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WD Announces 8TB, 10TB Helium Hard Drives
Lucas123 writes: Western Digital's HGST subsidiary today announced it's shipping its first 8TB and the world's first 10TB helium-filled hard drive. The 3.5-in, 10TB drive also marks HGST's first foray into the use of shingled magnetic recording technology, which Seagate began using last year. Unlike standard perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR), where data tracks rest side by side, SMR overlaps the tracks on a platter like shingles on a roof, thereby allowing a higher areal density. Seagate has said SMR technology will allow it to achieve 20TB drives by 2020. That company has yet to use helium, however. HGST said its use of hermetically-sealed helium drives reduces friction among moving drive components and keeps dust out. Both drives use a 7-platter configuration with a 7200 RPM spindle speed. The company said it plans to discontinue its production of air-only drives by 2017, replacing all data center models with helium drives.
All my audio files sound like "Tiny Tim"
helium, that is. invisible gold, Texas A (for Amarillo).
The most important question is what is the lifespan of the helium containment. Helium is notorious for getting in to and out of places that other elements can't. For example, in balloon borne cosmic ray experiments, or anything with a calorimeter or hodoscope that utilizes photomultiplier tubes, you have the problem of the helium from the balloon getting into the PMTs, which hold a vacuum. Of course, there are low pressure conditions to consider, but I'm still skeptical of the helium staying in the hard drive.
Considering a single balloon has more helium than $10,000 of these hard drives, I don't think this is going to be a serious issue anytime soon.
For party balloons, well, too bad.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I ordered 6TB drives 3 hours ago...
Now all my MP3s sound like the Chipmunks!
No, there are not. In this case, low molecular weight is the key, and that nearly rules out anything except H2 and He.
H2 is too reactive though. Ne is interesting, but even more expensive the He and the only advantage is less leaking.
N2 is not meaningfully different from normal air, and Ar is even heavier.
CH4 is cheap, light, and mostly unreactive (at moderate temps) but it's really not light enough to compete with He.
And that's the end of the list.
By 2020, SSDs will have greater capacities than 20TB.
We are seeing the buggy whip manufacturers in full denial. 10TB drives should have been out a year ago, and consumer 6TB drives should be selling for under $100. The floods in Thailand gave platter drive makers an excuse to keep the prices (and profits) jacked up artificially while the insurance money replaced aging plants with the latest technology.
With a fraction of the energy usage, densities increasing, and hopefully a reversal in the recent trend towards less durability, SSDs will probably also overtake platter drives in price per terabyte within 5 years.
BURMA SHAVE
Just because congress decided we needed to get rid ot all our heilum supplies quick and dump it for cheap?
The amount of helium used in these drives is utterly insignificant. Congress liquidated the helium reserves on the assumption that the market would respond to shortages more effectively than bureaucrats. So far they have been right. Many gas wells that produce helium have be idled, both because of the low price of gas and the low price of helium. So plenty of helium is being "reserved" by leaving it in the ground. If you think you are smarter than the market, feel free to start your own stockpile. When you get rich, you can come back here, post a picture of your yacht, and say "See, I told you so!"
I was also wondering this. Wouldn't nitrogen or argon/neon be cheaper?
The point of using helium is NOT that it is inert, but that it is low density (although the inertness is also nice). Neon is five times as dense and far more expensive. Methane is four times the density. The only gas lighter would be hydrogen. But hydrogen has a nasty habit of migrating through metal, leaking out, and embrittling the metal in the process. Low density gases reduce friction both through reduced mass, and a higher speed threshold for laminar (rather than turbulent) flow. Low density gases tend to also be better heat conductors, helping to keep the disk cool. That is why high density gases, like xenon or sulfer hexafloride, are used in insulated windows.
In the late 1960s, DDC of San Diego made head-per-track disk drives that operated with a helium atmosphere. These units had a cylinder of helium fastened to the baseplate (the units were 19" rack mount), and the documentation included procedures for replacing the cylinder and for purging from a full-sized cylinder if it was ever necessary to open the unit for repairs.
I had driven down to San Diego circa 1978 to buy a cylinder of refill helium from DDC for one of these in a hand-me-down system, but never got around to replacing the cylinder on the drive. The cylinder sat in my garage for years. Thirty years later I was a returned adult physics student. My professor was using a similar helium cylinder to purge a cryostat for a superconducting magnet. He ran out of helium, and the department had no other helium. I told him "wait 20 minutes, I'll be back." I retrieved the cylinder from my garage, and the professor was both delighted and baffled. When connected to the regulator, the cylinder proved to have maintained a remarkable fraction of its original pressure, and the professor was able to complete his procedure. Sadly, another part of the magnet failed and suffered a gas pressure explosion as it was being cooled.
In a remarkable coincidence, I noted that the department's helium cylinder and mine were identical, all the way down to a part number stenciled on them.
What's the news on HAMR? Is it still being pursued?
Don't stop. It's not HAMR time.
Helium balloons are a minor part of the overall picture. The overwhelming majority of uses are industrial, such as cryogenics. The problem is that they don't recover it. If you want to make a big impact on the helium consumption rate, hard drives is pretty much one of the least effective places you could focus - focus on industrial recovery.
Note that humans will never "run out" of helium. Even if we assume that space-based resource extraction becomes realistic, one can always refrigerate it out of the atmosphere. Or more accurately, refrigerate everything else out and leave the helium behind. There's only a tiny bit in the atmosphere, but for important uses it'll remain a possibility. I saw page that says that neon is $2 per liter. If you're refrigerating neon out of the atmosphere, pretty much all that's left is helium, so you're co-producing it, at a ratio of 3.5 to 1. If we assume that helium demand vastly outpaces neon demand, then the helium cost would be $7 per liter. And maybe less in mass production.
That's not really an absurd price for many uses - such as hard drives. On the other hand, it's dramatically more than today's prices at about $0.005 per liter! You're not going to be making helium blimps at $7 per liter. But if industry learns how to recapture and reuse, they should manage.
(Of course, humans probably wouldn't have to resort to helium extraction from the atmosphere for centuries, pretty much any gas coming out of the ground will be richer in helium than the air)
"... even though he sins so much that people cast him out of demons."
If these signs / were here today / the final one / would likely say / Myanmar Shave
It's not being priced according to the long-term cost or capability of supplying the volumes that are being drawn from the stockpile on a sustainable basis, which is what you'd actually do if you were running a business dealing in actual production.
Yes, clearly all the people investing THEIR OWN MONEY are complete idiots, and you, a random guy on the internet, are so much smarter than actual investors and professional geologists. So does this mean you are going to invest all your money in helium futures, that are obviously going to be worth billions when the helium runs out, just like all the arm chair doomsayers are predicting?
So, let me guess. "Government IS the problem" right?
Government created the reserve. Government paid for the refining of He from natural gas in Texas, Oaklahoma and Louisiana.
Government found the program was 1.2 billion in debt.
Government handed the business to Private Enterprise
Private enterprise sold the product dirt cheap (they didn't inherit the outstanding debt, yet another Pro-Capitalist giveaway).
and now, somehow, it is Congress fault?
So how does that work?
The helium in the atmosphere slowly dissipates into space. But it is also replenished by helium leaking out of the ground, where it is generated by radioactive elements emitting alpha particles (which are helium nuclei). At about 5.5 ppm, the source and drain are in equilibrium.