Western Digital added helium-filled hard disk drives to the Red, Red Pro and Purple product lines. The disks drive new consumer storage devices with increased capacity, cooler operation and higher density.
HGST, now a subsidiary of Western Digital, first released HelioSeal Technology in 2014. Not long after, the company claimed 1 million products shipped and field reliability increased a full 15 percent. Helium allows hard disk manufacturers to use more platters (up to 7 in a drive) to increase density. The gas is thinner than regular air so the platters face less resistance in motion. This reduces vibration and friction heat inside the drive, and it uses less power at the motor.
Western Digital will release helium-filled products using technology from HGST. These drives will make it into WD-branded consumer models like the My Book and several NAS systems.
New Product Announced Today
External Hard Drives
My Book/My Book for Mac -– An external hard drive solution that provides backup and storage with USB connectivity.
My Book Duo/My Book Pro – Dual-drive external hard drive solutions that provide ultra-fast storage in RAID-0 and backup and storage with USB and/or Thunderbolt connectivity and up to 16 TB capacity.
My Cloud/My Cloud Mirror – A personal storage device that plugs into your router at home to provide you with your very own private cloud.
My Cloud EX2 Ultra – As part of the creative professional series of My Cloud products, the My Cloud EX2 Ultra provides high-performance two-bay network attached storage.
Internal Hard Drives
WD Purple – Engineered for 24/7, always-on, high-definition surveillance security systems that use up to eight hard drives and up to 32 cameras.
WD Red – Optimized for personal, home and small business NAS (network attached storage) systems.
WD Red Pro – Optimized for small business and enterprise class NAS systems with high performance and reliability.
We expect helium-based hard disk drives to spread into other markets. Recently, Google pitched hard disk manufacturers to increase the z-height of disk drives to create products with more platters. This would increase storage capacity per disk and reduce costs. The fixed priced components like the case and motor would stay relatively unchanged but allow more platters that increase device storage density.
Chris Ramseyer is a Contributing Editor for Tom's Hardware, covering Storage. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. Follow Tom's Hardware on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.