Western Digital/HGST Ships 10 Million Helium-Filled HDDs Since 2013

Western Digital Corporation has shipped more than 10 million helium-filled HDDs since the company first introduced the HelioSeal platform four years ago.

First shipped in 2013, HelioSeal platform has pushed the envelope in terms of capacity and TCO benefits, becoming the highest density HDDs for massive scale-out workloads.

“Extreme capacity HDDs are increasingly a key value enabler for enterprise applications and Western Digital continues to be a technology and time-to-market leader in terms of delivering capacity-optimized enterprise HDDs,” said John Chen, VP, Trendfocus, Inc. “As cloud and traditional enterprise customers continue to develop applications that make use of all of their accessible data, high density drives will be a crucial component that enable cost-effective storage of that data at scale. Western Digital’s HelioSeal platform has proven to be a key differentiator that addresses high capacity needs.”

With roots tracing back to the first HDD manufactured 60 years ago, Western Digital delivers and reliable storage solutions that help solve challenges faced by customers in the datacenter. The HelioSeal technology complements future magnetic recording technologies, and will enable even higher density HDDs designed for enterprise applications and hyperscale workloads that require capacity to capture vast amounts of operational and historical data. Helium-based drives are also suited for applications such as IoT, search and social media.

Spanning three generations, the HelioSeal platform enables the highest density HDDs and delivers the highest HDD reliability ratings to reinforce its capabilities for use in cloud and enterprise workloads where availability and reliability are paramount concerns.

The 10 million helium HDDs, or approximately 76EB of storage capacity, are a testament to energy efficiency at scale. As architects continue to design for hyperscale cloud applications, 76EB of data stored on 10TB helium-filled drives would save over 1 million KWh of operating power1 each day, about half the power required for 8TB air-filled drives. The energy saved in one day of operation from these drives would be enough to power about 35,000 U.S. homes for the same day, illustrating how the efficiency of the HelioSeal line can help data center architects meet eco-environmental goals and requirements.

“Western Digital is firmly committed to enabling an era where data is abundant and immediately accessible,” said Brendan Collins, VP of product marketing, Western Digital. “The velocity at which Western Digital achieved this milestone underscores the avid need for data ubiquity across cloud and on-premise. Architects who design for hyperscale environments are sparking rapid innovation because they understand how data fluency across an organization informs smarter decisions. This is key to unlocking the power of data.”

Western Digital offers the HelioSeal platform on its enterprise products (under its HGST product brand) as Ultrastar He10 and Ultrastar He8.