Slashdot Mirror
WD Builds High-Capacity, Helium-Filled HDDs
Lucas123 writes "Western Digital subsidiary HGST today announced that after 10 years of development it is preparing to release 3.5-in data center-class HDDs that are hermetically sealed with helium inside. The helium reduces drag and wind turbulence created by the spinning platters, all but eliminating track misregistration that has become a major issue to increasing drive density in recent years. Because of that, HGST will be able to add two more platters along with increasing the tracks per inch, which results in a 40% capacity increase. The drives will also use 23% less power because of the reduction of friction on the spindle. HGST said the new seven-platter helium drives will weigh 29% less per terabyte of capacity that today's five-platter drives. In other words, a seven-platter helium disk will weigh 690 grams, the same as today's five-platter drives."
Those of you wondering why they don't just use a vacuum inside the drive. Hard drive heads ride on a cusion of air (or in this case, a gas of some kind) so that they don't crash against the drive.
Just imagine something like this with a huge 'WD' logo on the side inside your computer.
There's no place like
New Helium filled drives weigh less!
So that is where all the Helium has gone...
Is this going to be cheaper than SSD? The price point for solid state finally reached where platter drives were about ten years ago (a dollar or less a gig) and I installed one on my system just last week as my OS drive. Also, are these going to be significantly faster than the standard five platter density drives? Frankly, weight only matters in tablets, phones, and laptops. I'm not aware of any crushing weight problems in the steel server racks...
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
These disks are great except when you replay audio files the vocalists sound like munchkins.
Proverbs 21:19
What about the impending Helium shortage?
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/med-tech/why-is-there-a-helium-shortage-10031229
Helium was used as a lubricant in fixed head disk drives in the late 60's.
They had to keep a tank of it attached since it is very difficult to keep it from leaking out.
How, exactly, are they going to keep the Helium from leaking out?
Someone doesn't know what helium is!
The lighter weight is due to using thinner platters not the helium.
You'll sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks!
Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com
Change the pitch of the "click-of-death" so high it disappears ! Brilliant !
I don't think the article nor the summary states it's due to the gas.
Wasn't it pretty recently that a helium shortage was announced, and that world-wide helium amounts were going to start crashing? Why build a fancy, fancy, fancy new technology that relies on a gas that's supposed to go away relatively soon?
Yet another way to use up a nonrenewable resource.
These drives are not the first. Circa 1969, Digital Development Corporation of San Diego sold a line of head-per-track disks that used a helium atmosphere. A typical unit took around 24 inches vertical height in a 19-inch rack. Given the difficulties of sealing anything against helium leakage, these drives required a small helium cylinder and pressure regulator to maintain a small positive pressure within the enclosure, and had a pop-off valve to vent excess pressure. The electronics consisted of about a dozen circuit cards built with discrete transistors. The capacities of these units were amusingly small by modern standards: the first one that I had direct experience with, held something like 128K bytes.
Can they make a drive that does not fail under moderate use in a year?
I'm so fucking tired of replacing WD drives. Such garbage.
Sure they weigh less, because they are filled with helium. But when the servers start lifting off the ground and floating off, they might have to rethink this idea.
Sure helium could improve performance and be beneficial for some uses, but anyone buying these need to ask what happens when the helium inevitably leaks out...
To me it looks another example of planned obsolescence at work. Though, perhaps, WD will take the razor blade approach and sell helium refill kits.
My MP3s will sound like The Chipmunks and God knows what my porn will look like!
Do not want.
Maybe some of us already like prog.
More possible failure points.
anyone buying these need to ask what happens when the helium inevitably leaks out...
No worries; when the balloon attached to the side is half-full you know it's time to replace the drive and then find a child to give the balloon to.
Or if you are not in a hurry take the drive in to any Party Center USA store for a free refill.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This drive's weight and its mass will be different due to the buoyancy of the helium in a sealed container. I wonder if the drives contain 690 grams of mass, or if their weight is the same as a non-buoyant 690-gram object (i.e. 6.77 newtons at sea level on Earth). The implication seems to be that the helium-filled drives contain more than 690 grams of mass, but weigh the same as a 690-gram object.
Brings about a whole new meaning to keeping your data "in the cloud," doesn't it?
OK, so that didn't sound as funny as I thought it would...there's a joke in there somewhere, dammit.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
oh, the humanity ...
Cue the Hindenberg jokes(Oh teh humaniteez!). But then consider that hydrogen is used to cool large generators. And you don't see these exploding randomly.
Have gnu, will travel.
these "floatable" hard drives for (covered previously on slashdot) skateboards will now be able to "catch some rad air"? :)
Another advantage of using a drive filled with helium is better thermal conductivity than air (0.142 vs 0.024) . The heat generated by the inner workings of the drive will be conducted to the outer case, keeping the inside cooler.
I guess that means that GP is fired.
According to Wiki, for half a century the US Constitution was hermetically sealed inside a glass container with helium.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermetic_seal
:(){
Now, instead of using a half dozen smaller drives you can use just one. And when it dies you can lose everything at once. No screwing around losing bits and pieces of your files.
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
Yes, I worked in some of those drives (I remember a "big" 10 meg drive) and the helium leakage will be a problem. But not for WD, only for the users. The helium will leak (the damn stuff is tiny and leaks out of anything ), but WD only needs to keep enough inside or the drive to last beyond the absurdly short warranty period. Then the drive self destructs. Good for WD if they manage to keep creating a market for new drives, bad for the customer.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I'm fascinated by people such as yourself(there are many) because my experience has been exactly the opposite.
