Market Report
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Data storage technology transitions and the impact on ruthenium
No. 20 | 08th June 2026
Hard-disk drive (HDD) demand has been strong amid data centre buildouts. The rapid growth in cloud computing and AI has fuelled strong demand for HDDs which remain the lowest-cost option for large-scale data storage. At roughly $25 million per exabyte (EB), HDDs remain around 20 times cheaper than solid-state drive (SSD) storage which has costs running at around $500 million per EB. Intense demand from data centre buildout has exacerbated recent metal price rallies and seen ruthenium, a key component of most modern HDDs, rise to $1,895/oz earlier this year. The price has since pulled back to $1,520/oz, while demand from data centre expansion looks set to stay strong.
The push for greater information density created demand for ruthenium. Prior to 2005, HDDs stored data bits longitudinally. This technology used a single magnetic surface for data storage. Starting with Toshiba in 2005,perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) split the recording medium, an alloy of cobalt, chromium and platinum (CoCrPt), into two layers, separated with a ruthenium spacer. This improved the thermal stability, allowing smaller bit sizes. PMR facilitated great improvements in HDD storage capacity and became a large segment of ruthenium demand, driving a significant rally in the price.
The transition to heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) reduces the need for ruthenium. HAMR is the latest development to shrink the bit size and increase HDD storage capacity. HAMR uses an iron-platinum alloy and no longer requires a ruthenium spacer. HAMR uses more platinum than PMR and little to no ruthenium. While PMR HDDs make up most of the devices being sold today, HAMR enables the largest data storage capacity available in HDDs and is being rolled out by Seagate.
HDD manufacturers have diverging HDD strategies to increase data storage capacity in the near term. Seagate and Western Digital each have a roughly40% share of the HDD market. Seagate has pushed forward with the commercialisation of HAMR, expecting around half of its EBs delivered in 2026 to be HAMR with the other half still being PMR. Western Digital, on the other hand, has continued to optimise PMR by overlapping writing tracks to increase storage capacity in a process called shingled PMR. Western Digital has developed HAMR products but they are not expected to be commercially available until next year, at which point production will ramp up. Overall, global ruthenium demand is approximately 1 moz per annum, and hard drives are a significant part of the roughly one-third of this that is electronics demand. However, that usage will gradually shrink as the largest capacity storage devices shift to HAMR.
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