Lynn McGuire wrote:

On 9/12/2014 4:28 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
Lynn McGuire wrote:

"Seagate Ships World¢s First 8TB Hard Drives"
http://www.seagate.com/about/newsroo...ves-pr-master/

Yes, seven platters. Reminds me of the old 12 inch
winchester with the removable 10? platters.

Wait, here is WD with a 10 TB drive!

http://www.computerworld.com/article...sh-drives.html

Lynn

Ooh, helium-filled HDDs. Until you start looking at what's happening to
the helium supply market.

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/scien...ly-f6C10963426
http://phys.org/news/2013-04-probing-helium.html
http://www.popularmechanics.com/scie...rtage-10031229

So they're developing technically superior devices that rely on
deteriorating resources. Although mass production is used to lower
prices until some threshold where there is mass appeal for the product
(i.e., the product hits a price point that consumers are willing to
pay), the problem is that helium-filled drives will increase in cost as
there is more fighting over the the diminishing reserve. About when the
HDD makers would expect cost to hit the sweet spot for consumer pricing
is when helium will take off and force increases in the costs of these
HDDs. Did anyone at Seagate or WDC consider where they're going to get
the helium to put inside their HDD cases?

Maybe they already bought enough helium to last their
manufacturing for the next five years? I sure would.

Lynn

They could but they would also have to build the storage facilities to
actually have the helium rather than pay someone on the promise that the
supplier will have helium later. I suspect it would be a lot longer
than a 5-year supply they would need to accumulate in their own tanks.
They've been using air for how long now? 30 years, or more?

With air, the HDDs were not sealed. With helium, yep, they'll have to
be completely sealed. So what happens if there is a leak? Will they
add a helium sensor to detect a reduction in helium molecules? Will
they pressurized the interior to notice a reduction in pressure to
indicate helium loss? Are users expect to save a history of HDD
temperatures to notice when there is a sustained elevation in internal
temperatures indicating the loss of helium. Anything that's confined
will have a percentage of failures of that confinement, especially for
consumer-grade hardware.

If helium prices escalate as expected, the normal drop in HDD price as
the product moves from design to manufacture will get obliterated by the
rise in helium cost. With tight competition, the difference of a few
cents can make or break the sales of a product. Until there is a
resolution as to who is going to continue manufacture of helium and
perhaps how to recycle it, relying on helium is technically a win but
financially could be a loss. They talk helium but not how they're going
to ensure they have some in the future.