14 DAY TRIAL // A few days ago, HGST and Western Digital, as the owner of the former Hitachi, introduced seven-platter HDDs filled with helium. Now, those HDDs have been adopted by Huawei for use in its storage systems.
It's no mystery why Huawei would do this. After all, this is a seven-platter, 6TB storage drive that is as large as a 5-platter, normal unit, and also possesses 23 percent lower idle power per drive, plus 49 percent better watts-per-TB.
It's even half the weight of a regular 3.5-inch drive, while weight-per-TB is 38 percent lower (max capacity of 5-platter drives is 4 TB).
The Helium that replaces the air inside these HDDs is the one responsible for these advantages.
Hiawei will complement the assets of the 6 TB HGST Helium-filled 7-platter HDDs with its Immersion Cooling Solution (ICS, reduces heat while cutting costs of ownership).