As India’s digital infrastructure continues its rapid evolution, the demand for robust, scalable, and secure data storage has never been greater. Western Digital, a pioneer in storage technology, continues to play a vital role in powering this growth with its cutting-edge HDD and NAS offerings tailored for businesses of all sizes. In an exclusive conversation, Rajeev Ranjan, Editor at Digital Terminal, engaged with Owais Mohammed, Director of Sales – India, Middle East, and Africa, Western Digital. In this insightful exchange, Owais shared the company’s growth journey in India, the booming potential of HDDs in a data-driven economy, and how Western Digital is empowering small businesses and enterprises alike through its NAS solutions.
Rajeev: How has been the growth of Western Digital in 2024 especially in Indian market?
Owais: 2024 has been a strong year of momentum, building on decades of innovation and setting the stage for everything to come.
Looking ahead, we see continued opportunities as artificial intelligence (AI) as well as machine learning (ML) accelerates and the nationwide rollout of 5G technology continuous – only three trends out of many that are impacting industries in India. With Indian companies generating and storing more data than ever, the future of hard disk drives (HDDs) in India is bright. For the data centre industry on the subcontinent alone, analysts expect growth of 66% by 2026 - an estimate that underlines India's potential to become a digital powerhouse. HDDs are the foundation for this, and we are ready to support this development with our deep legacy in HDD technology.
According to CyberMedia Research (CMR), India’s consumer external HDD market surged by 88% year-on-year in Q4 CY2024, reflecting increased data backup needs amid growing remote work trends. surveillance HDD market grew 40% QoQ and 120% YoY, fuelled by smart city initiatives and high-resolution security systems. As the overall HDD market experiences single-digit YoY growth, Western Digital continues to cater to India’s evolving data storage needs.
Rajeev: How does NAS compare to public cloud storage in terms of cost, security, and performance?
Owais: Network-attached storage (NAS) offers businesses a centralized, scalable, and protectable storage solution that is ideal for collaborations in small/home office (SOHO) and medium businesses (SMBs) environments. Offering local storage without recurring monthly fees, NAS servers are a smart choice for those managing larger volumes of data. It ensures private control over files, allowing businesses to safeguard sensitive information. Performance is another advantage—NAS enclosures can connect to local networks via Ethernet to allow all invited contributors to quickly access, share, and collaborate on the same files.
Rajeev: What are the best NAS solutions for small businesses and home offices across India looking for easy, scalable storage?
Owais: For small businesses and home offices, storage needs can quickly grow with expanding workloads, making scalability a critical factor. Western Digital’s portfolio of WD Red NAS drives is built specifically for these environments, offering reliable performance and flexibility. SOHO users who need storage for office file sharing, backups, and content archiving can benefit from WD Red Plus drives, which balance capacity and efficiency. For businesses handling more intensive 24x7 workloads, WD Red Pro drives support higher data demands, offering 7200 RPM speeds and capacities of up to 26 Terabyte (TB). Thanks to extensive compatibility testing, the products work with a wide range of NAS system vendors and enclosures. With NAS solutions, businesses can start small, and scale as needed by adding more drives or upgrading to higher-capacity models, ensuring long-term storage without disruption.
Rajeev: How do NAS-optimized HDDs like WD Red improve performance, reliability, and longevity in NAS setups?
Owais: Unlike regular desktop hard drives, NAS-optimized HDDs like WD Red Plus and Pro HDDs are designed for continuous operation in multi-bay systems. They feature NASware™ technology, which fine tunes drive parameters to match NAS system workloads and helps to increase performance and reliability. Furthermore, the WD Red Plus and Pro products include rotation vibration (RV) sensors that anticipate and proactively counteract disturbances caused by increased trembling. By dispersing excess vibration across the drive chassis, turbulence is minimized, performance maintained and drives are better protected.
WD Red Pro drives go a step further by including multi-axis shock sensors and dynamic fly height technology, which protect data integrity in high-vibration NAS enclosures. These drives are engineered for reliability, rated for up to 550TB/year workloads and up to 2.5M hours mean time between failures (MTBF). Additionally, they are optimized for NAS systems with an unlimited number of bays, making them ideal for medium to large businesses, and commercial/ enterprise environments.
Rajeev: What opportunities do you see for channel partners/SIs with Western Digital who are looking to work closely for NAS business opportunity?
Owais: Everything we do starts with our customers and our 40+ year legacy in HDD technology makes us the trusted partner for India’s enterprises of any size that are growing their business. Our channel partners and system integrators can expect a relentless focus on their needs, operational excellence and committed leadership in product and technology development. Our in-house vertical integration across head, media, and HDD assembly as well as our focus on ethical business practices, sustainability, and good governance enable our strong commitment to quality and sets us apart from competition. Furthermore, our consultative approach gives our customers the proper perspective and confidence to ensure business success. One part of this is our differentiated portfolio of scalable capacities that allow our partners to achieve maximum value today.
For our channel partners we offer programs, technical trainings and marketing support in India to help them understand and position our solutions effectively and gain a competitive edge.
Rajeev: How does RAID technology enhance data protection as AI adoption is on the rise, and what’s the best RAID setup for different use cases?
Owais: RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) technology plays a crucial role in NAS environments and enhancing data protection, maintaining data integrity and availability as it uses multiple disks to store data redundantly or in a striped fashion, ensuring continued access even in the event of disk failure.
Different RAID levels are made to suite different AI-driven environments offering varied use cases.
Raid 0 functions by spreading data across several disks, it provides the quickest read/write rates, hence boosting performance but offering no redundancy.
A RAID 1 setup is ideal for high-reliability setups as it mirrors data across two or more disks ensuring that if one disk fails, the mirrored copy provides an immediate backup. For instance, for AI research and development, it provides optimized data security for critical research data.
Raid 5 balances performance and redundancy by distributing data and parity across multiple disks. This setup allows for recovery if a single disk fails. The balance of speed, capacity and redundancy makes it ideal for AI model training handling large training datasheets.
Raid 6 is best suited for enterprise AI deployments given its offering of high redundancy by using two types of parity, allowing recovery even if two disks fail simultaneously. This way, the setup prevents downtime for large-scale data processing and mission-critical applications.
Depending on the individual business needs, an appropriate RAID setup helps to improve data security, system efficiency and operations for AI solutions.
Rajeev: How can users balance between NAS and public cloud for an efficient hybrid storage strategy?
Owais: A hybrid approach that combines NAS and public cloud storage offers the best of both worlds—local control with cloud flexibility. NAS can handle frequently accessed files, fast transfers, and secure backups, while cloud storage can serve as an offsite backup for added redundancy. Many modern NAS systems allow users to automate this process, moving older or less frequently accessed data to the cloud while keeping essential files readily available on NAS. This setup optimizes storage costs and enhances disaster recovery preparedness. For businesses and individuals who want security without sacrificing accessibility, a hybrid storage strategy ensures seamless data management with the right balance of control, convenience, and cost-efficiency.
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