6TB Helium HDDs Are Here

[BFG10K]

Not quite available to consumers yet, but at least the design appears to be viably manufacturable.

I feel we're at an HDD crossroads with several possible directions available to increase capacity.

http://www.techpowerup.com/193800/hgst-ships-6-tb-ultrastar-he6-helium-filled-hard-drives.html

http://www.hgst.com/tech/techlib.ns...0032F257/$file/HeliumProductSummary_final.pdf

 

[Doomer]

Announced at the same is a set of computer anchors that conveniently keep your desktop or laptop from floating to the ceiling.

 

[Dahak]

Like one of the comments on the story at the source

"Well on the plus side they didn't release this with hydrogen. Then we'd be nicknaming them Hindenburgs. Give new definition to HD crash :laugh:"

 

[PliotronX]

Interesting, I assume the HGST is Hitachi Global Storage Tech...? Did Hitachi's HDD division get bought out by WD? If so, who woulda thunk they'd drive rust technology in a new direction with something that kids play with on their birthdays Neat stuff.

 

[code65536]

This has "bad idea" written all over it.

They want us to trust that the device can remain perfectly sealed over the course of years? That tiny amounts won't leak out at the seams? Sorry, I'm not willing to trust my data to this.

Helium may be abundant in the universe, but not so on Earth. It's impossible to recycle and impossible to manufacture (no, fusion doesn't count). We are silently careening towards a helium shortage (and the stupidly wasteful use of it for crap like party balloons certainly isn't helping), and WD wants to base their future storage roadmap on helium?

(Also, why aren't they using 1TB platters yet? Seagate's been using them for close to two years now.)

 

[fleshconsumed]

Great, just in time after I loaded up on 4TB drives for my new fileserver.

I'd like to second some of the comments in the article though. One, holy moly, that's a 7 platter hard drive. I always went for 3 platters max, and only in this generation I went with ST4000DM000 which is a 4 platter design because that's the best that is available to me. But 7 platters? Damn... And two, 7 platters and only 6TB? That works out to 0.86TB per platter. Both Seagate and WD have 1TB platters, I would presume Hitachi being WD subsidiary would have access to 1TB platters? No?

Anyway, I won't be buying because the price is certainly going to be sky high at the release date, 4TB drives are big enough for my needs, and I do not want to touch 7 platters unless I have to. However, all in all it is good to see hard drive capacity increasing again, we've been stuck at 4TB for almost two years now, it's about time for some progress dammit!

 

[Phynaz]

Definitely interested in the publicly released version of this drive.

 

[Phynaz]

Great, just in time after I loaded up on 4TB drives for my new fileserver.

I'd like to second some of the comments in the article though. One, holy moly, that's a 7 platter hard drive. I always went for 3 platters max, and only in this generation I went with ST4000DM000 which is a 4 platter design because that's the best that is available to me. But 7 platters? Damn... And two, 7 platters and only 6TB? That works out to 0.86TB per platter. Both Seagate and WD have 1TB platters, I would presume Hitachi being WD subsidiary would have access to 1TB platters? No?

Anyway, I won't be buying because the price is certainly going to be sky high at the release date, 4TB drives are big enough for my needs, and I do not want to touch 7 platters unless I have to. However, all in all it is good to see hard drive capacity increasing again, we've been stuck at 4TB for almost two years now, it's about time for some progress dammit!

You're not going to be buying these at all, they are specifically for the enterprise storage vendors (EMC, HP, Cisco). These are not retail products.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Seven platters to acheive 6TB? I'm not impressed.

The loss of the seal just sounds like one more thing that can go wrong, as if there aren't enough already.

 

[Anteaus]

We are silently careening towards a helium shortage (and the stupidly wasteful use of it for crap like party balloons certainly isn't helping), and WD wants to base their future storage roadmap on helium?

By the time helium becomes a critical element I'm pretty sure we will find ways harvest from those lovely huge gas giants we have in our solar system.

I think the petroleum we use to make the plastic that is used everywhere from the little plastic keychains next to the cash register to the case our game consoles reside in will make a far larger impact over the next couple hundred years. Helium is the least of our worries for the moment.

Besides, I'm not sure how we complain about helium when we use up so many precious metals and rare earth elements for so many less noble purposes.

Your point is taken though.

 

[BFG10K]

I've linked to the product sheet in the OP. They're saying a MTBF of 2 million hours with a 5 year warranty, so they must have pretty good confidence about the longevity of the product.

 

[Atreidin]

More than 4 platters in hard drives already makes me nervous, I don't have good luck with that. However maybe using helium somehow helps out reliability a lot, I don't know. I'd like to see 1TB platters jammed in there though.

 

[dawp]

thought these would be like those disks I installed in servers back in the 90s, 2 in. thick 4g models but according to the data sheet these are 7 platter within the standard 1 inch drives.

 

[joshhedge]

Save the helium to cool super conductors, not for use in HDDs.

Nevertheless, good breakthrough in platter amount.

 

[AViking]

I thought we were going to be getting 5TB and 6TB drives for the average Joe relatively soon. I could have sworn I read an article about it a year or so ago.

 

[MrK6]

Pretty sweet technology-wise, not sure about the feasibility in the long run though.

 

[OlafSicky]

Too many platters if it was one platter I would be impressed and they would have my money

 

[Fjodor2001]

I thought we were going to be getting 5TB and 6TB drives for the average Joe relatively soon. I could have sworn I read an article about it a year or so ago.

Perhaps you mean this:

http://www.techpowerup.com/176543/w...-red-series-get-5-tb-models-in-late-2013.html

 

[ElFenix]

what does the helium do?

 

[Engineer]

what does the helium do?

Lowers the friction down on the spinning platters (i.e. less motor power to turn them and less heat from friction) as well as the friction on the actuator arms (again, less power to move them).

As for leaking out, depends on if it is pressurized or not. Unless the leak path is much larger than the helium atoms, it would be difficult for anything else to diffuse into the drive to displace the helium and a natural vacuum isn't likely to form (i.e. helium leak out and nothing to replace it). I would tend to think the helium filling the drive is at a low pressure (maybe lower than normal atmospheric pressure) but that's just a guess.

 

[Haserath]

I thought we were going to be getting 5TB and 6TB drives for the average Joe relatively soon. I could have sworn I read an article about it a year or so ago.

Seagate will be offering Shingled Magnetic Recording drives in 2014.

what does the helium do?

www.tweaktown.com/articles/5856/hgst-6tb-ultrastar-he6-helium-filled-hdd-investigated/index.html

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

More than 4 platters in hard drives already makes me nervous, I don't have good luck with that. However maybe using helium somehow helps out reliability a lot, I don't know. I'd like to see 1TB platters jammed in there though.

I have a crap-ton of 5-platter Hitachi 1TB (the very first 1TBs!) that have been in service 24/7/365 for over half a decade now.

Still work just fine (no reallocated sector spikes, passes 100% sector scans).

 

[code65536]

Seagate will be offering Shingled Magnetic Recording drives in 2014.

Performance is gonna hurt, though--SSD-like complications with writing data coupled HDD-like seeking doesn't sound pretty at all. Probably fine for bulk write-once data, like a backup or archive drive, but I wouldn't want that drive for something that does lots of random writes. It makes the current 4-platter Seagate 4TBs look nicer, though.