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Enclosed Server Rooms with bad Helium Drives that are about to die, anyone else feel a little lightheaded? Also why is our voices so much higher? I can't wait to install these drives.
With a sealed drive how can it run cooler than a drive constantly having gas changed?
With conventional Heating/cooling you constantly recycle the air to provide more heat or cooling as once cooled/heated air being sucked in and cooled/heated again picks up more chilling or heating. If you constantly suck in fresh air and blow out used air you don't have as efficient heating/cooling as the temperature change is limited to the amount of time that the Air is in contact with the Heating/cooling elements.
With Helium Filled Drives that are sealed the Helium must eventually suck up more of the produced heat and in no way acts to cool the drive. With the increases in Heat that must come with any sealed drive the internal pressure Increases and places more load on the seals sealing the drive which must eventually cause the seals to fail sooner rather than latter and hence the drive fail more often than a drive that holds no internal pressure.
Of course I could be entirely missing the point and they are planning on having large external Helium Reserves and Radiators to cool the drives but that seems much more complicated not to mention Expensive than the current way of keeping the heads away from the platters. Not to mention much more expensive to power which would be a major disadvantage for any Cloud Provider and immediately rule them out for the medium to bigger Cloud Providers.
Yes they currently have a problem and Helium may even solve it for the time being but I just don't buy the spin as things currently stand. Reminds me of the Old Hydraulic Drives we used to have back in the Main Frame Days which where great till they developed a Leak, you then had drive enclosures full of Hydraulic Fluid leaking on the floor or worse still, if you had the covers off the enclosure and made the mistake of running the drive even for a second or two you had a even bigger mess to clean up.
Col
With conventional Heating/cooling you constantly recycle the air to provide more heat or cooling as once cooled/heated air being sucked in and cooled/heated again picks up more chilling or heating. If you constantly suck in fresh air and blow out used air you don't have as efficient heating/cooling as the temperature change is limited to the amount of time that the Air is in contact with the Heating/cooling elements.
With Helium Filled Drives that are sealed the Helium must eventually suck up more of the produced heat and in no way acts to cool the drive. With the increases in Heat that must come with any sealed drive the internal pressure Increases and places more load on the seals sealing the drive which must eventually cause the seals to fail sooner rather than latter and hence the drive fail more often than a drive that holds no internal pressure.
Of course I could be entirely missing the point and they are planning on having large external Helium Reserves and Radiators to cool the drives but that seems much more complicated not to mention Expensive than the current way of keeping the heads away from the platters. Not to mention much more expensive to power which would be a major disadvantage for any Cloud Provider and immediately rule them out for the medium to bigger Cloud Providers.
Yes they currently have a problem and Helium may even solve it for the time being but I just don't buy the spin as things currently stand. Reminds me of the Old Hydraulic Drives we used to have back in the Main Frame Days which where great till they developed a Leak, you then had drive enclosures full of Hydraulic Fluid leaking on the floor or worse still, if you had the covers off the enclosure and made the mistake of running the drive even for a second or two you had a even bigger mess to clean up.
Col
You certainly have not gotten any Less Annoying. Cheers.
OK, HAL. Anyway.
The known benefits of using helium are not new, what Hitachi fiured out is how to keep the darn helium in the drives.
The efficiencies introduced by using helium reduce power consumption significantly per drive, even more so per terabyte, so less waste heat to transfer.. Helium has roughly 4-5 times the thermal conductivity of air, so better heat transfer.
Now, there are various things to consider here in practice, so if they published actual verified numbers, it would help. Then you wouldn't have to wonder about spin (which was a Very Good Pun, by the way). Humidity, I assume, is a controlled quantity in enterprise situations. TC varies with the temperature of the conductor. There is, as you note, a difference in the type of heat transfer (moving coolant vs. straight conduction). So there should be data plotted on curves for the normal operating temperature range and such. It wouldn't be a new thing for someone to build a worse product out of superior materials.
I think I covered, more or less, what I posted last time.
And here is the original PR:
hgst.theobviousTLD whack press-room/2012/hgst-announces-radically-new-helium-filled-hard-disk-drive-platform
OK, HAL. Anyway.
