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AFAIK, all the 8TB drives were helium drives. AFAIK, the 8TB red drives came out Q1 2016 and I bought my first helium drive almost 2 years ago. HGST had 8TB helium drives almost 4 years ago and first announced (and I assume released soon after) helium HD's in 2012.you've never owned a helium filled drive in 27 years, certainly not longer than a year
every hard drive you've owned has been exposed to regular air with filtered breathing holes for pressure changes
there is near zero long term consumer experience with helium filled drives and what actually happens when the helium slowly leaks out after the second year
at $130 I had to try it myself though, I plan to get another in two year to clone it regularly
Oh I totally agree, but if one is worried about it, the warranties are not expensive. Hell, I suspect all of mine have 4 years, thanks to my CC's extended warranty, but I doubt it'll matter. I've got drives that I tossed (after wiping) that were over 7 years old and most of those had run 24x7Why not? Just re-insert it into the enclosure and RMA it under warranty if it fails within 2 years.
Agreed, but it isn't even worth the extended warranty IMO with a base of 2y, especially at $130.
I've been running multiple WD80EZZX drives for ~2 years now, the "enterprise" HGST HE8 drives on which those drives are based have been around for at least three years, and HGST was selling helium drives at least 5 years ago. So not only can WD easily measure the rate of any He diffusion in the lab during the design phase, they've got 5+ years of real world data to reference for newer designs.you've never owned a helium filled drive in 27 years, certainly not longer than a year
every hard drive you've owned has been exposed to regular air with filtered breathing holes for pressure changes
there is near zero long term consumer experience with helium filled drives and what actually happens when the helium slowly leaks out after the second year
at $130 I had to try it myself though, I plan to get another in two year to clone it regularly
In other words WD has at least a decade of lab data and at least five years of real world data backing up their current designs. If there were even a marginal risk of diffusion-related failures in 5 years WD wouldn't be offering 5 year warranties on He drives (and there is no "worse" design for consumer drives - it's all the same basic design because the expenses here are in R&D, not materials). Without WD's data nobody can say for sure what the MTBF for a diffusion failure might be, but with diffusion and normal distributions being what they are you're almost certainly talking at least 10 years if they have any confidence in a 5 year warranty window.