Western Digital Inflates 3.5in HDD Storage To 6TB Using Helium

HGST, a subsidiary of Western Digital, has today begun shipping Ultrastar He6 – the world’s first helium-filled hard drive.

Pumping hermetically sealed enclosures full of inert gas dramatically reduces the turbulence caused by the spinning disk, making it possible to put more platters into a single hard drive to increase capacity.

Thanks to this technology, Ultrastar He6 can offer 6TB of storage in a classic 3.5in form factor  – more than any other hard drive currently on the market. The first Helium-filled HDDs are primarily aimed at the enterprise and data centre applications.

Capacity Up

Up until now, traditional hard drives were mostly growing capacity by increasing areal density – putting more tracks onto a magnetic disk platter. However, according to IDC, areal density growth rates are expected to continue at a rate of less than 20 percent per year all the way to 2016.

Meanwhile, mobile devices, Internet services, social media and business applications, corporate, cloud and big data customers all need to store ever increasing amounts of data.

Helium is one-seventh the density of air, and using it inside a hermetically sealed hard drive helps lower resistance, with more disks able to spin for longer while requiring less power.

Until recently, the engineers had issues with keeping helium inside for the lifetime of the drive, since atoms of the inert gas are so incredibly small they will leak through the smallest of gaps. HGST, formerly a Hitachi division, claimed to have solved this in September 2012, with technology it calls HelioSeal, which HGST says is now ready to cost-effectively manufacture new drives in high volumes.

Compared to a standard 4TB drive, Ultrastar He6 consumes less power – just 5.3 watts when idle, has 4-5°C lower operating temperature, and even weighs less, despite having seven platters instead of the traditional five. It is available in SATA and SAS versions, and promises lower total cost of ownership than any other spinning disk solution.

The unusual properties of helium-filled drives also enable experiments with liquid cooling: since the drives are hermetically sealed, they can be completely submerged in cooling liquid, for ultimate heat extraction. HGST is currently working with Huawei and Green Revolution Cooling to develop this idea further. Other partners who have signed up to test the technology include HP, Netflix and CERN.

“Not only is our new Ultrastar helium hard drive helping customers solve data centre challenges today, our mainstream helium platform will serve as the future building block for new products and technologies moving forward. This is a huge feat, and we are gratified by the support of our customers in the development of this platform,” said Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing at HGST.

What to expect

Both Western Digital and its competitor Seagate are also working on Shingle Magnetic Recording (SMR) – a method that can squeeze more tracks onto a disk surface by partially overlapping them. The technology depends on the traditional hardware components, but requires specialised software. Seagate shipped the first ever SMR drive in September.

By 2016, the market should see the first hard drives featuring Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR). With HAMR, the recording head includes a tiny laser that heats up the medium before information is written. The technology offers higher thermal stability and could take information density to an unbelievable 5TB per square inch, but there are still plenty of kinks to iron out.

Seagate does not currently have plans to build helium-filled hard drives.

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