The known benefits of using helium are not new, what Hitachi fiured out is how to keep the darn helium in the drives.
The efficiencies introduced by using helium reduce power consumption significantly per drive, even more so per terabyte, so less waste heat to transfer.. Helium has roughly 4-5 times the thermal conductivity of air, so better heat transfer.
Now, there are various things to consider here in practice, so if they published actual verified numbers, it would help. Then you wouldn't have to wonder about spin (which was a Very Good Pun, by the way). Humidity, I assume, is a controlled quantity in enterprise situations. TC varies with the temperature of the conductor. There is, as you note, a difference in the type of heat transfer (moving coolant vs. straight conduction). So there should be data plotted on curves for the normal operating temperature range and such. It wouldn't be a new thing for someone to build a worse product out of superior materials.
I think I covered, more or less, what I posted last time.
And here is the original PR:
hgst.theobviousTLD whack press-room/2012/hgst-announces-radically-new-helium-filled-hard-disk-drive-platform
While the concept is commendable i also share your concern about the helium part! You can't just store the heat in the drives there must be a way to transfer it out of the "Hermetically sealed enclosure" else we might be having cases of exploding HD in the data centers!
The good side is that we are assured (assuming that there is another explanation of how this is supposed to work) of having larger capacity drives to temporarily satisfy our insatiable need for larger, faster, cooler and tinier drives. Fantastic though that they are pushing the envelope on this.
Regards
The good side is that we are assured (assuming that there is another explanation of how this is supposed to work) of having larger capacity drives to temporarily satisfy our insatiable need for larger, faster, cooler and tinier drives. Fantastic though that they are pushing the envelope on this.
Regards
But what i want to know is what happens as the Enclosed Helium starts to leak out and the performance starts to suffer as Internal Pressures decrease.
Col
Col
The technology / Science is great, but why did they choose Helium? Don't they read their science magazines, or nobody told them? Helium is the one gas we don't have left in abundance, and is likely to run out in the short term. Surely one of the other inert gases would have been a better choice. It's bad enough that we will be wasting great amounts this holiday season with people consuming it from balloons at xmas parties, now they want to put extra pressure on the resources by filling the milliards of hard drives with it. I suppose that will also push the price up as the gas gets more rare.
SB
SB
There's already talk about restricting the use of Helium in the US for medical use only since it is in short supply, can't be created, and it's needed in the medical field.
we had to sue the gas companies to get them to pay us royalties. Imagine that? They tried to convince the world it was worthless!
Errrrr......Have we forgotten about Solid State Drives and the progress they are making.
Mechanical is old technology whatever gas you stick in them.
Mechanical is old technology whatever gas you stick in them.
The article is talking about getting the most capacity out of drives. We're many years away from a world where SSDs have the bast capacity per dollar.
Science fiction, containing Helium is extremely difficult, this will never make it in light of the SDD technology.
At least so far. Anyone remember back in the late 1980s? Someone said color laptops will never happen and he was taken seriously. Even I knew that was a pantload.
As for SSDs, yes, they will eventually replace platters but as far as I know, they haven't exceeded 1TB with those yet (let alone 4TB) and they are still more expensive. They will get there eventually.
Then there is the helium shortage. Also, helium will leak out. I used to work on systems that used helium in cryogenic applications and we used a helium leak detector to make sure the connectors were tight enough to limit the leaks as much as possible.
As for SSDs, yes, they will eventually replace platters but as far as I know, they haven't exceeded 1TB with those yet (let alone 4TB) and they are still more expensive. They will get there eventually.
Then there is the helium shortage. Also, helium will leak out. I used to work on systems that used helium in cryogenic applications and we used a helium leak detector to make sure the connectors were tight enough to limit the leaks as much as possible.
Just how often do you have to refill the containment with Helium? Spent over 20 years working with helium and containing it is quite a problem. Unless the containment has been leak checked to 10 to the -10 it is just going to be a slow helium leak. Even at the high level of testing, helium permeates through many materials. Good Luck with this one!
I had forgotten the value we leak-checked to (been over 20 years). Thanks for the reminder.
Helium (HE) is limited, not easy to manufacture.
Today is is mined (if you can believe that) out of the ground.
