Top-tier storage specialists EMC and NetApp grew their storage revenue in the fourth quarter of 2012, a feat their server-and-storage brethren were unable to do, according to IDC's quarterly report on storage sales.

IDC Friday said that EMC grew its fourth-quarter 2012 storage revenue by 7.3% while NetApp's grew by 6.3% compared with the fourth quarter of 2011, while top rivals Hitachi, IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Dell saw year-over-year revenue drops.

For the fourth quarter of 2012, the storage industry shipped a total of 8 exabytes of capacity, up 25.3% over the same period last year. That figure counts both storage sold as part of a server and that sold external to servers. Revenue for that capacity, however, grew a mere 0.7% over last year to reach $8.6 billion.