That black hole image was stored on HGST He8

[Yorick]

The raw data for the image of the black hole that made the rounds was stored on 1,024 HGST He8 drives, 128 per observatory. Helium because air failed at those altitudes.

I’m feeling pretty good about my WD elements He8 whitelabels right now :).

Source: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/12/heliumfilled_disk_drives_stored_black_hole_data/

 

[Jailer]

All that for a blurry image of a black dot.

What would be really cool is if they used FreeNAS to manage the storage array.

 

[garm]

A black dot 40 micro arc seconds big is kind of impressive though

 

[Apollo]

Did they say HGST He8?
It seems the HGST NAS are no longer manufactured.
Beside Helium filled HDD is not HGST specific.

 

[Yorick]

Read the article? It says specifically HGST Helium-filled 8TB. That’s Ultrastar He8, not Deskstar NAS. The Deskstar NAS successor is WD Red.

 

[Apollo]

Read the article? It says specifically HGST Helium-filled 8TB. That’s Ultrastar He8, not Deskstar NAS. The Deskstar NAS successor is WD Red.

Don't get mad at me, I am sensitive to it.
I did go through the article quickly.

I know they wrote HGST Helium-filled 8TB drives.
It doesn't mean HGST is/was the only manufacturer of Helium-filled drives.
I do own a few HGST NAS drives but they are not 8TB but 10TB, and my understanding is that they are also Helium-filled as well.

The reason manufacturers moved to Helium-filled drive is due to the gas density difference, and as such, they can design a more compact drive/head/platter system.
That way they can pack more bytes out of the enclosure.

You can look at Seagate as well:
ST12000NM0007

https://www.anandtech.com/tag/helium-hdd

 

[Yorick]

I'm not mad :).

"It doesn't mean HGST is/was the only manufacturer of Helium-filled drives. "

Nope, just means those were used here.

" do own a few HGST NAS drives but they are not 8TB but 10TB, and my understanding is that they are also Helium-filled as well. "

You should be able to see that fairly easily - does it or does it not have a hole + filter for air. From what I can see, they were never marketed as helium-filled, and the WD Red, their successor, aren't. But I can't find pictures of them, they seem to be rare beasts.

The Ultrastar He8 and He10 are helium-filled.

In this case they went from 4TB air to 8TB helium, specifically HGST.

 

[Apollo]

You should be able to see that fairly easily - does it or does it not have a hole + filter for air. From what I can see, they were never marketed as helium-filled, and the WD Red, their successor, aren't. But I can't find pictures of them, they seem to be rare beasts.

I can't see any holes, maybe it is black. I don't have the drives next to me to check.
The drives have their top plate welded as best can be seen on the picture.

 

[Ericloewe]

Flat tops are typical of helium drives.