The current HE mines are drying? up which is driving the cost of HE up.
Most Helium balloons are mostly Nitrogen+Helium, enough HE to make the balloon float.
Today is is mined (if you can believe that) out of the ground.
The current HE mines are drying? up which is driving the cost of HE up.
Most Helium balloons are mostly Nitrogen+Helium, enough HE to make the balloon float.
The best way to make Helium is by combining two Hydrogen atoms (H+H).
It is called Fusion and also release lots of energy. Maybe the excess energy from the Helium factory can be used to power the world.
Also, He is very small, it will "leak" out no matter how secure and tight the harddrive is. The good news is nothing will replace the He since nothing can leak IN.
As for temperature, He will not help, it is surface area and the speed at which you can radiate heat off that will determine the inside temperature. "Simple" but hard to solve mechanical problem.
It is called Fusion and also release lots of energy. Maybe the excess energy from the Helium factory can be used to power the world.
Also, He is very small, it will "leak" out no matter how secure and tight the harddrive is. The good news is nothing will replace the He since nothing can leak IN.
As for temperature, He will not help, it is surface area and the speed at which you can radiate heat off that will determine the inside temperature. "Simple" but hard to solve mechanical problem.
Hydrogen in its commonest form has no neutrons. Helium does. Making helium that way is really going to make the drives seriously expensive!
Yes, HE supply is dwindling fast. Once we run out, then what? Though one can argue that very little is needed for the drives, but as demand for the new HE-filled drives, the supply will end. I recommend that the industry use a renewable gas instead.
otherwise known as tritium - it makes the process of fusion easier. Just another good reason to mine it from the Moon. Also it would be better to fuse it on the Moon where gravity has less influence, to cause plasma leaks.
That very well may be correct, but I find it hard to believe that we have a) exhausted the entire supply on our planet (yes - it may be more expensive to find more, but need finds a way) and my guess is that there are other gases that would do almost as well that are available to try. The air we breathe is not clean (even when filtered) and cleaning it better would also help. I understand that it is heavier than helium. Why not Hydrogen? It is even lighter and pretty plentiful. In a closed environment, it is not a fire hazard unless it gets too hot and we know how to lower the temperature sufficiently - we already do it for our CPUs and a closed circuit water cooling system is not that expensive and with more use will be even less expensive.
Well, I suppose. But only because we're not tapping our natural gas deposits, which are 7% helium.
It is not correct that a bunch of tech-geniuses keep saving us from the brink of disaster. Which wouldn't be a disaster anyway, just a slow down.
Most, if not all, "new" technologies are not new at all. They have been thought, and researched and tried years and even decades before, but they were too expensive, or required extensive changes to other hardware, or were unreliable, or the technology to mass produce it was not yet available. Usually, it all boils down to costs.
Now, whenever we reach an impasse in ANY area of tech, be it hard-drives or sanitary-towels, companies which need to keep growing to post better and better quarters, accept those costs as investment and embrace the "new" technologies.
Most, if not all, "new" technologies are not new at all. They have been thought, and researched and tried years and even decades before, but they were too expensive, or required extensive changes to other hardware, or were unreliable, or the technology to mass produce it was not yet available. Usually, it all boils down to costs.
Now, whenever we reach an impasse in ANY area of tech, be it hard-drives or sanitary-towels, companies which need to keep growing to post better and better quarters, accept those costs as investment and embrace the "new" technologies.
will make using spinning platters obsolete anyway. The storage medium will by more like a clear block of transparent material looking like an ice cube. Lasers will read the electron attitude of each atom in the matrix.
They said that in the mid 80s. Still waiting.
We still have not mastered Holographic Data Storage so maybe some time soon when we give up on spinning platters it may become available.
Col
Col
I just posted a comment about the new technologies not being really new. And then proceeded to read the comments.
OMG. Are we a bunch of morons? And by we, I mean YOU.
First. Really?? Discussing whether we will deplet the helium in the atmosphere? Making helium from hydrogen explosions? "Need makes the way", really, what next, turning plumb into gold?
