Sure but exabyte-level storage is done with tape, not HDDs.

I doubt any of YouTube is being served off tape. Some impressive amount of its data is probably served from RAM.

I mean, it would explain the minutes-long unskippable ads you get sometimes before a video plays. There's probably an IT maintenance guy somewhere, fetching that old video tape from cold storage and mounting it for playback.

I don’t have ads. No wait times.