Oh this will be fun, the only gas harder to keep inside is hydrogen. While its absolutely true that you get a huge benefit in head flying by switching to helium it also means that there is pretty much a guaranteed lifetime cap on the usefulness of the drives. As someone who tries to run drives 24/7 for 3 years before tossing them this probably makes my life harder. Especially if the 'failure' mode is that they just get slower and slower as the heads have a harder and harder time staying on track as other gases migrate inside.
Filling HDDs with Helium seems like a bad idea since the Earth is running out of Helium.[1]<p>Increasing prices could very well make the technology infeasible before it even comes to market.<p>[1]<a href="http://digitaljournal.com/article/321439" rel="nofollow">http://digitaljournal.com/article/321439</a>
So why not a vacuum? Vacuumed KERS systems rotate an order of magnitude faster. I get that a KERS system can afford heavier casing than a HD but still, if your cases can hold <i>helium</i> you ought to be able to hold a reasonable vacuum too.
Something doesn't make sense here.<p>Turbulence is related to viscosity as far as I know.<p>Viscosity of air: 18.6 micropascal seconds.<p>Viscosity of helium: 20.0.<p>For comparison hydrogen is 9.0 and argon is 22.9.<p>Actually - maybe a higher viscosity is better (it causes the turbulence to die out)?<p>But in that case why not use argon? It's cheaper and a LOT easier to contain.<p>Yet the article talks about light atoms?
The link goes to the second page of a two-page article, here's a better link (all on one page):<p><a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9231220/Helium_filled_WD_drives_promise_huge_boost_in_capacity?taxonomyName=Data+Storage&taxonomyId=19" rel="nofollow">http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9231220/Helium_...</a>
This is great.. but there is an international shortage of hydrogen, and unfortunately, I think MRI scanners should have first dibs. Having said this, it will be great when nuclear fusion is cracked and there is an abundance of the stuff.