I suppose if you need a massive storage drive something like this would be useful, also need to read up a bit more on this helium tech and what the benefits of it are but it seems to be seeing some growth so it must have some benefit. (Lighter than air thus less resistance for the spindle I think I remember reading for one thing.) (EDIT: Yeah it seems density is a major thing for this method.) Wonder how the HDD looks like IE how many platters it's using for this too, 6x 2TB ones perhaps? Nice cache size too for that and that other 8 TB model although perhaps a bit more than needed due to other bottlenecks, review would be interesting in that regard but I guess as usual these tend to hover around 100 MB/s during peak condition and then down to the usual 20 - 30 MB/s or lower for most scenarios. (Multiple smaller files and all that.) Sudden data loss would be a pain too if the drive is near filled with stuff when it happens, good backups for the more important content might be useful. (Certain media is probably ill advised to store on cloud storage though ha ha, well that and certain other sensitive data of course.) EDIT: Storage and speed and reliability would be amazing to have it all combined though, doubt the component shortages will make that anything more than a dream for quite some time still and TB+ sized SSD's also have a pretty hefty cost. EDIT: Well just some random thoughts, glad to see HDD improvements still though SSD's have come a long way in just a few years too. (Still probably room for improvement for both though.)

JonasBeckman:

I suppose if you need a massive storage drive something like this would be useful Sudden data loss would be a pain too if the drive is near filled with stuff when it happens, good backups for the more important content might be useful. (Certain media is probably ill advised to store on cloud storage though ha ha, well that and certain other sensitive data of course.)

WD Golds are enterprise-class hardware (though for whatever reason there are no SAS models, that I know of). These aren't meant for the average person; these are what companies use for websites like Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Dropbox, SoundCloud, etc, where capacity matters most. Also, RAID1 or RAID10 are a must for such servers, so the worry about data loss shouldn't be a big deal. All that being said, it's likely cheaper and more [physical] space efficient to use 12TB HDDs in RAID than it is to get an equivalent of SSDs, without RAID. SSDs for enterprise use are good for websites like Google, Pandora, Amazon, eBay, etc, where speed and efficiency matters more than capacity.

kastriot:

Why so expensive?

12TB, 256MB of cache, and helium (for increased reliability) for $522 is expensive to you? Have you considered the alternatives? Seems like a major bargain to me, even when ignoring SSDs.

Oxygen causes all sorts of problems for many electrical devices because it bonds very well with H2 and then causes Oxidation within tiny pours which is the main cause of copper turning green, in other words corrosion will happen with oxygen present. Any of the inert gases would be better. Lower noise, less resistance of moving parts = less friction, probably meaning slightly less heat. I believe it improves overall returning failures too. I think inert gases have been used for years now and it's not a new thing.

kastriot:

Why so expensive?

it's not so expensive if you compare seagate 10 To to WD gold 10 To there is only 10 Euro in favor of seagate , and if you compare WD red pro 8To to WD gold 8To you get them at same price. WD gold series are very well placed in price. For sure you have not the price/space 's ratio of the 4 To, wich sell in huge quantity... but for data center having lot of 12To is better than lot of 4To.

Reddoguk:

Oxygen causes all sorts of problems for many electrical devices because it bonds very well with H2 and then causes Oxidation within tiny pours which is the main cause of copper turning green, in other words corrosion will happen with oxygen present. Any of the inert gases would be better. Lower noise, less resistance of moving parts = less friction, probably meaning slightly less heat. I believe it improves overall returning failures too. I think inert gases have been used for years now and it's not a new thing.

it SHOULD be like that... but right now it's still young... and i don't see WD put it on market with high probability of fail. Anyway we will see in future.

Reddoguk:

Oxygen causes all sorts of problems for many electrical devices because it bonds very well with H2 and then causes Oxidation within tiny pours which is the main cause of copper turning green, in other words corrosion will happen with oxygen present. Any of the inert gases would be better. Lower noise, less resistance of moving parts = less friction, probably meaning slightly less heat. I believe it improves overall returning failures too. I think inert gases have been used for years now and it's not a new thing.

Rust doesn't occur because of hydrogen... in fact many materials (like copper or steel) will rust when exposed to water, by removing the hydrogen bond, and having the oxygen bonded with the metal instead and the hydrogen just drifts off. Regardless, HDD platters are very resistant to corrosion - rust is not the reason they use helium. If just any inert/noble gas were ok, why use helium when argon is so much, much cheaper? From what I can tell, they use helium because of it's low density (and therefore lowering the resistance on the spinning on the platters) and it's modest thermal conductivity (for a gas), while remaining inert and non-toxic. Argon is much heavier and is a terrible thermal conductor, so those properties alone must be why it wasn't chosen over helium. They don't use hydrogen because that could damage the rubber seals of the drive, and hydrogen is a fire hazard. I'm not sure how it fares for thermal conductivity.

schmidtbag:

Rust doesn't occur because of hydrogen...

rust occur with iron (all number) with oxygen... exept iron we talk about oxydation... even organic are touched: so people find that replacing oxygen with hydrogen (inert gaz) save from this (also make possible to keep apple nearly a year with few alteration lol 🙂 ) Hellium is more cold and less dense as previous people have posted wich is perfect for HDD (less hot and still fast)

rl66:

rust occur with iron (all number) with oxygen... exept iron we talk about oxydation... even organic are touched: so people find that replacing oxygen with hydrogen (inert gaz) save from this (also make possible to keep apple nearly a year with few alteration lol 🙂 )

I'm aware iron rusts from oxygen, I'm just saying hydrogen has very little to do with rust. Also, hydrogen isn't inert, in fact it is very much the opposite. Despite having less mass than helium, people don't use hydrogen in party balloons because in the event of a spark, it explodes. This is also why you can use hydrogen in 4-stroke combustion engines.

Hellium is more cold and less dense as previous people have posted wich is perfect for HDD (less hot and still fast)

There is no such thing as a cold[er] element. All elements can be the same temperature. As I stated before, helium is more thermally conductive (compared to argon or ambient air), which means it can help transfer heat away from the HDD platters better than the alternatives.

it's more the way it expense that is dangerous, and in engine it's the chimical reaction that you can do that is usefull (same as water injection with combustible in chamber when a certain temperature is reached... unless it destroy the engine). The only side effect is for some alliage that react with it. but exept H3 that is unstable H1 and H2 are enough stable to don't need licence or particular knowledge to buy it... (sadly not as the N2O4 ->N2O ... wich is really hard to get here and very usefull for drag racing grrr... )