6TB helium-filled hard drives bump capacity, decrease power use

Re:6TB helium-filled hard drives bump capacity, decrease pow... by mnw21cam on Monday November 04, 2013 @09:38AM (#6668732)

This makes me wonder if these new hard drives will have a limited shelf life. I know they have spent so much research on keeping the He in, but it's more likely that they have just slowed down the leaking, so will this hard drive still be spinning in ten years? Some hard drives are expected to keep running for at least that long.

Also, I worry about air pressure changes. If a particularly nasty weather system came along with a very low pressure centre, and the hard drive is completely sealed, then it will have to either flex to accommodate the He expansion or be very rigid indeed. If it flexes, does that de-calibrate the head alignment? Is the case strong enough to deal with 200N force pulling it apart?

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Re:6TB helium-filled hard drives bump capacity, decrease pow... by DougWebb on Monday November 04, 2013 @10:15AM (#6668947)

I would imagine they include a bladder of some sort to handle expansion and contraction due to temperature changes while the drive is operating, in order to keep the internal pressure fairly constant. That's probably a wider range of pressure change handling than weather systems would require. (There was a time when I knew how to do the math for that, but I haven't used my MechEng degree in a long, long time.)

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