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Discussion on Article:
Helium-Filled Hard Drives Could Lift Western Digital in Enterprise Market.

Started by: siuol11 | Date 01/04/13 12:35:30 AM
Comments: 8 | Last Comment:  01/06/13 03:28:16 AM

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1. 
It's a shame you can't count on their consumer-class drives for shit.. (or Seagate's, or Hitachi's). 3 years and I've gone through all three brands.
1 0 [Posted by: siuol11  | Date: 01/04/13 12:35:30 AM]
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I've never had that experience. I still have my old Quantum HDD from 1994 loaded with Windows 3.1 that works perfectly.
0 0 [Posted by: fanboyslayer  | Date: 01/04/13 06:39:09 PM]
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2. 
I doubt many in enterprise are going to buy into the helium joke.
0 1 [Posted by: beenthere  | Date: 01/04/13 10:18:18 AM]
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If the Cost:HDD storage space:power budgets ratios works out as a good gain, they will buy into it otherwise it wont take off. The research into helium and other low density inert gases is real science 100s of research materials published on it.

In enterprise today, outright speed is not priority, power budgets and procurement budgets take importance.
1 0 [Posted by: vanakkuty  | Date: 01/05/13 04:31:46 AM]
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3. 

iT IS RISKY with Helium . If your HDD gets damaged a bit, how would you recover your data ? Helium have to be kept tightened there
0 0 [Posted by: tbaracu  | Date: 01/05/13 06:35:00 AM]
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Good Question.

If there is a helium leak and if its getting contaminated by outside air, the heat generation goes up along with power consumption by servo to do the same workloads.

That will be the cue for removal and recovery of the data before the drive looses all life.

S.M.A.R.T supports all this type of monitoring and advanced warning in drives today.
0 0 [Posted by: vanakkuty  | Date: 01/05/13 07:34:22 AM]
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4. 
I was wondering is the helium mainly due to its capability to transfer heat or reduce the drag? If its for the last would a vacuum pumped casing noot be preferable? Or is it impossible to keep a vacuum in there for several years?
0 0 [Posted by: einheriar  | Date: 01/06/13 03:10:57 AM]
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Helium is used for its properties to reduce drag because of its lower density.

Vacuum means much heavier material to construct the casing/sealed structure. And ordinary vacuums out there with standard materials are not really at 'vacuum' its just a order or magnitude poorer in terms of quality of this vacuum due to existing contaminants from atmosphere locked in it.

The higher order vacuums that approach true vacuum like conditions are order of magnitudes much thicker and powered by cryogenic pumps in concert with mechanical vacuum pumps. The order of vacuum pressure will be like 1x10E-6 Torr.

This picture shows a chamber that can achieve these close to ideal vacuum environments. We use them for CVDs (chemical vapor deposition)
0 0 [Posted by: vanakkuty  | Date: 01/06/13 03:28:16 AM]
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