C2Q 2025 HDD Industry Growth Projected For 2025

Computer Hard disk drives HDD

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This data is in for the second calendar quarter 2025 HDD industry from the August 2025 Digital Storage Technology Newsletter.

Total HDD shipments in C2Q 2025 were up about 6.0% compared with C1Q 2025. Total exabytes shipped in C1Q 2025 were up about 12.6% from C1Q 2025. HDD revenues (estimated at $6.2B) were up about 17.4% from the prior quarter. Nearline HDD shipments were up 13% from the prior quarter.

Western Digital shipped 12.9 million units and an estimated 190 Exabytes of storage capacity. Seagate shipped 12.5 million units and 162.5 Exabytes of storage. Toshiba shipped 5.0 million units and about 42.3 Exabytes of storage. Total estimated exabytes shipped were 394.8 Exabytes.

Both Seagate and Western Digital reported some potential impact on the June quarter from the trade war in their quarterly reports, but generally felt that nearline storage demand supported near term growth in storage and revenue. Note that all HDDs and most components are manufactured outside of the USA.

Seagate said their HDD revenue was $2,281B in the quarter with Mass Capacity HDDs accounting for 88% of this revenue (up 1% from the prior two quarters). Total storage capacity shipped was 162.5EB with 150.9TB for all Mass Capacity and 136.6TB for Nearline HDDs, the balance of 11.5TB was shipped for legacy applications. The average HDD capacity was 13.0TB with Mass Capacity average capacity at 16.5TB and legacy average capacity at 3.4TB. The company shipped about 12.5M units in the quarter with an ASP of $180.5.

Western Digital started reporting on the HDD EB shipments again rather than the % change from the prior quarter. We have also adjusted out C1 2025 numbers to reflect this change. Total storage capacity shipped in the quarter was 190EB with 170EB shipped for Nearline Applications and 20EB shipped for legacy applications.

WDC also said that they shipped 2.1M client compute units, consumer shipped units were 1.5M and data center (cloud HDD unit shipments) were 8.3M, for a total of 12.9M units shipped. That means the average capacity of their nearline HDDs was about 20.5TB. The company’s ASP was $202 (up 12.8% from the prior quarter at $179) and higher than Seagate. Total HDD revenue was $2.605B. Cloud storage was about 89% of the company’s revenue in this quarter (compared to 87% in the prior quarter).

We saw a 8.4% average sales price (ASP) increase for HDDs from C1Q 2025 to C2Q 2025. HDD ASPs are now at levels about 17% higher than seen at the end of 1998 due to the increased demand for high capacity, high ASP, HDDs and the increase in the percentage of these drives shipped as shown below.

The figure below shows calendar 2025 HDD market share (by total units). Toshiba total 2024 market share was about 17% (down 1% from C1 2025) with Seagate at 41% (up 1% from the prior quarter) and Western Digital at 42%.

We note that the growth of capacity-oriented nearline drives for enterprise and hyperscale applications will result in more components per drive and thus higher head and media demand than in the past by 2028 and with high disk and head counts per drive, provides the biggest driver for heads and media. This could result in additional capital spending to support component growth by 2027.

HDD unit shipments, exabyte shipments and revenue were up signicantly in C1Q 2025 versus C1Q 2025 with 17% higher revenues. HDD ASPs were the highest they have been since the late 1990’s. HDD companies projected October financials will show quarterly and YoY growth.