“Recently the US hard disk drive (HDD) manufacturer HGST (California) developed a HDD for company use called the “shield drive.” Filling the drive with helium gas reduces the total cost of ownership (TCO) such as those costs related to storage, electric power, cooling, and the area of system installation. The company is aiming at starting mass production around the middle of 2013.

The HDD is a magnetic supplementary memory device used with cloud and at data centers in companies and government offices. In recent years application has been expanding for use with portable information terminals, the Internet, and social media. As greater storage volume stands out, reduction of costs accompanying the rise in the TCO has become an issue.

The company had for quite some time been aware of the particular features of helium, such as the low density of gaseous helium, and decided to use this for its new HHD products. Gaseous helium has a density about 1/7 that of air. It greatly reduces the consumption of electricity for high speed revolution of the disk inside the HDD. It raises the level of freedom in mechanical design by reducing the hydrodynamic force of air given to the heads and disks within the HDD during operation, so that in one HDD numerous disks can be installed. In addition, helium has a lower hydrodynamic force, and a higher heat conductivity than regular air, all of which leads to a quiet HDD and a lowering of the temperature during operation．

As a result of this, by combining the technology which raises the storage density with this new system, with the 3.5 type HDD as the basic size, the new products can be designed with the new 7 disk structure. In addition, the TCO of the next generation products were reduced.

In September of 2012, Western Digital (WDC), a global scale HDD manufacturer and HGST parent company, held “Investor Day” in Irvine, California during which it displayed its new products with helium filled. The company succeeded in reducing electrical consumption by 23% compared to that of the conventional products.

There is increased storage due to having 2 more disks than the conventional product. There has been a great improvement in electrical consumption per terabyte which indicates the size of the data and storage unit, resulting in a decrease of about 45%. In addition, there was a reduction in operating temperature of about 4℃, which eases the cooling conditions of the system rack at the data center.

HGST, which undertook the development of the new products, regards that helium contributed to the current reduction in energy consumption, and at the same time was useful in reducing the TCO of the entire system.

A spokesperson of the marketing planning and publications departments of the Japanese branch of the company, HGST Japan, noted, “The method of helium filling, the type of supply, and the amount used are related to important manufacturing methods at the development stage so that we cannot make the details public. We are now in the midst of planning mass production of the new products in mid 2013 throughout Asia, with the exception of Japan.”

The company has manufacturing plants in the Province of Laguna in the Philippines, in Singapore, in Chonburi Province in Thailand, in the State of Sarawak in Malaysia, and in Shenzhen, China, and the view is that helium will be used there. Great expectations are being placed on this new application of helium which is already used in numerous areas such as the MRI, optical fiber, semiconductor areas, and leak test areas.

HGST was established in San Jose, California in 2003, and has on the order of 45,000 employees. In March of 2012 it became a wholly owned subsidiary of WDC.”