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Seagate Adopts Helium For a 10TB HDD (computerworld.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the noble-gas-to-the-rescue dept.

Lucas123 writes: Seagate has finally adopted helium as an inert gas in its data center drives and has used it to produce a 10TB HDD for cloud-based data centers. Seagate had relied on its shingled magnetic recording technology for high-capacity drives right up until its last 8TB HDD, even after WD has used helium in several iterations of its hermetically sealed, 3.5-in HDDs. The lighter-than-air helium reduces friction on platters and allows more to be used. In Seagate's new HDD, it crammed seven platters 14 heads, a 25% increase in disk density over its 8TB drive.

6 of 175 comments (clear)

  1. Hydrogen next? by Trachman · · Score: 4, Interesting

    We need to assume that hydrogen will be the next element used for cooling? Or is it the end of spinning disc era?

    Hydrogen is used, believe it or not, for generator cooling at power plants. Here is the quick link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  2. Re:Isn't Helium running out? by Fwipp · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How many 10TB hard drives do think Seagate will ship?

    How many children will have at least one balloon at their birthday party this year?

  3. Re:Oh yeah! by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Sealing helium in ANYTHING for a significant amount of time is pretty much impossible. Helium is a monatomic gas. These drives will leak.

    --
    "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
  4. There's significant and there's long enough by dbIII · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yes it's another failure mode that is going to give a harder limit on drive life than the current ones of spindle lubricant breaking down and polished surfaces fusing together. Seal things well and maybe they will last ten years before total failure, maybe only five, but a life of a few years is enough to bring them to market.

  5. Re:Oh yeah! by cheater512 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Wow why wouldn't the skilled engineers at Seagate and Western Digital think of stuff like that?

    They should employ you on the spot!

  6. Spishak Mach 10TB drives by WaffleMonster · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't like the idea of cramming platters to increase density because it throws a wrench in useful scaling relationship between density and I/O rate. I don't want a disk requiring days to sync up or otherwise doubles time needed to read out a given percentage of the disk. This is what archival media is for.

    Would much rather see R&D efforts focused on increasing density and therefore I/O performance of individual platters otherwise for my purposes better off simply buying more and scaling out disks.

    If helium increases reliability over long term use then great.. if it lasts only as long as the warrantee period I'm not interested.

    Hoping against hope something not resembling vaporware will come out of RRAM efforts like crossbar in the next year or two.