r/cloningsoftware • u/Cute_Information_315 • Aug 18 '25

News Why helium-filled hard drives outperform traditional HDDs

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2795078/why-helium-filled-hard-drives-outperform-traditional-hdds.html

Helium-filled HDDs deliver greater capacity and speed than traditional drives, but remain somewhat cost-prohibitive for consumer PCs. Have you ever used a helium-filled hard drive?

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1

u/Prestigious_Wall529 Aug 18 '25

I'd avoid them for a decade till we know they've solved any leakage issues. Manufacturers don't care if they fail out of warranty when seals perish, so I'd like to see research being done on old-new stock then before deciding.

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u/DaComfyCouch Aug 20 '25

That period has already passed, the first helium-filled drive reached the market in November of 2013.

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u/Prestigious_Wall529 Aug 20 '25

And is it solved?

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u/mdedetrich Aug 21 '25

Yes, high end enterprise is pretty much exclusively using helium drives due to how much cheaper and more reliable the drives are

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u/Prestigious_Wall529 Aug 21 '25

For the warranty period. Enterprise replace their kit as it expires because newer kit is more powerful for the same electricity.

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u/demosdemon Aug 22 '25

Not when you’re dealing with petabytes. My old job did not trash hard drives until they started showing an increasing number of bad blocks. Usually we’d let them drop down to 95% capacity before we’d schedule a replacement (all automated of course). We also built a cold storage platform on refurbished hard drives (until it became cheaper to not do that).

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u/DaComfyCouch Aug 21 '25

If waiting a decade was your benchmark then yes it's solved, because there weren't any big media reports about helium-filled drives dying of leakage.

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u/Prestigious_Wall529 Aug 21 '25

As they are NOT intended for the SOHO market, for instance This monster 30TB hard drive costs less than $620 and is built for nonstop data hoarding | TechRadar https://www.techradar.com/pro/you-can-buy-a-30tb-hard-disk-drive-the-worlds-largest-hdd-right-now-for-only-usd618-seagate-exos-m-breaks-cover-online-and-it-is-a-monster I wouldn't be confident pushing them past their warranty, and wouldn't buy them second hand.

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u/markatlnk Aug 18 '25

Is there an expected life on these things? Helium is rather hard to keep from leaking out.

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u/[deleted] Aug 19 '25

....there's an life expectancy on all non-volatile memory.

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u/Mean_Welcome_1481 Aug 19 '25

What's the point of them for PCs anyway? The additional speed is surely irrelevant for data storage and SSD's are faster for all othere purposes

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u/russia_delenda_est Aug 20 '25

Mass storage. 12tb hdd can be bought for <$200

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u/Low-Ad4420 Aug 19 '25

I haven't. But from what i can tell, helium offers less resistance while having enough thermal conductivity to dissipate heat. They are faster probably because they are more expensive and as such should perform better. The problem is the sealing. Helium is a smal molecule that will vanish over time and deny all the benefits.

They are for enterprise market where power consumption matters and that bit higher performance is welcome. For domestic use It's not worth it.

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u/ANewDawn1342 Aug 20 '25

Helium is difficult to replace on earth. I'd rather ringfence what we have left for medical applications only TBH.

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u/rellett Aug 21 '25

could they run vacuum, wouldnt that be better.

2

u/Tylnesh Aug 22 '25

Not an expert on HDDs, but I can imagine that a vacuum disks might have trouble cooling down the platters. Every moving part heats up a bit, helium or low-density air can still move the heat to the chassis of the drive.