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Toshiba Unveils First FC-MAMR HDD: 18 TB, Helium Filled

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Re: Toshiba Unveils First FC-MAMR HDD: 18 TB, Helium Filled

#41

Post by system2 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #30
rbanffy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone have a number on how much Helium is produced in the Earth's crust by radioactive decay?

Not enough. It is generally known that we are using helium faster than the planet can naturally produce it. We currently get helium from natural gas deposits. In the future we might end up puling it from the air, but that would be very expensive. For many use cases it might be easier to switch to hydrogen. For those interested in SETI, excessive atmospheric helium might be a detectable techno-signature, a sign that s…

When we use the reserves completely and prices sky rocket, probably unnecessary entertainment use of it would stop.

Re: Toshiba Unveils First FC-MAMR HDD: 18 TB, Helium Filled

#42

Post by wccrawford »

burke wrote: post #2

I remember hearing somewhere that helium will slowly leak through whatever vessel you try to contain it with. I wonder if that (is true, and if so whether it) imposes some kind of maximum life on these drives. Or maybe this is only hydrogen that is this problematic.

Wouldn't the real problem be other things leaking back in? If the helium just leaves, that's a vacuum. If only helium can pass, then it's going to stay helium in there.

Re: Toshiba Unveils First FC-MAMR HDD: 18 TB, Helium Filled

#43

Post by thesz »

wccrawford wrote: post #42
burke wrote: post #2

I remember hearing somewhere that helium will slowly leak through whatever vessel you try to contain it with. I wonder if that (is true, and if so whether it) imposes some kind of maximum life on these drives. Or maybe this is only hydrogen that is this problematic.

Wouldn't the real problem be other things leaking back in? If the helium just leaves, that's a vacuum. If only helium can pass, then it's going to stay helium in there.

Helium can leak into and between crystals in the metal inside the container and container itself. That process changes dimensions and mechanical properties of construction.

In this particular case I see it as a planned deprecation, sort of.

Re: Toshiba Unveils First FC-MAMR HDD: 18 TB, Helium Filled

#44

Post by calchris42 »

wccrawford wrote: post #42
burke wrote: post #2

I remember hearing somewhere that helium will slowly leak through whatever vessel you try to contain it with. I wonder if that (is true, and if so whether it) imposes some kind of maximum life on these drives. Or maybe this is only hydrogen that is this problematic.

Wouldn't the real problem be other things leaking back in? If the helium just leaves, that's a vacuum. If only helium can pass, then it's going to stay helium in there.

I believe helium is used due to it being more effective than air at removing heat. Vacuum is significantly less effective (as in, no convection in a vacuum)

Re: Toshiba Unveils First FC-MAMR HDD: 18 TB, Helium Filled

#45

Post by ksec »

For those who haven't been following HDD closely.

Energy Assisted Magnetic Recording, EAMR is a term that sums up both MAMR, Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording and HAMR, Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording.

And this isn't the first 18TB HDD, there are 20TB HDD already. Nor the first MAMR drive. Western Digital Ultrastar DC HC550 [1] claims that title.

MAMR will bring us some incremental gains, both WD and Seagate believes HAMR is the right path in the long term. Seagate shipped [2] their first HAMR HDD only last month and my bet is that it will take another year before it trickles down to consumer market. As of the last investor conference both Seagate and WD are still aiming at 50TB HAMR HDD in 2026.

Seagate is also working on Dual-actuator Mach.2 technology, which will finally put the HDD transfer speed close to the maximum SATA 3 6Gbps speed. Two of these in RAID on a NAS we can finally saturate the 10Gbps Ethernet.

Seagate also expect to use HAMR across most range of its product to amortised the enormous R&D and component expense with HAMR. After all we have been talking about HAMR for nearly a decade. Which suggest while we might be getting bigger drive in the near future. Price / GB will likely stay flat for another few years. ( Of course that is also dependent on how fast NAND could drive its cost reduction. )

[1] https://www.westerndigital.com/products/data-center-platform...

