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These helium-filled drives always make me twitchy and worried. I know they've come up with new seals to keep the second-smallest atom from leaking out, but I'd
by fencepost 10y ago
These helium-filled drives always make me twitchy and worried. I know they've come up with new seals to keep the second-smallest atom from leaking out, but I'd really like to know what the lifespan of these drives will really be.
That said, in the datacenter environments where they're pushing these hopefully the drives will be better monitored and replaced regularly as opposed to the consumer and small business market where there are still people who will give up their XP when you pry it from their cold virus-infested 15-year old HDs.
- effie 10y agoFun fact: the helium atom is actually much smaller than the hydrogen atom. See https://www.webelements.com/helium/atom_sizes.html https://www.webelements.com/helium/atom_sizes.html
- fencepost 10y agoNot clear where that's coming from, that site lists the bond length for HeHe as 300pm but for HH it's around 75 which would make Hydrogen ~1/4 the size of helium. On the scale of individual atoms I don't remember enough about my chemistry and physics courses to recall whether there's supposed to be much physical difference between the "size" of the region where the first 2 electrons are between different atoms, nor do I know if that's being conceptualized as orbits, shells, abstract concepts of energy levels of something even weirder these days.
- effie 10y agoI think the helium in the harddrive consists mostly of single independently moving atoms, not molecules of two. Those have very small binding energy, much smaller compared to kT.