And second. Solid state, guys!! The problem with hard drives are not air, or dust or whatever. It is MOVING PARTS! All problems developed by hard-drives boil down to broken or degraded moving parts, dead motors, desync between parts. Access times can't go down because of the needs of mechanical access to 0s and 1s. Wobbling and vibrations are unavoidable.
This forum reminds me of people arguing how many angels can stand on a pinhead.
OMG. Are we a bunch of morons? And by we, I mean YOU.
First. Really?? Discussing whether we will deplet the helium in the atmosphere? Making helium from hydrogen explosions? "Need makes the way", really, what next, turning plumb into gold?
And second. Solid state, guys!! The problem with hard drives are not air, or dust or whatever. It is MOVING PARTS! All problems developed by hard-drives boil down to broken or degraded moving parts, dead motors, desync between parts. Access times can't go down because of the needs of mechanical access to 0s and 1s. Wobbling and vibrations are unavoidable.
This forum reminds me of people arguing how many angels can stand on a pinhead.
What type of Angles Christian ones or Weeping Ones?
At least the Weeping ones turn to stone when ever anyone looks at them so they are easier to spot and presumably count.
Sorry just a little Christmas Humor to lighten the day.
Col
At least the Weeping ones turn to stone when ever anyone looks at them so they are easier to spot and presumably count.
Sorry just a little Christmas Humor to lighten the day.
Col
We will have CHIPMUNKS running the place!
Well, we talk back to them of course. That day is already here and not just for us geeks. Every smartphone (well at least the iPhone and Windows Phone) talk to you and listen to you. I have never tried an Android, but my guess is that they have the capability as well. It isn't like the computer on Star Trek, but as Neil Armstrong stated over 40 years ago, 'It is a great leap for mankind' and it is going to get better. Real soon.
A computer with He Filled drives speaks how exactly?
Col
Col
If the reduced density of the gas surrounding the drive is the issue, why not hydrogen?
It is not an inert gas as Helium is but is is even lighter/less dense and in a hermetically sealed enclosure is not going to cause a fire if it is a pure hydrogen atmosphere. Helium is a bit pricier and I hope includes some process of gas recovery otherwise spinning disk prices will start climbing again to keep step with the capacity increases.
It is not an inert gas as Helium is but is is even lighter/less dense and in a hermetically sealed enclosure is not going to cause a fire if it is a pure hydrogen atmosphere. Helium is a bit pricier and I hope includes some process of gas recovery otherwise spinning disk prices will start climbing again to keep step with the capacity increases.
Helium is monatomic and thus has 3 degrees of translational freedom and zero degrees of rotational freedom (hence high "gamma"). This probably makes a considerable difference to its efficacy. The next lightest inert (and monatomic) gas is Neon, with atomic weight about 20, 10 times that of helium.
harry@, may I correct your figures? Neon is only 5 times the atomic weight of helium. Helium has a Relative Atomic Mass of 4 (2 protons + 2 neutrons).
I'd bet those alternatives will permeate the metal even faster. They are very leaky gases.
Ladies and gentlemen. You are all probably correct and all probably wasting your time. Technology moves on. Does anyone else remember the first IBM I-GB drive for the mainframe?. That was around 40 years ago and cost $75,000 for 1 GB.
Today on my PC (which is a million times more powerful than the mainframes of that era, I have over 10 TB of hard drive storage (pretty inexpensive) and my boot drive is a 1/2 GB SSD. SSD prices have come sown since my machine arrived about a year ago and they are still coming down.
I agree with the comment that mechanical moving parts is a problem and that is going the way of the dodo.
Just look at your car. Open the hood. If you can see the ground, it is probably an older car.
Technology moves on. All the stuff that is now blocking your view of the ground in your car is (I think as far as I can tell) NOT moving parts.
I don't worry about it and I view it as a temporary 'idea that works now, - but is not destined to be around forever.partially because of all the reasons mentioned, but also because it is not an issue.
IBM has recently publicly announced that they have been able to successfully write and read data at the atomic level just using a very small number of atoms. There are more than enough of those around and the read/write speed is even better than SSDs.
I don't know if and when that capability will be commonplace, but remember that your cell phone is probably more capable of processing data than the multi million dollar mainframes of a short time ago and your cell phone cost a whole lot less.
