Fill a hard drive with helium and you could boost its capacity by 50%

Researchers at HGST, a subsidiary of Western Digital, have announced a new type of storage medium, the “Ultrastar He6”, the world’s first hermetically-sealed, helium-based hard drive. 

After years spent trying to perfect the technology, the group has figured out how to not only replace the air in a hard disk drive with the second most abundant element in the universe, helium, but also manufacture it in a cost-effective, time-efficient manner.

The benefits of this technology are tremendous: for one, helium is a gas seven times less dense than air. This means the interior disks create less turbulence when they spin, which means more disks can be packed into less space, and less power is needed, too.

The new six-terabyte hard drive that is 23% more power efficient than today’s models, and offers 50% more capacity, too. It’s also the world’s first device to fit six terabytes of storage into the standard 3.5-inch hard drive container.

Putting helium inside hard disk drives has been experimented with for decades, but the problem has always been in creating a cost-effective manufacturing process that produces long-term, air-tight hard drives .

The HGST crew not only solved this issue, they’ve also solved the other long-standing mechanical problem associated with HDDs: how fast disks can spin when packed so close together.

And since these helium-filled drives are hermetically sealed, they’re watertight, too. This means they can be used in what’s known as “immersion data centers”, or systems in which hard drives and servers are submerged in a non-conducting, mineral oil-like fluid. Doing this allows the technologies to run at higher temperatures, but remain cool because of the liquid.

Right now, helium-filled HDDs are a technology that’s a bit advanced for the average consumer, but immediately speaking, they offer a host of benefits for large data centers to fit more storage into less space, using less power.

Story via: independent.co.uk