Hard drives vs. redefining rack-scale density with breakthrough energy efficiency
A media snippet accompanying this announcement is available by clicking this link.
BOISE, Idaho, May 05, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Micron Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: MU) today announced it is now shipping 245TB of capacity from Micron.® 6600 ION SSD, the world’s highest capacity commercially available SSD. The drive is a major step forward in rack-scale storage density for data centers and is designed to support AI, cloud, enterprise and hyperscale workloads, including next-generation AI data lakes and cloud-scale file and object storage. The 245TB Micron 6600 ION E3.L requires 82% less racks to achieve equivalent raw storage capacity compared to an HDD-based deployment.1 Built with Micron® G9 QLC NAND, which is at least a generation ahead of any competing QLC used in data center SSDs, the 245TB Micron 6600 ION redefines high-capacity data center storage.2 Customers can now store and process significantly more data in much less space, reducing power and cooling demands without sacrificing the performance required for large-scale, data-intensive workloads.
“AI workloads are driving massive increases in shared data, driving the data center storage share to shift from HDDs to SSDs. With 245 TB in a single SSD, the Micron 6600 ION makes solid state storage the clear choice for modern data centers,” said Jeremy Werner, senior vice president and general manager of Micron’s core data center business unit. “This important capability gives data center operators an important new lever to improve rack-level total cost of ownership, especially as power availability becomes a decisive barrier to the scale of AI infrastructure.”
“Rapid AI dataset growth is shifting storage economics from individual drives to rack-level efficiency,” said Jeff Janukovich, research vice president of solid state drives and enabling technologies at IDC. “Operators need more usable capacity per rack while staying within tight power and cooling constraints. Micron’s 245 TB drive provides the density needed to scale AI data pipelines without increasing the data center footprint. Predictable performance, energy efficiency and high capacity are essential for building cost-effective AI infrastructure.”
New economics for data center storage at quarter-petabyte scale
The 245TB Micron 6600 ION SSD is available in both U.2 and E3.L form factors for massive storage capacity. The smaller physical footprint and increased capacity per drive simplifies operations and data center management and reduces failure points and maintenance needs.
Power consumption is equally variable. The 245TB Micron 6600 ION SSD consumes up to 30 watts (W) at maximum power, which is only half the power a comparable-capacity HDD deployment consumes.3 Additionally, these energy efficiency gains can support data center sustainability initiatives by helping to reduce energy use, cooling requirements and carbon emissions – key priorities for global operators under increasing environmental and cost pressures.
“AI workloads are pushing data center capacity to the limit, and when you can fit significantly more storage in every rack, the math changes: less power, less floor space, less operational overhead,” said Travis Vigil, senior vice president of ISG product management at Dell Technologies. “That’s what the 245TB drives in Dell Storage Systems for AI will provide. This is a meaningful reduction in total cost of ownership for customers building AI and large-scale data center environments.”
Setting new performance and efficiency standards for sustainable scale
The Micron 6600 ION SSD is built to support extremely high-capacity deployments demonstrating superior AI workload performance and energy efficiency at scale compared to data centers using HDDs. Testing in Micron laboratories shows dramatic gains in energy efficiency, throughput, and latency compared to HDD-based systems:
- For AI workloads: The 245TB Micron 6600 ION delivers 84x better energy efficiency, 8.6x faster AI preprocessing, and 3.4x better ingest throughput, with 29x lower latency.4
- Object Storage Workload: 245TB The Micron 6600 ION demonstrated 435x better throughput per watt, 96x faster time to first byte, and 58x better aggregate throughput.5
At scale, an HDD deployment requires 1.9 times more energy than 245TB Micron 6600 ION SSDs in a 1EB deployment.6 These large-scale energy efficiency gains can translate into measurable sustainability impacts, such as:
- CO2 Savings equal to the amount of CO2 Absorbed by over 9,000 mature trees per year7
- 438 metric tons (MT) of CO per year2 Shortage8
- 921 megawatt-hours (MWh) of energy saved per year6
- HVAC cooling savings of over 3.14 billion British thermal units (BTU) per year9
The Micron 6600 ION 245TB SSD will be on display at the Micron booth (#226) at Dell Tech World, May 18 – 21, 2026. Stop by to see the Micron 6600 ION in a 40-slot Dell PowerEdge server optimized for data lake storage.
