Seagate Releases 6TB Hard Drive Sans Helium

Lucas123 (935744) writes "Seagate has released what it said is the industry's fastest hard drive with up to a 6TB capacity, matching one released by WD last year. WD's 6TB Ultrastar He6 was hermetically sealed with helium inside, something the company said was critical to reducing friction for additional platters, while also increasing power savings and reliability. Seagate, however, said it doesn't yet need to rely on Helium to achieve the 50% increase in capacity over its last 4TB drive. The company used the same perpendicular magnetic recording technology that it has on previous models, but it was able to increase areal density from 831 bits per square inch to 1,000. The new drive also comes in 2TB, 4TB and 5TB capacities and with either 12Gbps SAS or 6Gbps SATA connectivity. The six-platter, enterprise-class drive is rated to sustain about 550TB of writes per year — 10X that of a typical desktop drive."

Comments

~1000 *Bits* per square inch?

[PaulBu]

I thought that in 21st century we are talking about Gbits/inch^2, not just bits...

Paul B.

Re:~1000 *Bits* per square inch?

[cheater512]

Its just sad that in the 21st century we are still using Gbits/inch^2 and not Gbits/cm^2.

Re:~1000 *Bits* per square inch?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its just sad that in the 21st century we are still using Gbits/inch^2 and not Gbits/cm^2.

Why is that sad? An inch is 2.54 cm, so a square inch is 2.54*2.54=6.45 cm^2. If we switched from inches to cm, instead of 6 TB, this disk would not even hold 1 TB.

Re:~1000 *Bits* per square inch?

[SpankiMonki]

Better check your math on that. It's actually 1Tb/inch^2.

Re:~1000 *Bits* per square inch?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoosh!

And you got the unit conversion wrong! Gold!

Re:~1000 *Bits* per square inch?

[Anonymous Coward]

Imperial or metric bits?

Re:~1000 *Bits* per square inch?

[BoRegardless]

Slashdot is hiring fired AP writers now?

Re:~1000 *Bits* per square inch?

[Ghaoth]

Yes, but the disk is rotating at 198,374 furlongs/fortnight.
It's all getting a bit bitty methinks.

Re:~1000 *Bits* per square inch?

[rossdee]

You don't get into the imperial or metric part until you're talking Kilo bits

Metric Kilo = 1000
Imperial Kilo = 1024

Why not?

[wisnoskij]

And why would you not use helium? They already seal the hard drives and it is just as easy and cheap to leave helium in the drive as some form of super clean air.

Re:Why not?

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, the drives aren't usually sealed. there's a porous frit plug that allows the pressure inside and outside to be equalized, and which has pores small enough not to let water vapor in.

Designing a hermetic container that lasts for years is non-trivial, particularly one to hold Helium, which has very, very small atoms that can go through the interstices in the metal. By comparison, pulling a vacuum would be easier, but disk drives need something to fly the heads on. He is nice because it is also very low viscosity

Re:Why not?

[pushing-robot]

Because they're trying to maintain their quality.

(Seriously, though, they actually don't seal their hard drives. Hard drives typically have a small hole in the casing with a extremely fine dust- and moisture-proof filter attached. It allows the drive to equalize its pressure with the environment and reduces the mechanical strain on the housing and seals.)

Re:Why not?

[Kaenneth]

Fun Fact, retail helium for recreational used is often salvaged from used 'pure' helium from MRI machines and such.

So children's party balloons are filled with medical waste, yay!

Re:Why not?

[war4peace]

He is nice because it is also very low viscosity

But she is nicer than him, that's for sure, mainly because her viscosity is spot on.

Re:Why not?

[niftymitch]

.......

Designing a hermetic container that lasts for years is non-trivial, particularly one to hold Helium, which has very, very small atoms that can go through the interstices in the metal. .....

This is important.....
I have seen thick wall steel pipe with blisters inside the metal.
The pipe contained high pressure hydrogen at high temperatures and
the hydrogen would react with the carbon in the steel and grow bubbles
a little like Swiss cheese.

The diffusion dimension of H2 and He is also interesting.

Re:Why not?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fun Fact, retail helium for recreational used is often salvaged from used 'pure' helium from MRI machines and such.

So children's party balloons are filled with medical waste, yay!

I wondered where Big Bang Theory got most of their scripts for Sheldon. Now I know ... Slashdot!

Re:Why not?

[JoeMerchant]

So, when you pull a vacuum, does it eventually fill up with helium that goes through the interstices in the metal from the ambient atmospheric mix of gasses?

Helium leak?

[Tablizer]

Finally a way to detect if your drive is about to crash: you start to sound like a munchkin.

