Western Digital HelioSeal helium filled drives enter consumer market

Till now, Helium filled hard drives were used only in data centres (eg : Western Digital HelioSeal technology). Unlike normal hard drive that contain air, these hard drives are filled with Helium. Helium reduces internal friction and the result is 23% lower power consumption and 40% higher capacities. This week, Western Digital has announced that My Cloud personal storage devices, My Book external Hard Drives, WD Red, WD Red Pro and WD Purple hard drives will have HelioSeal helium-technology. Thanks to the HelioSeal, WD managed to launch a whopping 8TB variant in these line ups. The new drives will be available from first half of 2016. My Book and My Book for Mac 8TB variants are already available in USAfor $299.99.

“We are committed to integrating high-performance, high-capacity and high-quality drives into all of our solutions,” said Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing, Western Digital Corporation. “No matter what market or application, we have a solution – whether it’s for small businesses, channel partners, enterprises or end-users. Our goal is to deliver the best and most competitive solutions on the market.”

The following models will support RAID 0 configuration (for 8TB variants):

External Hard Drives

• My Book/My Book for Mac — An external hard drive solution that provides complete backup and storage with USB connectivity.
• My Book Duo/My Book Pro – Dual-drive external hard drive solutions which provide ultra-fast storage in RAID-0 and complete backup and storage with USB and/or Thunderbolt connectivity and up to 16 TB capacity.
• My Cloud/My Cloud Mirror – A personal storage device that plugs into your router at home to provide consumers with their very own private cloud.
• My Cloud EX2 Ultra – As part of the creative professional series of My Cloud products, the My Cloud EX2 Ultra provides high-performance two-bay network attached storage.

Internal Hard Drives

• WD Purple – Engineered for 24/7, always-on, high-definition surveillance security systems that use up to eight hard drives and up to 32 cameras
• WD Red – Optimized for personal, home and small business NAS (network attached storage) systems
• WD Red Pro – Optimized for small business and enterprise class NAS systems with high performance and reliability.