Despite one recent failure on a 9 month old 2.5inch WD drive, I have had no WD drive failures despite using lots of them in 24Hrs on small server systems all the time. I've got a couple 400MB (that's megabytes) that have been in place for ten years and they are still running.
Meanwhile, I regularly have failures from much younger Seagate, Samsung, Hitachi, Toshiba... It's bizarre, to me that our experiences are that much different.
For the record my environment is typically hot and humid. Annual lows 30F highs 98F. But, my systems stay between 70-78F.
All of my music files sound like they were recorded by Alvin and the Chipmunks.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Seems to me it's pretty easy to solve the problem of the helium leaking out: fill the drive with helium at low pressure -- just below the lowest atmospheric pressure you intend to use the disk. The helium will try to diffuse out through the metal, but it's an uphill battle. Now all you've got to do is seal the disk so air can't get *in*, which is easy enough, and your drive will last forever. I haven't done the math, but it should work.
Except that is not how it works in the actual world. Permeation rates for all sorts of gases have been measured for various ceramics and glasses, while there is effectively no permeation of noble gases through metals. Some metals, especially ferric ones, are quite good at permeating hydrogen, which is in part due to its small size, but largely has to do more with chemistry (and not grain boundaries).
Looking at some numbers for polymers used for vacuum seals (what is on my desk at the moment), I would get something the size of a 3.5" hard drive would loose helium on the order of a year, if a mm thick. Those polymers are much, much crappier than metals when it comes to gas permeation, so I think they can keep helium sealed for several years, and probably any other gas other than hydrogen if they insisted on using a steel case (unless they insist on using a thin steal case for hydrogen, or a silver case for oxygen).
Your the only one who made that claim.
Film at 11.
Ask your grandpa kid.
Now when you tell the end-user that they "let the magic smoke out" you might be completely accurate.
Goodness people, tag it magic smoke.
Article says target weight is 690 grams. 3.5 inch drive has volume of 4 in × 1 in × 5.75 in (101.6 mm × 25.4 mm × 146 mm) = 376.77344 cm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive So it has a density of 1831 kg/m3.
The density of air is 1.225 kg/m3 at sea level 15 C. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Density_of_air
The density of helium is 0.1786 kg/m3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium
Let's say you could scale the physical volume with no weight gain (impossible but I don't care). And let's say the components of the hard disk are very small relative to the volume of helium you would need.
You'd have to make a volume of 1494.8 m3 filled with helium to make a hard disk lighter than air.
...The Carbon Gang, Nitrogen Group, and the Oxygen Brotherhood reacted explosively to the news. :)
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
A PET transmission source is Ge-68 or Cs-137, both gamma emitters.
The 90% shielding thickness in lead is about 3". A 3" thick suit is too heavy to move.
Add to that problem, the fact that shielding a source imperfectly is bad for you, because of the nature of how shielding works.
Shielding from gamma photons require a series of scattering collisions with the shielding media, losing energy with each one, usually as x-ray photons or lattice vibrations.
Low energy photons in the low x-ray region are very likely to be fully absorbed by the body; high energy gammas tend to go right thru you, depositing less energy.
Tshirt and shorts are also great when you're removing all the gantry covers, too. :)
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Permeation rates of helium is much, much lower than hydrogen in metals, especially steels where hydrogen permeates much faster than non-nobel gases, which permeate much faster than noble gases. Considering most large vacuum and pressure vessels are made of varieties of steel, hydrogen is typically the most problematic gas to deal with keeping in or out in many situations.
i'm a diver, a technical diver, and i disagree strongly.
we need helium to dive deeply, and there is a shortage since one year.
we don't need competitors
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=chipmunks+bad+day
It's not like they're going to specifically be made to be compatible with TiVo drive controllers.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Now with helium in the drive, all your mp3s will sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks.
Or is it Helium? In that case, the Tharks will be constantly attacking your computer.
This space unintentionally left blank.
I guess this explains the helium shortage.
Helium is hard to keep contained since its monatomic and a small atom. Longevity will be a problem -- how do you know when the gas has leaked out?
Wouldn't it just be easier to vacuum out all the air and create a vacuum inside an HD? Instead of wasting time and money pressurizing it with helium, just suck the air out of it! Maybe I should be in charge of WD HD development? :P
Don't worry, the Oil Cooling will weigh it down
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
...after the Bernoulli effect.
They were made by Iomega, according to Wikipedia.
I never saw any personally and remember the Syquest removable HDD cart drives being more common, at least in the 1990s when removable HDD technology was viable.
Weight is such a factor in notebook applications, and helium filled drives could enable a new class of devices weighing significantly less than existing hard drivers...
Except for what parent said about diatomic vs. monoatomic, and H2 size vs. He, it is flat out wrong.
I was a member of ASTM before I even connected to a BBS on a dialup modem, but as I indicated elsewhere, it's not a difficult problem and I could have given you the same answer as a first year student.
I've attached a link to a simple experiment that should give you an idea of what is going on, which can then be modified for different materials and thicknesses, so you'd design the drive with a thick enough wall of aluminium or whatever to get a long enough life.
http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/project1075_91_1.html
The actual "math" is on wikipedia under diffusion.
Anyway, my point is that filling the drives with helium results in a finite drive life and the time is going to depend on how long it takes to lose the gas. It just means the thing has to be designed with that in mind and to say push it out to decades where it's likely to have failed another way anyway.
Not surmised that way by anyone with a grasp on high school level physics or chemistry. To take things to a higher level than that, you get age hardening of some aluminium alloys by diffusion within a solid at room temperature over a timescale of months - just because it's a solid that does not mean it's a barrier that stops everything, and that especially applies when something very small is diffusing through a structure.