An unexpected revolution in the hard drive industry.
The why of helium-filled - or, as HGST's marketing styles it, HelioSeal - disk drives is easy. Helium has 1/7th the density of air. That means:
- Less drag on disks and head actuators.
- Less drag means less platter flutter and vibration.
- Lower flutter means platters can be thinner and tracks can be closer together.
- Thinner platters means more disks in a stack - 7 instead of 5 - and lighter weight.
- More platters mean more capacity at lower motor capacity and cooler operation.
That is a very persuasive combination for web-scale data centers, who want to jam as much capacity into a storage server as possible since servers cost money. The reduced power consumption is a plus, as it also reduces cooling requirements and allows denser disk packaging.
HGST is designing no new air-based drives. They expect to be almost 100 percent helium by the end of 2018.
HGST goes all in on helium drives | ZDNet
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Why Hard Disks in an SSD world. SSD vs. HDD | HGST Storage
