Toshiba employees have unofficially announced that the company will come with 14TB Helium filled HDDs this year. The news comes from TheRegister who heard the news during the Huawei Connect conference in Shanghai.
The 14TB disk would be the first one of the Japanese HDD manufacturer that contains Helium. Unfortunately there are no further specifications known about the upcoming drive.
Competitor WD announced 12TB and 14TB disks last year and Seagate has stated it will bring 12TB, 14TB and 16TB disks on the market. The high capacities are possible thanks to Helium. The gas has a lower density than air which has the benefit that platters and heads suffer from less friction. This in its turn reduces generation of heat which allows platters to be closer to each other and thus higher capacity drives. Because in Helium it takes less energy to rotate the platters, the Helium filled HDDs also consume less energy. To properly function the HDDs have to be airtight.
Currently Toshiba's largest capacity HDD is an 8TB drive part of the company's N300 series.
