Updated 26 October 2026 · Published by Zoorik
Azure Standard HDD is the hard disk drive (HDD) type of Azure managed disk. It suits backup and other data you rarely use. It’s a poor fit for OS disks and databases that need low disk latency.
Microsoft’s figures:
- It’s designed for writes under 10 ms and reads under 20 ms, for most operations.
- Its largest sizes reach 2,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS), or 3,000 with performance plus turned on.
- It’s locally redundant storage (LRS) only: three copies in one data center.
Azure Standard HDD OS disk retirement
On 8 September 2028, Azure stops supporting Standard HDD as an OS disk. It then converts each one automatically to a Standard SSD of equivalent size. Microsoft warns that workloads may see a service disruption if you don’t migrate first.
The Azure Standard HDD retirement covers OS disks only. Data disks, snapshots and Azure Site Recovery’s OS disks aren’t part of it.
To find yours, filter the portal’s disk list by storage type Standard HDD LRS and OS type Linux and Windows. Then convert each to Standard SSD or Premium SSD.
Why it matters for your cloud cost
Two things set the price:
- the size tier its size rounds up to, however little data it holds
- transactions: each read or write of up to 16 KiB counts as one
After conversion, an OS disk is charged as Standard SSD. Microsoft says it generally comes closest to Standard HDD on price for performance.
The free assessment works out what your disks could save.
Read next: Premium SSD vs Standard SSD on Azure: what you pay for
Sources: Microsoft Learn, “Migrate Standard HDD OS disks by September 08, 2028” (opens in a new tab); Microsoft Learn, “Select a disk type for Azure IaaS VMs” (opens in a new tab); Microsoft Learn, “Understand Azure Disk Storage billing” (opens in a new tab); Microsoft Learn, “Redundancy options for Azure managed disks” (opens in a new tab).