Infrastructure · Worldwide

AI also costs money to store data.

A vendor-sponsored survey points to more data being stored for longer.

Announced : 9 Sept 2026Source checked : 10 Sept 20261 min read

AI-assisted draft. Human review is still required before public release.

What happened

An IDC survey commissioned by Western Digital found that 94.7% of respondents stored more data because of AI adoption, while 74.3% kept data longer. The sample covered 763 IT and business decision-makers across seven countries.

SIGNAL analysis

What changes for you

Storage and retention belong in the AI budget alongside model and computing costs.

What to keep in mind

These are self-reported experiences from a vendor-sponsored survey, not a measure of every organization. The press release does not specify fieldwork dates.

What you can do

Include retention periods and deletion plans when costing an AI project.

Inside a hard drive. Archive photo, 2015. Raysonho / Wikimedia Commons, CC0.

Source

wdc.gcs-web.com

Vendor-funded research. Company claims are not independent test results.

No correction recorded for this draft.