<highvoice>Oh oh, I better make a backup fast!</highvoice>

Calculations

[wisnoskij]

At 1000 bits per square inch, to get 6TB you need about a third the size of Manhattan.

According to Wolfram Alpha at least:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/in...

Re:Calculations

[Trailer Trash]

At 1000 bits per square inch, to get 6TB you need about a third the size of Manhattan.

It takes a couple of hours to get up to 5800RPM, but when that bitch is spinning don't even try to tilt your computer.

Re:Calculations

[JoeMerchant]

Just think, last year's drives at 831 bits per square inch, that's only 29 bits per inch, squared... you can see those suckers with the naked eye.

"relying" on helium

[Anonymous Coward]

Seagate, however, said it doesn't yet need to rely on Helium to achieve the 50% increase in capacity over it's last 4TB drive

Seagate previously made 4 x 1 TB platters and 5 x 800 GB platters. Now this drive stores 1.25 TB per platter (according to El Reg). I bet WD/HGST can replicate that very easily... 7 x 1.25 = 8.75 TB. From what we know Seagate could use shingles (shingled magnetic recording) to boost capacity but with a penalty to write speed. There was also a suggestion they could cram 6 platters in a drive without helium. Both companies are working on HAMR to replace PMR in the coming years.

It's not that WD is relying on helium, it's that WD has better technology than Seagate. By including two more platters, WD can match Seagate's capacity with older PMR platters.

Re:Big Drive

[war4peace]

Also, "increase in capacity over it's last 4TB drive".

Re:Let me just

[Anonymous Coward]

You think you could afford enough of these to facilitate raid 5, eh? Lol.

Re:So with the Helium inside, is drive lighter?

[gargleblast]

In a big storage server, that could amount to few kilos, perhaps

Absolutely. That's astute! They're going for cloud storage.

Press blurb is junk

[m.dillon]

The press blurb is full of nonsense. Not one real performance statistic. Not one.

-Matt

Re:obsolete

[iggymanz]

yes. as you will find out in a couple years, SSD are more reliable in the first 2-1/2 years, then they go to shit faster than hard drives after that.

Get Perpendicular

[ArcadeMan]

The company used the same perpendicular magnetic recording technology that it has on previous models.

Just in case anyone missed it, here's the very technical video explanation by Hitachi about how perpendicular recording works.

Re:obsolete

[Harlequin80]

Hmmm Let me think about this

Intel Enterprise grade SSD 800gb - I can find them for about $1800
HGST Ultrastar - Enterprise grade with Helium - 6tb - $865.

I currently have a 21tb Nas machine in this office. I don't need speed I need capacity. The cost differential is MASSIVE. So yes people buy spinning platters all the time.

Re:obsolete

[WuphonsReach]

Does anyone buy platters of very slow piles of rust anymore?

For bulk storage (measured in terabytes and petabytes), platters of spinning rust are the only economical solution. So for a secondary storage SAN where capacity is more important then IOPS, you fill it out with spinning rust. A 4TB enterprise SATA 7200RPM drive is about $330 right now, or about $0.08/GB. The cheapest enterprise SSDs are about 10x-20x that price.

Rust is also better for drives (or tapes) used as backups. It has better shelf stability then a SSD. Most SSDs will start to lose data after a few months of being disconnected (maybe as few as 6 months). Barring mechanical issues, traditional magnetic media holds up well over the span of years (at least a decade in most case).

Now I just wish WD would come out with a 2TB 10k RPM SATA Velociraptor 3.5" drive...

Re:obsolete

[dbIII]

I'll link the above post next time you pretend to know what is going on in server rooms so that everyone can have a laugh.

55TB / year?

[zdzichu]

Since when mechanical drives degrade during writes? Isn't that a SSD 's illness?
And 55TB / year for desktop drive sounds ridiculously low.

Unfortunately, Seagate's reliability is garbage

[cpm99352]

There was a time when Seagate was a gold standard, but nowadays certainly not. I would not trust a Seagate drive if someone gave it to me. A truly sad state of affairs. I just pity the consumers who don't know any better. Even worse that they're now tarnishing the Hitachi brand.

Re:Oops in title - "sans" ?

[dylan_-]

Doesn't "sans" mean without?

Yes, that's because WD's 6TB Ultrastar He6 was hermetically sealed with helium inside, something the company said was critical to reducing friction for additional platters, while also increasing power savings and reliability. Seagate, however, said it doesn't yet need to rely on Helium to achieve the 50% increase in capacity over it's last 4TB drive.

At least, I'm sure I read that somewhere.