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Comment by ck2 | Hacker News Reader

I don't trust any of these helium filled drives to last more than a decade.

Helium atom is too small and leaks through everything, eventually.

Really hope I am proven wrong.

Unfortunately what backblaze is excellently documenting is not archival use.

I've got half TB and 1TB WDC drives that are over a decade old and still spin up fine, single platter and run cool and quiet even air filled.

I think 4TB is the cutoff for air-filled but not sure anymore.

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There are helium sensors in the drives. It's reported via SMART. It's monitorable.

Just a note that there are no direct helium sensors in these drives. The status is inferred indirectly through some thermal sensors, conductivity, or something similar. I've read that the readings of the helium value are not very good and that it only puts out readings with granularity steps of 10-20% each. It's not great.

Many 8 TB and even up some 12 TB I believe don't have helium. It depends on the model and manufacturer, so you have to dig into the spec sheets to figure it out.

But is the helium really required for the drive to function or is it just an efficiency thing? So that if all the helium leaks out the drive would just be slower or consume more power?

I believe the magnetic head has to float over the surface using some gas, helium allows it to get closer than regular air so it can read/write at higher density?

If it becomes a vacuum or replaced by air, helium drives will fail.

I don't trust any spinning rust for a decade, but I suppose a pre-helium model stored in good, stable conditions should still spin up in a decade.

> Helium atom is too small and leaks through everything, eventually.

Suppose the drive were encased in solid hydrogen? Hydrogen freezes at 14 K and helium boils at 4 K so there's a 10 K range where you could have both solid hydrogen and gaseous helium.

Hydrogen atoms are bigger than helium atoms, but what matters is the gaps between the hydrogen in the solid. I was unable with a bit of Googling to find out anything about the physical structure of solid hydrogen.

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