> hard drives having moved entirely into the market traditionally occupied by tape

It'll be curious if the hyperscale clouds decide to self-manage more HDD functions, and dumb down the devices ($), or leave that to HDD manufacturers ($$).

I imagine there's some savings to be had stripping memory & controllers out of drives, when you're deploying in large groups anyway. Similar to what was done with networking kit.

Or maybe this already happens? Moreso than "RAID-edition" drives.