Western Digital readies first 10TB Hard drive

jimbo45 said:

Hi there

You don't actually need 4 TB ONLINE to be able to backup 4TB's worth of data -- this can be backed up incrementally / gradually etc etc...

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Mayhap if you describe how you make backups, my three remaining brain cells will connect.

I had a 1TB WD Green as my boot before my SSD. That was so painful.

HarriePateman said:

I had a 1TB WD Green as my boot before my SSD. That was so painful.

The Greens are a good drive when used correctly (data storage only) but they are unsuitable for use as boot drives and in a RAID.

Couldn't agree more, but you guys persuaded me to get my SSD.

ILOVEYOU ALL.

Lady Fitzgerald said:

The biggest drives I have right now are 2TB (Blacks and Greens). Even the Greens are plenty fast enough for writing and reading any data I throw at them. Specs for the 4TB Blacks and Greens are not much different from my 2TBs (the Greens are slow to initially spin up, however); I haven't compared the specs for the 6TB Greens yet and WD hasn't released any 6TB Blacks yet...

I checked the specs for the 6TB Greens and they are comparable to the 2TB and 4TB Greens. I also contacted WD about if and when they were going to release a 6TB Black. Their response was that they had no plans on releasing a 6TB Black, which is odd considering they released the 6TB Green. Bummer! I guess are pouring all their resources into their Helium technology in their HGST line. For something so radically new as the Helium drives, methinks I will wait awhile to see how that pans out (and for prices to come down). Helium molecules are tiny and are going to be mighty hard to keep from leaking out over time.

Lady Fitzgerald said:

Helium molecules are tiny and are going to be mighty hard to keep from leaking out over time.

Maybe the drives are welded.

The helium molecule is so small it can directly pass through many materials without the benefit of a leak in a joint.

The secret sauce to all this is that the drives are built to be hermetically sealed, which means they’re both perfectly airtight and leakproof. While the science behind doing all this has been well understood for a while, Cordan says that Western Digital is the first to figure how to do it in a repeatable manufacturing process. It adds an extra step or two to the manufacturing process, and thus some cost.

It gets more interesting: Hermetically sealed drives don’t let the helium out, but they also don’t let anything else in, including liquid. That makes them good for use in immersion-cooled data centers. These are small, dense collections of IT gear packed into a box the size of a shipping container and filled to the top with nonconductive liquid that keeps everything running at a constant temperature. (If you didn’t know that this was a thing, you’re not alone, because I didn’t, either.)

Western Digital Adds Helium to Enterprise Hard Drives - Arik Hesseldahl - News - AllThingsD

They have been hermetically sealed. They've been kept in a #2 mayonnaise jar on Funk and Wagnall's back porch since noon today.

A Guy

"Western Digital is the first to figure how to do it..."
I guess they did buy HGST.
When it comes to HDDs maybe there's life in the old dog yet.

BTW Helium is a Noble gas and doesn't form molecules easily.

mjf said:

...BTW Helium is a Noble gas and doesn't form molecules easily.

You are correct; it only exists as atoms. I didn't take chemistry back in school (half a century ago), opting instead to take accelerated biology. Of course, that means helium can slip through even smaller openings.

Helium will leak through solids that will block most atmospheric gasses. Rubber and Mylar balloons are an example. They will loose all the helium in the helium/air mix they are inflated with in a matter of just a few days. Of course, the helium filled drives have much thicker walls than a balloon but how well will those walls retain helium over, say, two or three years? How well will the seals for wiring leading to the drive motors, drive heads, and head actuators hold up?

I'm not saying these drives absolutely will lose their helium over time but, with any new technology, time can take a toll.