This is almost (not quite - but almost) arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin
I really think that this is a non-question. Relax. It will be resolved without depleting the currently available Helium (there is a lot more available, just costs mor to get at it) and we will probably (may already have - I am not an atomic scientist) be able to make our own sooner than you think.
Technical progress is moving at an increasing rate. Remember the story about the Patent office official who quit in the 1890s because he felt that 'everything that could be invented already had been invented and his job was irrelevant'? Well, he sure was wrong.
What we see today will be considered archaic by our own children.
People are amazing. Believe it. A couple of months ago, I was startled to watch my 3 1/2 year old granson use an ipad like he was in his teens and had been using it for years. I later found out that his mother had just picked it up that morning from the local library and had received a two minute overview from the librarian (which he had overheard because he was standing next to her) and without a single question, he wasby late morning zipping through all the kid stuff like he had been using it for years. My daughter grew up with computers in the house as both of her parents were and still are in Data Processing and we had PCs and Apple (because that's what the schools had at that time) in the house. My son who is 8 years younger than his sister was using computers before he could read and somewhat before he could really talk well.
Stop worrying. This is a non-issue.
Today on my PC (which is a million times more powerful than the mainframes of that era, I have over 10 TB of hard drive storage (pretty inexpensive) and my boot drive is a 1/2 GB SSD. SSD prices have come sown since my machine arrived about a year ago and they are still coming down.
I agree with the comment that mechanical moving parts is a problem and that is going the way of the dodo.
Just look at your car. Open the hood. If you can see the ground, it is probably an older car.
Technology moves on. All the stuff that is now blocking your view of the ground in your car is (I think as far as I can tell) NOT moving parts.
I don't worry about it and I view it as a temporary 'idea that works now, - but is not destined to be around forever.partially because of all the reasons mentioned, but also because it is not an issue.
IBM has recently publicly announced that they have been able to successfully write and read data at the atomic level just using a very small number of atoms. There are more than enough of those around and the read/write speed is even better than SSDs.
I don't know if and when that capability will be commonplace, but remember that your cell phone is probably more capable of processing data than the multi million dollar mainframes of a short time ago and your cell phone cost a whole lot less.
This is almost (not quite - but almost) arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin
I really think that this is a non-question. Relax. It will be resolved without depleting the currently available Helium (there is a lot more available, just costs mor to get at it) and we will probably (may already have - I am not an atomic scientist) be able to make our own sooner than you think.
Technical progress is moving at an increasing rate. Remember the story about the Patent office official who quit in the 1890s because he felt that 'everything that could be invented already had been invented and his job was irrelevant'? Well, he sure was wrong.
What we see today will be considered archaic by our own children.
People are amazing. Believe it. A couple of months ago, I was startled to watch my 3 1/2 year old granson use an ipad like he was in his teens and had been using it for years. I later found out that his mother had just picked it up that morning from the local library and had received a two minute overview from the librarian (which he had overheard because he was standing next to her) and without a single question, he wasby late morning zipping through all the kid stuff like he had been using it for years. My daughter grew up with computers in the house as both of her parents were and still are in Data Processing and we had PCs and Apple (because that's what the schools had at that time) in the house. My son who is 8 years younger than his sister was using computers before he could read and somewhat before he could really talk well.
Stop worrying. This is a non-issue.
It's well know that helium molecules are so small that they can pass through glass over time which is why TV cameras using vacuum tubes had a very short life in manned diving equipment which used a helium-oxygen mix to prevent divers getting 'the bends'.So how long before the helium pressure in the drive changes enough to prevent the drives working? I presume this question has been addressed.
Consider how many hard drives could be manufactured with the helium within one single floating party balloon, sold by the millions daily. That is where the waste is pervasive!
Helium is obviously used for at least two basic reasons: it is relatively inexpensive, and being the lowest in density (except for highly flammable hydrogen), it provides the least resistance and narrowest functional gap between the heads and platters
Helium is obviously used for at least two basic reasons: it is relatively inexpensive, and being the lowest in density (except for highly flammable hydrogen), it provides the least resistance and narrowest functional gap between the heads and platters
If Helium is choosen because it is light then Hydrogen would be a better choice and we have abundant. Fuel cells are already looking at Deuterium which can be extracted from sea water. If not the next gas that we have plenty is Nitrogen.
