Seagate wears dunce's cap in hi-cap disk ship slip Seagate has misjudged the high-capacity disk drive market, lacking helium-filled drives and mucking up its 8TB drive manufacturing tactics. Despite recognising that high-capacity drives are the key part of its enterprise portfolio, with SSDs killing off the high-performance 2.5-inch spindle market, Seagate has let WDC (HGST) …
So the issue isn't about keeping the helium in, but about keeping the air out.
Good point, but ... actually ... not really, no.
Helium molecules are really small -- they only contain a single atom -- and manage to seep quite easily through most of the materials that are typically used as gas seals. Air is mostly made up of Oxygen and Nitrogen, which have much bigger molecules, with two atoms each, and are much easier seal against; so keeping the air out is relatively easy.
Pressurised helium leaks, but eventually it balances to atmospheric pressure - which is what these drives are filled to.
These have enough helium onboard to last the warranty period and maybe a bit beyond.
The monster they're not looking at is SSD. I can already buy 4Tb enterprise PM863 SSDs for £1350 apiece and that's not a whole lot more expensive than an enterprise £600 helium filled 8/10TB drive, considering it's ~200 times faster, uses 1/4 the power and is unlikely to need replacement during its warranty period (unlike Seagate mechanical drives)
Next year those SSDs will be £700 and those mechanical drives will be around £500 The year after that, Seagate/WD will probably be snapped up by a major SSD maker.
> Also, the chart shows shipped capacity
Exactly.
Someone has a spin they want to push, and has designed a chart to help that spin.
Consider units would have the 8GB section an eighth the height and the 10GB section a tenth. The latter would essentially disappear.
That said, net revenue would perhaps be a more useful scale but unlikely any of the companies publish sufficiently detailed sales data.
If you look at the cost-per-slot in a SAN / NAS / JBOD enclosure and the cost-per-terabyte of the drives, 8TB Helium drives are a slam-dunk choice. It's not even close. And 10TB Helium drives (that are usable in standard arrays, as opposed to the SMR ones that require special write logic) are just around the corner.
And then you get to Seagate's longer-term problem of shipping crap drives. Reputation has to be hurting them as well.
Also, since people have been wondering, the Helium drives are laser-welded shut to keep the Helium in.
Pretty clever to replace the air in the drive with another gas. It reminds me of the availability of nitrogen for car tires, or tyres, if you prefer. The N eliminates water vapor, although don't ask me how, and reduces the fluctuation of pressure when the temperature changes. Although I could no longer pump them up at home, it was a reasonable tradeoff with less maintenance overall. I can imagine with He filled drives you get slightly faster internal parts movement, and probably other advantages, and the higher capacity on the spinning rust bits due to reduced/eliminated oxidation. Then again, this is just like 4K TVs; you can get them now, or wait until 8K or 16K or 32K comes out. Depends on your need and budget. Fascinating choice of gases though. Must check out more. Thanks, El Reg!
The way to separate out the N2 from the air is to liquify it by cooling.
This freezes out all the water, so an N2 tank is going to be almost perfectly dry.
The trouble with helium fill is that any gas fill will leak out, and the drive will fail once enough of it has escaped.
He also leaks out relatively quickly compared to most other gas fills in common use (eg GS or halogen lightbulb)
Using nitrogen eliminates water vapour because it's coming from compressed gas cylinders. The nitrogen is generated by liquifying air at silly cold temperatures and then progressively boiling off the different components. The water is completely removed as part of this process.
Normal petrol/gas/servo station air is compressed on site and doesn't have the water scrubbed out. Get enough of this water in your tyres and there will be condensation at cooler temperatures and therefore big pressure changes when things heat back up.
How much of a difference does it really make? Uh, dunno. Can't say if it is worth paying someone to pump up your tyres with 'special air' for you or not.
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