Data Recovery Weekly

In the article about use of helium in hard disks from Xyratex some aggressive change is offered. Helium is absolutely inert - it interacts neither with surface of platters nor other disk components. Thus, if the disk is filled with helium, the protective platter covering can be made thinner or even completely omitted. However, the side effect may arise: if the disk loses hermeticity and helium escapes, surface of platters will be oxidized quite quick and data will be lost. To kill a regular hard disk you need to open it and fill it with dust. For disk without protective covering it is enough to leave it without helium for a month. In this case it is impossible to put the disk aside and try to recover data from it, say, in a year.

Hitachi (HGST) is going to create hard disks filled with helium. Theoretically, it improves a thermal conduction and also allows getting more platters into the same form-factor. Obviously, such disk will be more difficult to repair, at least because a distance between platters decreases. It is less obvious that a vent hole (aimed to equalize a pressure inside the typical disks filled with air when the temperature changes) must be closed. Maybe incipient pressure changes will be compensated by the lesser viscosity of helium; however, it the more severe temperature limits might be introduced. Additionally, it is known that it is more difficult to hermetically seal a volume of helium rather than that of air, because helium better percolates through gaskets. Thus, we cannot conjecture about the lifetime of helium disks.