Hitachi Launches Helium powered Hard Drive with 50% More Storage Capacity

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“Need to store more data, but no more space is left on the hard drive”, “Hard drive is running out of space, but still have more data to save ”, “Cannot afford hard drive upgrade, where to store more data?”

What you have just read above are neither the questions nor the ways someone is making fun of others. In fact, mentioned above are the real-time scenarios that people around the globe have come across while managing their personal stuff, such as movies, photo, audio and video files, and more. Imagine if you encounter a similar situation, is there any way you can some how manage you data? I guess! You do not even want to respond to this question because the situation will surely lead to data loss, which is not acceptable at any cost indeed.

With this post, I am enlightening upon a more efficient way to manage all your storage related needs without making you have to store data on multiple drives, and the same will provide you up to 50 percent more space to store your data. Well, I am talking about the ‘Helium-powered Technology’ that a Japanese data storage company, namely Hitachi, has implemented to develop an Ultra He6 hard drive.

Helium-powered Technology
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HGST (Hitachi Global Storage Technologies) experimented and found out that helium can be used to stored data in compacted form, keeping the information intact. HGST’s Ultra He6 3.4-inch hard drive is no way different from conventional hard drives in appearance. However, the company claims that it facilitates storage up to 50 % more than a traditional hard drive of equal capacity, being the fastest and the lightest in its size range. As per the technology, the low-density helium cuts down the hard drive on friction, thereby making a highly efficient use of both space and energy.

The emergence of such a storage efficient hard drive could bring a revolution in technology market, as a huge amount of data can be stored on a single hard drive. Based on this technology, HGST uses helium instead of air, which is less dense (up to 14 percent) as compared to air, which therefore provides space for central hardware along with energy efficiency. Consequently, since the number of platters is more (seven) than they usually are (five), the number of drags on the spinning disks as well as the friction is considerably less. Moreover, the temperature of the hard drive is cooler by four to five degrees.

Important: As per the developer company, the drive provides up to 50 percent more storage space, is lighter up to 38 percent, and consumes power up to 23 percent lesser as compared to other drives in similar size range. Ultimately, the hard drive provides storage space of 6 TBs, whilst other similar ones provide 4 TBs. In fact, Ultra He6 hard drive is not even HGST’s first helium-filled hard drive, but it is the very first hard drive to offer 6 TBs in a standard 3.4-inch container.

Industries Welcome Ultra He6 Hard Drive

The emergence of such a high capacity hard drive is great for websites like Netflix, streaming videos of billions of hours simultaneously for their 40 million plus customers. In fact, the director of the company, David Fullagar, says that since the new Helium He6 hard drive is a collaboration of high storage capacity and power efficiency, “we will welcome it”.

In the earlier times, many storage companies have been experimenting for years to develop helium-based hard drives. However, none of them could turn it into a reality. If we see, such types of hard drives are beyond the ken of average home users, as they do not require such large storage space. However, they are very much useful for companies, especially the ones that deal in Information Technology and/or a like field, as they have huge amount of data to store and it keeps increasing every day. Specifically, companies will be using the He6 hard drive for cold storage – storing rarely used but crucial data.

For individuals, He6 hard drive could be useful for storing his or her personal collection of movies, photos, videos, software, and more. For instance, you are a fond of movies and have a large personal collection of different genres. You might not watch them every day, but you would certainly like keeping them. Likewise, people have their personal collection of photos, which they click on different occasions, such as a birthday party, wedding anniversary, a family tour, and the like. Some even keep movies’ and music videos as their personal collection.

One of the principle of He6 hard drive is that they are hermitically sealed or you can say that they are watertight, which makes them perfect to be used in immense data centers. Because of their higher storage capacity, they are perfect to be used at servers, storing data of all the clients as a central storage unit. Well, the talks about the price of the He6 hard drive end up with no result, as HGST has not yet final a price for it. However, the company is selling the He6 drive to servers and storage array manufacturers. The daily influx of new apps, social networks, search engines, and more is high as it remains every time.

According to a report, Instagram – the popular photo sharing social network, records 3600 photos, Twitter registers 100,000 tweets, and WordPress publishes 347 blogs every minute. Such a high storage needs demand the He6 or a like storage device. In fact, the companies already have upgraded to larger servers based on the average statistics they record every day, month, or year. Since individuals keep increasing their personal collections of data, including movies, photos, and more, the day when they would be upgrading to he6 or an upcoming large storage capacity hard drive is probably not so far.

Since the helium-powered technology is very much popular these days, other storage devices manufacturing companies would certainly bring out something new to beat the record. Well, whatever and whenever new devices will arrive, no doubt that the consumers will have better choices.