Seagate suggests AI is causing a carbon crisis for the industry

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The need for data comes with a need for data storage.

Seagate
(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Just like cryptocurrency put a new strain on the GPU market, AI is starting to push into the demands of data storage companies. Recently, at Computex 2025, Seagate came forward with a panel showcasing new developments for the upcoming year. According to Digitimes, Seagate also used the opportunity to express growing concern about the impact AI is having on the tech industry and potentially developing into what they describe as a "carbon crisis".

Seagate also provided some figures for those interested in exactly how big the impact appears to be. It claims the hard drive industry as a whole is only able to create 1 to 2 zettabytes of storage each year, with 1 zettabyte being the equivalent of 1 trillion GB. However, this is only a small portion of how much data is expected to be created.

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Ash Hill
Ash Hill
Contributing Writer

Ash Hill is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware with a wealth of experience in the hobby electronics, 3D printing and PCs. She manages the Pi projects of the month and much of our daily Raspberry Pi reporting while also finding the best coupons and deals on all tech.

6 Comments Comment from the forums
  • SomeoneElse23
    "The need for data comes with a need for data storage."

    Therein lies the problem.
    We don't need AI.
    Reply
  • ejolson
    The way I see it AI has already become so smart that's it's impossible for people to assess how smart it really is.

    On the other hand, there has to be some form of storage that is better than either SSD or HDD.

    Since they're renewable and encourage growing more trees, maybe green washing could also make paper tapes and punch cards more marketable to environmental nerds.
    Reply
  • Co BIY
    Sounds like we need to assign some AI to the storage problem.
    Reply
  • Heiro78
    ejolson said:
    The way I see it AI has already become so smart that's it's impossible for people to assess how smart it really is.

    On the other hand, there has to be some form of storage that is better than either SSD or HDD.

    Since they're renewable and encourage growing more trees, maybe green washing could also make paper tapes and punch cards more marketable to environmental nerds.
    Make tape mainstream again! It's not practical for day to day usage at datacenter but heck if it isn't cool
    Reply
  • Alvar "Miles" Udell
    Isn't this basically a repost of this one?

    https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/storage/seagate-claims-hard-drives-are-more-environmentally-friendly-than-ssds
    Reply
  • RiverDoggie
    A report in MIT Technology Review ( https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1116287/ai-data-centers-nevada-water-reno-computing-environmental-impact/ ) discusses the immense amount of potable fresh water that is evaporated for cooling of those data centers. One of the sources ( https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.03271 ) estimates worldwide water loss to evaporation at between 4.2 and 6.6 billion cubic meters annually by 2027. That's between 1.11 and 1.74 TRILLION GALLONS of clean drinking water evaporated to the atmosphere! Needless to say, this is unsustainable.
    Reply