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A 10TB drive for your iMac? HGST’s new Ultrastar He10 uses helium, 7 platters to make it possible

he10

Although faster, cheaper solid state drives (SSDs) are winning marketshare and mindshare, makers of traditional hard disks are still working to squeeze more storage capacity inside standard 1-inch hard drive enclosures. HGST — known for its excellent G-Technology-branded G-Drives — today announced the Ultrastar He10, a 3.5-inch conventional hard drive with a staggering 10TB of storage space. But “conventional” might be the wrong word, as the drive manages to fit seven platters inside its hermetically-sealed enclosure, which is filled with helium rather than air, hence the “He” name. Measuring 1″ thick, it’s capable of fitting inside even the latest, thinnest Retina iMacs, as well as conventional external hard drive enclosures…

The Ultrastar He10 isn’t HGST’s first 10TB drive — that would be the Ultrastar Archive Ha10, introduced earlier this year — but the new model is faster for rewriting, and claimed to have a 25% longer lifespan. Ultrastar He10 is a 7200RPM drive with a 256MB data buffer, 5-year warranty, and a promised MTBF (mean time before failure) of 2.5 million hours — the type of extended longevity expected of HGST’s server-grade drives. It also promises an average latency of 4.16ms, with sustained transfer rates of 249MB/second (read) or 225MB/second (write), and 8ms seek times. HGST is offering it in 8TB or 10TB versions, as well as with SATA-III or SAS interfaces. HGST hasn’t announced pricing, but a report from Ars Technica suggests that the price will be approximately $800.

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Comments

  1. Doug Aalseth - 8 years ago

    Hmmm…. Three of these in a RAID5 NAS. I might never need to worry about backups ever again.

    • standardpull - 8 years ago

      Yep! With RAID storage this large, redundancy makes backup an old-fashion way of thinking!

      (Unless, of course, you suffer from a flood, fire, theft, raid controller failure, data corruption fault, or operator error.)

    • tehgnomearmy - 8 years ago

      RAID5 is a BAD idea especially on something as large as a 10TB drive. Its been the case ever since HDDs surpassed 2TB. WIth such large capacities rebuilds can take days while putting the array under a very heavy load, which can cause another disk to fail. RAID6 is the minimum if you care about your data. Also keeping at least a one cold spare is a good practice, so the replaced drive will have exact same performance characteristics.

    • rnc - 8 years ago

      Although RAID may sound like a good idea for backup, it’s not a backup.

      Because the hard drives work the same number of hours doing the same things, the probability of failing all drives at the same time is high.

      RAID is a solution for when you need the system to keep working even when an accident has occurred.

      Just do periodic backups.

    • Doug Aalseth - 8 years ago

      tehgnomearmy
      Yes RAID6 would be better. Actually right now I’m looking at setting up a 2 disk, RAID 1 system for archive storage of some material but mostly continuous TimeMachine and CCCloner backups from the Macs. You do make a good point about the rebuild times though. I wish I could afford a 5 bay NAS. I’d use the strategy I used when I was building servers: put some drives in and then every few months add another. This spreads out the wear and reduces the chance of multiple drives failing simultaneously.

      mc
      The RAID I’m building will mostly be a backup drive and I’m going with RAID 1 to avoid striping. Right now my MacBook Pro backs up the boot drive to a second internal drive where the DVD used to be. Then I do a monthly backup to a USB drive. My wife’s Macs only get backed up monthly to the USB drive. The new NAS will become the primary backup site for all systems, then I’ll continue the USB drive backups only from the NAS directly, and keep the USB drive at the office.

  2. Don Horne (@DonHorne) - 8 years ago

    The photographer part of me smiles while the accountant part frowns so, I’ll be waiting till the prices come down.

  3. macusercom - 8 years ago

    1-inch hard drive with 10 TB of storage? With this the iPod classic could make a huge comeback :)

  4. crewst - 8 years ago

    Just so everyone is aware, a hard drive that lasts 2.5 million hours lasts over 285 years. Hard drives have only existed for just under 60 years.

  5. shareef777 - 8 years ago

    This got me thinking. I ordered 5 3TB WD red drives for my Synology NAS two years ago for $120 each. They’re now going for $110 each. I don’t understand how they only dropped $10 in two years.

  6. Scott Lowry - 8 years ago

    How much heat does this 10TB drive generate? The newer iMacs are so thin and barely handle thermal ranges of normal HDDs. I bet putting this drive in a thin iMac would make the fans rev full blast continuously until the motors died. Then you have a HOT iMac that’s going to have other components fail from overheating.
    Seriously, how can the author of this article even think to suggest voiding your AppleCare and putting one of these in your machine to make it overheat and die? These drives are meant for ENTERPRISE. Ya know, where they have rack mount servers in rooms with dedicated air conditioning. These are NOT meant for consumers.

    • Jeremy Horwitz - 8 years ago

      The operating temperature of this drive is identical to the drives currently used in iMacs; the power consumption is identical in full operation and even lower at idle. And the article never said “crack open an iMac and install one of these drives,” just that a 10TB drive with a 3.5/1-inch form factor exists to be put in an iMac if wanted.

      ‘Seriously,’ at least take the time to check out a spec sheet before frothing at the mouth with misplaced rage.

  7. Ilko Sarafski - 8 years ago

    10TB is good. It’s really good. But! I am sure that we’ll see the very same article about SSD in… let’s say, 2020. We already “have” 1TB SSD (maybe even 2TB, I haven’t checked for a while), so for sure this market has a lot of potential. 10x for the article :)

  8. Leif Paul Ashley - 8 years ago

    10 years too late.

  9. Which iMac would I be installing this into again?