HGST Helium-filled HDDs Achieve Field-tested 2.5 Million-hour MTBF

[Ahhzz]

Doh! sorry, lost the thread heheh
Altho, to be fair, those are consumer priced drives that exceed your standards

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Helium is lower power consumption, longer life span, physically lighter, and higher density (HGST's highest currently is 8 TB).

 

[Freezer]

Sorry, I guess I don't have an understanding of "Consumer Version" To me, if I can buy it without requiring me to certify to some company that I'm this or that, it's a consumer version, even if it is high priced

Usually means they failed testing for Enterprise performance, so they're tossed in the bin and recycled to the consumer market = Lower quality.

 

[RejZoR]

Also, when they add lasers for heating the disk in the future, the helium eliminates fire risk because it is an inert gas.

Fill them with hydrogen and use lasers. It'll be jolly

 

[R-T-B]

Doh! sorry, lost the thread heheh
Altho, to be fair, those are consumer priced drives that exceed your standards

They are getting better... at least in theoretical numbers. I still don't trust them.

Fill them with hydrogen and use lasers. It'll be jolly

I'd almost buy one just for the fireworks...

 

[64K]

If they are claiming the average lifespan of this drive is 285 years of constant use then they might as well claim forever because no one will be using this drive even 20 years from now to be able to see if it even lasts 20 years. I have no idea what will replace HDDs by then. Maybe SSDs will be incredibly cheap in 20 years. I'm thinking it will be something else though that isn't practical right now but will be by then or it could be something no one has even thought of yet.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

MTBF includes repairs
MTTF does not

In other words, they're saying that if they keep servicing the drive every time it fails, it should last 285 years.

...yeah, I don't believe it either. MTTF is probably <5 years.

 

[R-T-B]

It's not quite like that with HDs. Seldom if ever are repairs considered, but they calculate it based on a batch of say 1000 confirmed working HDs. They run them for say a year, and count the number that failed. If only ~4 fail in 1000 fail in a 1 year time, they can claim say a ~225 year MTBF ((4/1000) / 1 year). They usually run a few tests like this, sometimes in even shorter increments and average them.

It's still dumb and not very realistic.

MTTF is probably <5 years.

I wouldn't be surprised if these Helium drives or any 2.0MTBF can pull 5 years. But not much more...

 

[FordGT90Concept]

If the helium doesn't escape, I could see them lasting longer than your average HDD because the internal environment is better controlled. I've got so many hard drives going on 10+ years with daily use that I almost want the failure rate to pick up so I can swap them with higher density drives.