WD today announced it started the delivery of HGST HE6 drives . These are 6TB drives targeted at enterprise applications such as cloud storage. The drives have an interesting feature, they are filled with helium instead of air. By using helium the platters and heads are less affected by friction.
The helium-filled disks from HGST, part of Western Digital , were announced last year and now the company has started to ship the drives . The HE6 HDDs use seven platters in a 3.5 " form factor to achieve the 6TB capacity. According to HGST this amount of platters could be used due to the use of helium in place of air .
Because Helium is lighter than air and has a lower density, the platters and heads suffer less from friction which means less mechanical failure and less heat. Due to the use of the lighter helium the platters can also spin easier which results in less energy consumption.
HGST claims that the drives consume almost 50% less watts per TB. The HDDs are also lighter, according to HGST the drives are 38% lighter per TB than regular 3.5" HDDs
The company has not disclosed any price information on their HE6 drives.