Isn't Inert and is Explosive.
Not really the type of thing you want sitting on your Kitchen Table in the Kids NB when it starts to leak.
Even a little Hydrogen makes a very big bang as well as having a very low Flash Point.
Col
Not really the type of thing you want sitting on your Kitchen Table in the Kids NB when it starts to leak.
Even a little Hydrogen makes a very big bang as well as having a very low Flash Point.
Col
Concerning the comment about using another inert gas, I would say that the atomic weight of the molecules is probably a determining issue, which would make helm the most useful inert gas for the filling of hard drives.
Concerning the limited amounts of available helium, I suspect that hydrogen would be also effective in this use, and it is readily available, and at the small amounts in a hard drive, it would not be much of a fire or explosion risk.
Concerning the limited amounts of helium, I suspect the amounts to be used in a hard drive case is very small compared to a balloon, so just stop using it in balloons and there will be plenty available. and the market place would much such an allocation, should the availability of helium become an issue.
Concerning the limited amounts of available helium, I suspect that hydrogen would be also effective in this use, and it is readily available, and at the small amounts in a hard drive, it would not be much of a fire or explosion risk.
Concerning the limited amounts of helium, I suspect the amounts to be used in a hard drive case is very small compared to a balloon, so just stop using it in balloons and there will be plenty available. and the market place would much such an allocation, should the availability of helium become an issue.
The reason they are using helium is that it is non-reactive (that's what inert means). Hydrogen is highly reactive and would combine with any compatible molecule, such as any oxygen that happened to leak into the enclosure.
I don't know about you, but I sure don't want water inside my drive enclosure!
I don't know about you, but I sure don't want water inside my drive enclosure!
Indeed, we're going to see a shortage of helium in the coming years, so this "advancement" (if you can call it that) in the tech is a moot point since it would only make the drives more expensive as helium supplies dwindle. There's also a concern about the availability of rare earth magnets, which are used in hard drives, but that's a whole other topic.
Furthermore, as was again pointed out already in another post, why are we focusing on mechanical drives when we should be working on more reliable and inexpensive forms of flash memory for SSD technology??
If manufacuturers insist on keeping platter drives around, I'd rather see more money and research poured into making the drives more reliable rather than increasing the capacities. Seriously, even with my extensive photo and video collection (trust me,... it's a LOT), it still takes me quite a while to fill up a 2TB drive and I'm only just now considering a 3TB drive as my next backup device. But, when I read the cusomer reviews on some of the world's "best rated" hard drives (consumer level, not enterprise class), I'm appalled by the frequency of DOA drives, or drives that completely fail within the first 3 months of use. The failure rate of drives made by companies like Seagate and Western Digital are unacceptably high as they stand right now.
Seriously, work on making drives BETTER, not bigger.
Furthermore, as was again pointed out already in another post, why are we focusing on mechanical drives when we should be working on more reliable and inexpensive forms of flash memory for SSD technology??
If manufacuturers insist on keeping platter drives around, I'd rather see more money and research poured into making the drives more reliable rather than increasing the capacities. Seriously, even with my extensive photo and video collection (trust me,... it's a LOT), it still takes me quite a while to fill up a 2TB drive and I'm only just now considering a 3TB drive as my next backup device. But, when I read the cusomer reviews on some of the world's "best rated" hard drives (consumer level, not enterprise class), I'm appalled by the frequency of DOA drives, or drives that completely fail within the first 3 months of use. The failure rate of drives made by companies like Seagate and Western Digital are unacceptably high as they stand right now.
Seriously, work on making drives BETTER, not bigger.
I wholeheartedly agree. I don't mind having more drives (we can go from C to Z) for capacity. Like the car manufacturer giving a 100,000 mile warranty - give me a hard drive that will be warranted for 10 years.
Space and weight are not the issue they used to be. Might as well go back to 5-1/4" drives to expand capacity. But that avoids the issue in that data is still serially read and a mechanical device is searching the areas to be read. Advance the solid state drive and have true 64bit parallel data fed to the CPU.
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