Hitachi Specialists, for some time worked for the Western Digital, in September last year announced plans to release to the market in 2013, hard disks filled with helium. According to the inventors, helium environment can increase the recording density on magnetic platters, and put seven platters inside 3.5 "instead of the current five. Energy consumption level is reduced by 23%, the temperature is more favorable.
IHS iSuppliExperts say that after the helium-filled hard drives on the market in the fourth quarter this year, WD will significantly increase chances of leadership in the drive for corporate use. Now Seagate share accounted for 48% of the segment, WD content with 45%, the remaining 7% is Toshiba.
Hard drives, filled with helium, according to analysts, could grow by 25-50% without increasing the thickness or density. In principle, the thickness of the hard drive can even reduce by about 30% due to the dense placement of platters in a helium environment. Western Digital will be fully able to offer hard drives up to 5 TB of storage or servers.
By 2016, the size of the market filled with helium drives may exceed 100 million units. Because of the high cost of such devices they will be used only in the corporate sector.