The new HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8 hard drives are now shipping today. These hard drives are powered by HGST’s patented Helioseal technology, which makes use of hermetically-sealed helium-filled hard drives to provide what HGST claims is “high-capacity, high-reliability and performance.” The new drives, dubbed the HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8, further develop HGST’s helium-based technology by providing 33% higher capacity and lower power costs of up to 23%. However, although this model is just coming out the door, HGST has already announced a new 10TB model that incorporates HGST’s Helioseal technology as well as a technique known as ‘Shingled Magnetic Recording’. Shingled Magnetic Recording is a fairly new technology that rival company Seagate reckons will allow for individual drive capacities of 20TB by the year 2020. Such drives are currently a pipe dream, however, as the technology simply isn’t developed well enough yet to allow for 20 terabytes. The future is certainly looking bright for the cloud as HDD manufacturers move to increase raw storage capacity and drive performance to cater to the needs of data centers. We enthusiasts will also reap the benefits as we gain more space for our games and multimedia.
For now, however, you can expect the HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8 drives to show up at retailers within the month
