Seagate ships 10TB helium drives in volume

Seagate has announced that it has begun volume shipment of its 10TB helium-filled enterprise-centric hard drives, the Enterprise Capacity 3.5 10TB, as it continues its battle with rival Western Digital.

HGST, the storage company formerly known as Hitachi and now a Western Digital subsidiary, was the first to announce helium-filled hard drives back in 2012. By replacing the air inside a hard drive with helium drag on the platters is reduced, buffeting on the disks and head-positioning arm minimised, and excess heat more readily transferred to the external casing. In short, it's all positives - aside from the slight issue surrounding the growing scarcity of the lighter-than-air element and its various uses for scientific and medical equipment, alleviated solely by the very small volumes of gas required.

A year later Western Digital announced a 6TB helium-filled drive, followed by a 10TB version. Seagate joined the 10TB helium market in January this year, a month after Western Digital's 10TB HelioSeal drives hit the open market, but was merely sampling at the time; now, three months on, the company has officially launched the drive with volume availability.

Although Seagate has indicated that the drive is now available from international partners, stock and pricing information has yet to be confirmed - but with Western Digital's equivalent HGST Ultrastar HE10 10TB drive costing around £750, don't expect Seagate's version to be priced very much cheaper.