"The Helium Factor and Hard Drive Failure Rates"

Lynn McGuire wrote:

jerryab wrote:

VanguardLH wrote:

What are they going to use after the helium is gone?

Depends what they can get cheap. They might experiment with another
noble gas--or they might try hydrogen. Then again, solid state storage
might become more practical as the tech improves.

Nitrogen would be better than Helium.

Nitrogen's thermal transfer rate is abysmal. So is oxygen. That's why
[trapped] air is used as an insulator. Helium transfers heat 8 times
faster than nitrogen. Hydrogen transfers heat over 7 times faster than
nitrogen. It isn't just about adding some gas so the heads will fly a
few micrometers above the platters. It's also about heat dissipation.

In another of my posts, I gave a link to the thermal conductivity of
many gases to show why helium was chosen over nitrogen. While hydrogen
looks like a nearly equal choice to helium, hydrogen is more reactive.
Helium is an inert gas. Hydrogen is not.