Ultrastar Hard Drive Uses Helium to Maximize Capacity
Western Digital's HGST is using helium to tackle industry-wide challenges in scaling current areal density technologies.
This week Western Digital-owned HGST announced that its new 6 TB Ultrastar He6 hard disk drive is now shipping. This isn't just any hard drive, though. The Ultrastar He6 uses HGST's HelioSeal, which means the spinning platters are sealed inside a hermetic chamber filled with helium instead of air.
The density of helium is one-seventh that of air. The use of helium in HGST's
new drive equates to dramatically less drag force acting on the spinning disk stack and a substantial reduction in mechanical power from the motor. The lower helium density also means that the fluid flow forces buffeting the disks and the arms, which position the heads over the data tracks, are greatly reduced. This allows for disks to be placed closer together (seven disks in the same enclosure) and to place data tracks closer together (allowing continued scaling in data density). The lower shear forces and more efficient thermal conduction of helium also mean the drive will run cooler and will emit less acoustic noise.
The Ultrastar He6 boasts 5.3 idle watts and weighs in at 640 g (HGST claims that the Ultrastar He6 packs a 38 percent lower weight-per-TB compared to a 3.5-inch, five-platter, air-filled 4 TB drive). It's designed for cloud storage, massive scale-out environments, disk-to-disk backup, and replicated or RAID environments.
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Reliability wise it might last longer if it runs cooler. Heat is one of the biggest killers when it comes to mechanical (and electrical) devices as it causes the parts to expand, and when they cool they contract.
We will have to wait and see but WD also has a HDD based on the technology so I wouldn't doubt seeing others also adopt it as it seems promising.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Helium-Filled-Hard_Disk-hdd-western-digital,17573.html
I think mechanical hard drives should die and go away this is 2013 price of ssd's are going down if made in mass production prices will continue to fall.
Failure rates of mechanical drives are on the rise ever since the flood i have been sending back 80% of the drives i sell they fail within 2-6 months the re-certified they send back have a 100% failure rate not a single one i got back last more than 30 days out of 200 drives.
And there are HUGE industrial users. Hard drives (even if all new drives used it) would be very small in comparison.
As much as some of use would wish that, It wouldn't happen.
The read/write heads needs to have a little bit of air (or some type of gas) to keep them the proper distance away from the platter when the platters are spinning.
Without it, well.... you might not want to know....
As much as some of use would wish that, It wouldn't happen.
The read/write heads needs to have a little bit of air (or some type of gas) to keep them the proper distance away from the platter when the platters are spinning.
Without it, well.... you might not want to know....
Can you explain why the gas is necessary?
As much as some of use would wish that, It wouldn't happen.
The read/write heads needs to have a little bit of air (or some type of gas) to keep them the proper distance away from the platter when the platters are spinning.
Without it, well.... you might not want to know....
Can you explain why the gas is necessary?
Because the head "floats" on it. It creates a gap between the head and the spinning platter.
Without gas the head would just grind against the platter.
From one of your deleted posts: "Are you even an adult? Because if you are, then shame on you!" Let's keep this civil, without personal attacks.