Helium-filled WD drives promise huge boost in
capacity:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/26227..._capacity.html

I can't tell if this is a spoof. The drive will
need to be sealed of course.

Lynn

"Lynn McGuire" wrote:

> Helium-filled WD drives promise huge boost in
> capacity:
> http://www.pcworld.com/article/26227..._capacity.html
>
> I can't tell if this is a spoof. The drive will
> need to be sealed of course.
>
> Lynn

Looks like they're mixing in different technologies and claiming the
capacity boost is caused by one of them. With reduced drag, they don't
have to put in bigger motors which means the smaller motors already used
can turn a larger number of platters. Adding platters is an age-old
trick of upping the capacity of a drive.

On Fri, 14 Sep 2012 11:04:47 -0500, Lynn McGuire <(E-Mail Removed)> put
finger to keyboard and composed:

>Helium-filled WD drives promise huge boost in
>capacity:
> http://www.pcworld.com/article/26227..._capacity.html
>
>I can't tell if this is a spoof. The drive will
>need to be sealed of course.
>
>Lynn

Hitachi Global Storage has 280 US patents involving helium gas:
http://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&t...obal%22&num=30

Seagate has 447:
http://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&t...Seagate&num=30

Western Digital has 9:
http://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&t...digital&num=30

Samsung Electronics has 2:
http://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&t...tronics&num=30

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

Lynn McGuire <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Helium-filled WD drives promise huge boost in
>capacity:
> http://www.pcworld.com/article/26227..._capacity.html
>
>I can't tell if this is a spoof. The drive will
>need to be sealed of course.

I wonder what they do about the different pressures the drives could
be exposed to. Someone might use one at the Dead Sea, 423 metres
(1,388 ft) below sea level or at an observatory at a high altitude.
Wikipedia says that the highest observatory is the new University of
Tokyo Atacama Observatory, an optical-infrared telescope on a remote
5640 m (18,500 ft) mountaintop in the Atacama Desert of Chile. There
must be a huge pressure difference between those two places.
--
When a cat sits in a human's lap both the human and the cat are usually
happy. The human is happy because he thinks the cat is sitting on him/her
because it loves her/him. The cat is happy because it thinks that by sitting
on the human it is dominant over the human.

Daniel Prince <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> Lynn McGuire <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>>Helium-filled WD drives promise huge boost in
>>capacity:
>> http://www.pcworld.com/article/26227..._capacity.html
>>
>>I can't tell if this is a spoof. The drive will
>>need to be sealed of course.

> I wonder what they do about the different pressures the drives could
> be exposed to. Someone might use one at the Dead Sea, 423 metres
> (1,388 ft) below sea level or at an observatory at a high altitude.
> Wikipedia says that the highest observatory is the new University of
> Tokyo Atacama Observatory, an optical-infrared telescope on a remote
> 5640 m (18,500 ft) mountaintop in the Atacama Desert of Chile. There
> must be a huge pressure difference between those two places.

Not so huge, but I think they cannot just seal the drives, that
would be very difficult and expensive. Also note that most HDDs
are only specified for 10000ft maximum altitude and may crash
above that. So, 0-3000m is about 1...0.7 Bar. By Boyle's Law,
say volume at 1 Bar is 1l, then volume at 0.7 Bar is 1.42l.

I suspect they will have some kind of flexible membrane
pressure equalizer, that keeps the gasses separated. Could be
done as sort of a "bag" to cause minimal additional pressure
difference. That would also allow use of relatively stiff
materials that are more gas-tight. Apparently, there
have been some materials break-throughs in the recent past,
see for example

http://heliosairships.com/sir-andre-...tight-graphene

Maybe that is the reason we are getting these disks now.
Running disks in Helium must have been tried ages ago,
but keeping the Helium in seems to be really tricky,
according to the link.

Arno
--
Arno Wagner, Dr. sc. techn., Dipl. Inform., CISSP -- Email: (E-Mail Removed)
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----
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