Seagate begins volume shipments of helium filled hard drives

While not what I'd consider a "fanboy" of WD, my experience leads me to no longer donate money to Seagate so that their products can inconvenience and aggravate me. I've had a couple WD drives fail on me (laptop) but nothing like Seagate's case mounted ballast bricks have.

However, back OT, their Enterprise drives don't seem a whole lot better based on the link ED posted. The technology seems to have potential, so I'm glad other manufacturers are developing it. I don't think the rise or fall of HDD tech should ride on Seagate's implementation.

Alaric said:

While not what I'd consider a "fanboy" of WD, my experience leads me to no longer donate money to Seagate so that their products can inconvenience and aggravate me. I've had a couple WD drives fail on me (laptop) but nothing like Seagate's case mounted ballast bricks have.

However, back OT, their Enterprise drives don't seem a whole lot better based on the link ED posted. The technology seems to have potential, so I'm glad other manufacturers are developing it. I don't think the rise or fall of HDD tech should ride on Seagate's implementation.

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Using anecdotal evidence for technology is a sure fire way to wind up with headaches. We all have our favorites and brand loyalties, but to criticize one over the other, when in fact, they are all pretty much the damn same doesnt make much sense to me. To each their own.

bob4933 said:

Correct, those are models from 2012 (yes I can see the post date).
And to a few of you, any source I put up holds about as much weight as tissue paper on fire. I'd rather people stay on top of the curve themselves, and it's easier to figure out for yourself than have me show you....

That and I'm on my phone and copy pasting links suck...

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None of the models are from 2012, actually. For example:

ST3000DM001 - This 3TB drive was reviewed at the end of 2011, so I would imagine it came out sometime that year (read: not 2012).

ST33000651AS - This 3TB drive was reviewed 3/2011, so I would imagine it came out sometime that year (again, not 2012).

ST4000DM001 - Its initial release of the manual came out in 12/2013 (still not a 2012 drive).

ST4000DX001 - This was reviewed in 2015 by several reviewers. Did we all review these drives two years late?

Bob... you may have a point. I 'did some homework' on it but seemed to come up with nothing that supports your assertion RE: 2012 from backblaze as you mentioned. When you have the time, please post something that supports what you are saying more clearly. I was unable to find it in the source you mentioned. I mean, we can see that the last 4TB is 2015 somewhere, but outside of that, these were made in 2011 or 2013. That doesn't even mention the same age/older 1.5TB ones that were REALLY bad prior to it. From their article, they are swapping out with higher density drives and we do see a downward trend . Was that what you trying to get out, but just missed the year? (you know how literal I can be, LOL). In other words, it was more than one model amd more than one generation which formed that popular opinion.

If you need to correct something, which is really 'conventional wisdom/commonly held as true', it is up to you to provide links, not us to go looking for it. I can say there were better ways to handle it...this isn't something that jumps out at you like the earth being flat. Supporting evidence goes a long way to changing people's mind.

I think the link posted by ED was statistical information, not anecdotal. X number of drives failed of Y number of drives deployed, and Z brand drives were statistically over represented. Have I missed something? https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-stats-for-q2-2015/ It isn't much of a stretch to say a HDD company's enterprise grade drives would be their most reliable units. So....

Kenrou said:

Were not talking about Hindenburg Helium ? damn that was Hydrogen nvrmnd

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Interesting digression: (To me anyway. ) Hydrogen has the widest flammability limit of any combustible gas in air that I know about, making it one of the most dangerous to work with. BTU content isn't as high as natural gas (mostly methane) but that has much narrower flammability limits. Hydrogen is also very hard to contain because the molecules are so small. (The things you learn as a combustion engineer at an integrated steel mill...)

Hydrogen is used in utility generators however. There are two reasons. It has great thermal conductivity and very low viscosity making it a great coolant. Stringent operating procedures mitigate the risk.

BTU content isn't as high as natural gas (mostly methane)

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Or a drunk college student....

since you guys were talking about backblaze check out this article.
http://arstechnica.com/information-...ll-rules-the-roost-for-hard-disk-reliability/

Interesting HGST, Inc. is a owned subsidiary of Western Digital.

I have been running 4 Seagate 1TB Barracudas in RAID5 for over 4 years now. 1 drive failed. That pc is up 24/7. I am happy with Seagate's performance so far! I personally don't think the Seagate failure rate is that bad.

Just a side note the Hindenberg was not filled with helium. It was filled with hydrogen. So I dont think helium based drives are going to blow up when they get hot.

Z