Seagate Research Shows Hard Disks Have Lower CO2 Emissions than SSDs

As ReportsGlobal carbon emissions increased from about 25 billion tonnes in 2001 to close to 38 billion tonnes in 2023 – 52% has increased since the century turn. This report states that the CO2 emission is not yet at its peak, which means that it is more to follow.

While only industrial level rules can be noted, Seagate has shared Important research It says that hard drives are better than SSD when it comes to carbon emissions in light of the increasing needs of the data center.

As the AI ​​ever seen at the prior viewed speed, the demand for data centers will increase by 165% by 2030, which will eventually lead to higher carbon emissions. However, using a hard drive instead of SSD can cause emission cuts. Research has been found here:

As figures suggest, SSD is a no-go to the environment, which emit the highest embodied carbon by-product, per TB, and COA/TB/year. On the other hand, hard drives are the most environmentally friendly.

The report also shares three strategic columns for a permanent future:

• The manufacture of HVAC systems and liquid/immersion cooling technologies such as energy-efficient technology can reduce CO2 emission and energy consumption.
• Reusing, recycling, and re-starting storage devices can increase your lifetime and help reduce e-waste.
• Cooperation in the entire price chain with shared responsibility between suppliers, vendors and service providers.

Real life problem

While it sounds very straight in theory, switching on a hard drive is more difficult than you think. For onset, HDD storage devices are slow as they use magnetic spinning discs to read and write data.

Whenever a data is requested, the disc needs to be spinned in the correct position to be able to reconstruct that data, which slows down the entire process. It is not ideal for AI tools and products, which rely on immediate data recover. In addition, with HDD, the data may be scattered over time, in addition to being more prone to physical wear and tears.

On the other hand, SSDs use flash memory of no moving parts, allowing immediate data recovery. They also use parallel reading and writing techniques, which means that the process is almost immediate.

At the end of the day, this is a simple question: Why would tech companies switch to a slow and old storage method? Is the fact that it leads to low CO2 emissions to make switch?

Well, it will not be a talented to guess that the answer is not a large fat. Openai, Microsoft, Google, or Deepsek will not wake up tomorrow, read the seagate report, and become environmentalists. A more practical solution is to enhance a better SSD prototype that emit low CO2 without compromising its benefits.

Segate is already working on bringing NVME technology on a hard drive, which uses PCIE interface for rapid data transfer. It also allows the direct and quick data access required for Tech-Havi AI industries. NVME also enables direct data access from storage to GPU, without any participation of CPU, which leads to better delay.

However, an immediate solution, unfortunately, is not in sight yet, and we can still be 2-3 years away from a great success.