WD Ultrastar He6, world’s first Helium-filled 6TB hard drive

Ultrastar He6 6TB hard drive filled with Helium

Today Western Digital is introducing the Ultrastar He6, the first 6TB hard drive filled with Helium gas. Although, the future of storage seems to be in the cloud and in Solid-State Drives, rotating platters hard drives are still alive and pushing boundaries. The new 6-terabyte drive from WD is another type hard drive hermetically sealed and filled with Helium gas, which according to the company, it allows to cram more platters in the same physical space, consume less power, reduces noise, and optimizes lifespan of the product.

The innovation of filling up the enclosure with Helium gas is to reduce drag when the rotating platters are spinning at thousands of times per minute, which also allows to add more platters in the same 3.5-inch enclosure, up to 7 disks instead of 5, achieving a maximum capacity of 6TB.

Helium Western Digital hard drive

And because the way they are built, the HDDs are sumergibles, which makes them perfect for immersion-cooled data centers.

The new Ultrastar He6 Helium-filled drives are being target to corporations, some companies already using this new hermetically sealed hard drives are Huawei, HP, Netflix, and CERN. However, we’ll soon see these drives on traditional desktop computers.

Source HGST a Western Digital company

About the author

Mauro Huculak is a Windows How-To Expert who started Pureinfotech in 2010 as an independent online publication. He has also been a Windows Central contributor for nearly a decade. Mauro has over 14 years of experience writing comprehensive guides and creating professional videos about Windows and software, including Android and Linux. Before becoming a technology writer, he was an IT administrator for seven years. In total, Mauro has over 20 years of combined experience in technology. Throughout his career, he achieved different professional certifications from Microsoft (MSCA), Cisco (CCNP), VMware (VCP), and CompTIA (A+ and Network+), and he has been recognized as a Microsoft MVP for many years. You can follow him on X (Twitter), YouTube, LinkedIn and About.me.