HGST’s Helium-Filled Ultrastar He10 10TB HDD Now Shipping

The world’s first 10TB perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) hard disk drive is now officially shipping and it is naturally HGST’s helium-filled Ultrastar He10. This is the third generation helium drives out of the Western Digital Corporation and it offers an impressive 25% increase in capacity over the previous generation.

Customers can enjoy an overall decreased total costs of ownership thanks to the increase in capacity. The new 10TB HGST Ultrastar He10 uses 56% fewer watts per TB capacity compared to traditional air-filled HDDs. WDC expects its 10TB drives to be a key enabler of video, photo, business and other cloud-based applications, and that it will be a cornerstone for public and private cloud deployments.

The Ultrastar He10 isn’t just the first 10TB PMR drive to hit the market, it also comes with the highest reliability rating and features an impressive 2.5 million hours before meantime failure rating. The drives are also backed by 5-year limited warranty.

There are both 6Gbps and 12Gbps SATA and SAS versions as well as Instant Secure Erase (ISE) and Self-Encrypting Drive (SED) options. The drive further features a 256MB data buffer and a 7200 RPM rotation speed. The average access latency is 4.16ms and the 10TB Ultrastar He10 is rated for a sustained transfer rate of 249MB/s with seek times of 8ms. With a power consumption of just 6.8W during operating and 5W when idle, you get an effective power consumption of just 0.50W per TB storage. Impressive.