Helium-filled drives are shipping

“With ever-increasing pressures on corporate and cloud data centres to improve storage efficiencies and reduce costs, HGST is at the forefront delivering a revolutionary new solution that significantly improves data centre TCO on virtually every level – capacity, power, cooling and storage density – all in the same 3.5-inch form factor,” said Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing, HGST. “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.”

Through HGST’s innovative and patented HelioSeal process, the Ultrastar He6 drive is the industry’s first hermetically sealed helium-filled HDD that can be cost-effectively manufactured in high volume. The breakthrough development of the hermetically sealed process is arriving just in time as key market requirements are colliding with HDD areal density constraints. According to IDC, areal density growth rates have slowed, and are expected at a rate of less than 20 percent per year from 2011 to 2016. Moving forward, HGST’s helium platform will serve as the main platform for new technologies like shingled magnetic recording (SMR) and heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) where HGST will continue to push the HDD areal density envelope. The helium platform will also serve as the future building block for new, growing market segments such as cold storage, a space that HGST plans to address over the next couple of years.

"HDD industry areal density growth is not keeping pace with the rate of storage capacity growth in enterprise data centres," said John Rydning, research vice president, IDC. "HGST's proprietary, new, hermetically sealed, helium-filled HDD solution – the industry's first helium filled platform that simultaneously increases capacity while lowering power consumption and operating temperature – is intersecting the market at a time when IT managers are seeking out capacious and energy efficient new disk drives that will help to reduce the total cost of ownership of enterprise storage systems."

TCOptimized™ - Driving Down Data Centre TCO with Helium
The amount of data that companies need to store is growing exponentially, but IT budgets remain flat. With 6TB, a low 5.3 idle watts, a reduced weight of 640g, and running at 4-5°C cooler, the new Ultrastar He6 lowers data centre TCO on virtually every level. Key TCO benefits when compared to a 3.5-inch, five-platter, air-filled 4TB drive include:
§ Highest Capacity HDD on the Market; 6TB, Seven-disk Design, Providing the Best TCO
§ Lowest Power Consumption with Best Watts-per-TB
– 23 percent lower idle power per drive
– 49 percent better watts-per-TB
§ Best Density Footprint in a Standard 3.5-inch Form Factor
– 50 percent higher capacity
§ Lighter Weight than a Standard Five-disk 3.5-inch Drive
– 50g lighter even with two more disks, offering 50 percent more capacity
– 38 percent lower weight-per-TB

Pushing New Limits: Ultrastar He6 Enables Liquid Cooling in the Data Centre – See the Demo at Cloud Expo, Booth 209
Data centre designers and server vendors are continuing to pack more capability into smaller spaces, and with that, effective cooling is becoming a new challenge due to hotter components and less space for efficient airflow. One solution, which has been explored by many, is liquid cooling. Liquid, which is denser than air, can remove heat more efficiently and maintain a more constant operating temperature. However, traditional drives cannot be submerged as they are open to the atmosphere and would allow the cooling liquid inside, damaging or destroying the HDD. HGST’s HelioSeal platform provides the only cost-effective solution for liquid cooling as the drives are hermetically sealed and enable operation in most any non-conductive liquid. Today, HGST is working with leading innovators in this space such as Huawei and Green Revolution Cooling.