[2] https://www.tomshardware.com/news/seagate-ships-hamr-hdds-in...

Re: Toshiba Unveils First FC-MAMR HDD: 18 TB, Helium Filled

#46

Post by tlamponi »

mcraiha wrote: post #32

At data copy rate of 100 MB/s taking a backup from one of these drives takes 50 hours.

Besides the fact that your BW is off a factor of 2.81, which would bring it to ~18.65h, note that:

* That's why they are often rather on the receiving end of backups ;-)

* Are often in RAID10 systems, for redundancy/uptime + performance, roughly doubling their bandwidth

* Delta syncs/backups exists and thus normally only something like tens to hundreds of GiB need to be actually read, that can be done i way less than an hour

Depends naturally on the whole setup and actual workload, but if you have a high data rate change between backup times you may want to go for a SSD only system using ZFS or Ceph or the like (again depending on actual use case) which could do both cheap differential syncs.

Re: Toshiba Unveils First FC-MAMR HDD: 18 TB, Helium Filled

#47

Post by temp0826 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #34
FooBarWidget wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A party balloon full of helium is a minuscule amount?

Note this is liquid helium in one operational MRI machine: "Let’s say you have an MRI scanner with the OR76 magnet with the full capacity of 1800 litres of helium. Your system consumes approximately 4% of its helium capacity per month, that sums up to 48% per year (4% 12 = 48%). That means that 864 litres are consumed per year (1800 litres 48% = 864 litres)." https://lbnmedical.com/liquid-helium-in-mri-machine/ That…

Thanks, this thread just made “number of party balloons” my new favorite unit of measure

Re: Toshiba Unveils First FC-MAMR HDD: 18 TB, Helium Filled

#48

Post by mlyle »

yummypaint wrote: post #3

This seems like a terrible use of helium from a sustainability perspective. There are some things that helium is truly essential for, like low temperature cryogenics and neutron detection. Our supply is finite and largely tied to natural gas reserves. When helium leaks out it floats into space and is gone forever. Why does the atmosphere in the drive absolutely have to be helium? Why not any other mix of inert gases…

Note that right now we're burning the natural gas either way. How much of the helium we get out depends upon market use of natural gas, and market prices about whether we even bother to capture the helium from natural gas supplies that are rich in helium.

Re: Toshiba Unveils First FC-MAMR HDD: 18 TB, Helium Filled

#49

Post by mlyle »

gibspaulding wrote: post #39
sandworm101 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note this is liquid helium in one operational MRI machine: "Let’s say you have an MRI scanner with the OR76 magnet with the full capacity of 1800 litres of helium. Your system consumes approximately 4% of its helium capacity per month, that sums up to 48% per year (4% 12 = 48%). That means that 864 litres are consumed per year (1800 litres 48% = 864 litres)." https://lbnmedical.com/liquid-helium-in-mri-machine/ That…

> "Let’s say you have an MRI scanner with the OR76 magnet with the full capacity of 1800 litres of helium. Your system consumes approximately 4% of its helium capacity per month, that sums up to 48% per year (4%12 = 48%). That means that 864 litres are consumed per year (1800 litres 48% = 864 litres)." I know this is napkin math so it doesn't really matter, but a 4% loss times 12 months would be 1-(.96^12) = 39%. Unl…

Loses a percentage of its capacity, not a percentage of the amount of helium it has.

Re: Toshiba Unveils First FC-MAMR HDD: 18 TB, Helium Filled

#50

Post by Covzire »

ksec wrote: post #45

For those who haven't been following HDD closely. Energy Assisted Magnetic Recording, EAMR is a term that sums up both MAMR, Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording and HAMR, Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording. And this isn't the first 18TB HDD, there are 20TB HDD already. Nor the first MAMR drive. Western Digital Ultrastar DC HC550 [1] claims that title. MAMR will bring us some incremental gains, both WD and Seagate bel…

Is transistor density somehow holding back magnetic storage density too or something else?
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