we’ve covered a lot of these here at TechRadar Pro . Some technologies are already appearing in production environments, while others remain firmly... experimental, shall we say. These are the the technologies I think you’ll be hearing more about in the coming years. 1. High-capacity enterprise SSDs SSDs are, of course, the most obvious candidates to replace hard drives, particularly in modern data centers. Vendors are now pushing flash well beyond the 100TB mark, directly targeting workloads that once relied on large HDD arrays. Micron’s 6600 ION is available in a 122TB PCIe Gen5 configuration and could well scale to 245TB. At those capacities, Micron claims a single rack will be able to reach up to 88PB of storage, while a 2U server populated with 36 E3.S SSDs can hold as much as 4.42PB. Built on Micron’s G9 NAND, the drive is all about density, power efficiency, and space savings, with the aim to allow hyperscale and enterprise operators to consolidate storage while lowering energy use and cooling requirements. Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed! 2. E2 SSD form factor The E2 SSD form factor targets a different slice of the market, focusing on warm data that sits between hot and cold storage tiers. It's designed to replace large HDD arrays where capacity and cost matter more than peak performance. Developed through collaboration between SNIA and the Open Compute Project, E2 targets petabyte-scale flash density in standard 2U servers. In its most ambitious form, a single E2 drive could hold up to 1PB of QLC flash. The design follows the EDSFF Ruler standard and uses NVMe over PCIe 6.0. Power draw and heat output remain major challenges, but supporters see E2 as a practical flash-based middle ground between expensive high-performance SSDs and space-hungry HDD storage. 3. 5D memory crystal storage 5D memory crystal storage targets a very different role to hard drives, focusing on long-term archival durability rather than speed. The technology uses fused silica glass etched with femtosecond lasers to encode data in...

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