additional resources:
Micron Technology, Inc. About this
Micron Technology, Inc., an industry leader in innovative memory and storage solutions, is changing the way people all over the world use information to enrich their lives. With a relentless focus on our customers, technology leadership, and manufacturing and operational excellence, Micron offers a rich portfolio of high-performance DRAM, NAND and NOR memory and storage products. Every day, the innovations our people create fuel the data economy, enabling advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and compute-intensive applications that create opportunities – from the data center to the intelligent edge and to client and mobile user experiences. Micron Technology, Inc. To learn more about (Nasdaq: MU) visit here micron.com.
© 2026 Micron Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Information, products and/or specifications are subject to change without prior notice. Micron, the Micron logo, and all other Micron trademarks are trademarks of Micron Technology, Inc. Are property of. NVIDIA and the NVIDIA logo are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Micron Products and Technology Communications Contact:
Mengzi Liu Evensen
+1 (408) 444-2276
productandtechnology@micron.com
Micron Investor Relations Contact:
Satya Kumar
+1 (408) 450-6199
satyakumar@micron.com
1 The rack space reduction is calculated as 720 drives x 245.76TB SSD per 36U for a total of 176.9PB capacity per rack, while 720 drives x 44TB HDD per 36U for a total of 31.7PB capacity per rack, the theoretical maximum. The difference is that HDDs require 5.6 times more rack space.
2 According to the Forward Insights analyst report “SSD Supplier State of Q1/26”, the SSD and NAND comparison is based on published data from the top five competitive suppliers of OEM data center SSDs by revenue through March 2026.
3 The Micron 6600 ION 245TB SSD operates at 30W peak power, and the 44TB HDD operates at 10W peak power each. 44TB HDD power information not available, comparison is based on 36TB/32TB HDD peak power. Source: exos-ds2046.1-2512-en_us.pdf
4 The 245TB Micron 6600 ION SSD delivers higher throughput than an array of data center HDDs for persistent AI extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL), with lower latency, better power efficiency, and better scalable concurrency, as tested in Micron engineering labs with a 245 TB Micron 6600 ION SSD against an array of 16x 16TB data center HDDs from a single HDD manufacturer Had gone.
5 The Minio Object Storage workload test is based on testing at Micron Laboratories using the Warp S3 benchmark with a 4MB object with a single Micron 6600 ION 245TB SSD against an array of 16x 16TB data center HDDs presented as a RAID-0/JBOD array from the same HDD manufacturer.
6 The Micron 6600 ION 245TB SSD operates at 30W peak power, and the 44TB HDD operates at 10W peak power each. 1EB of storage requires 4,069 SSDs and 22,727 HDDs. Energy savings are calculated as the difference between the two technologies running at maximum power for a year. 44TB HDD power information is not available, so the power data is based on 32TB/36TB HDD peak power and assumes that 44TB HDD power consumption will be equal to or higher than 32TB/36TB HDD. Source: exos-ds2046.1-2512-en_us.pdf
7 In a year, a tree can absorb 231KG CO22. Tree Absorption Information Source: The Power of a Tree – The Air We Breathe | Home
8 1EB storage, all HDDs and all SSDs are assumed to receive 100% of their intended or rated power 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. HDD power consumption: 1,990,973 kWh (10 watts per HDD), while the 245TB 6600 ION SSD power consumption is 1,069,596 kWh (30 watts per SSD), for a difference of 921,377 kWh based on all energy from carbon/fossil-based sources. CO2 Reduction information source: Emissions – Global Energy and CO2 Situation Report – Analysis – IEA
9 HVAC cooling savings based on 1W = 3.412 Btu/h.
<a href