Gone are the days of floppy disk; thank goodness! Today, the hard drive is what’s holding and transporting our precious and often critical information. But the hard drive I’m about to talk about is unlike any other.
Submitted for your approval is the first ever 10TB hard drive. It’s official name is the Western Digital Ultrastar He10. It’s still in the sampling phase, but this is only a part of Western Digital’s production push. Not only is there this 10TB helium-filled hard drive, there is the 8TB helium-filled hard drive and a 6TB air-filled hard drive. The Western Digital 10TB has helium that is sealed in the drive. It provides less resistance than regular air and requires less power, consuming nearly a fourth less energy than other hard drives. This 10TB drive uses SMR, or shingled magnetic recording. This increases areal density, which is especially good for cloud and cold storage. The Western Digital 6TB air-filled hard drive is being shipped. The Western Digital Ultrastar He10 is very much in testing phase. I have no information on a debut date, so don’t go rushing to your computer store just yet.
But when this comes out, it shouldn’t be as expensive as one may think. The 6TB goes for around $400-$500. The 10TB is suspected to go around $1,000 when the shipping, selling and buying starts. Western Digital claims this drive will have the lowest cost per gigabyte. I guess we’ll see. Keep in mind this will be a novelty item, the first of it’s kind. I wonder if that will factor into the pricing, and even the release date of the Ultrastar He10. I’m no scientist or environmentalist expert, but this sounds energy friendly. But more to the point, you can get lots and lots of data on this thing, maybe even too much (yes, I do believe there is a such thing). So is the ultimate hard drive going to be a hit or flop?