6TB in a 3.5 inch form factor... HGST (part of Western Digital) announced a line of new hard drives packing 6TB on 7 platters into a 3.5 inch form factor. The advance was enabled by their perfection of helium-filling the platter enclosure (given the small size of those molecules, that's quite a trick). The low density of the helium reduces aerodynamic drag on the rotating platters and moving heads, making the whole thing more efficient. They're also hermetically sealed, so they can even be liquid-cooled. The announcement says they're in general availability, though I was unable to find them for sale anywhere.
Every time I think we're about to write the epitaph for moving magnetic media, one of the vendors comes up with some new trick to extend hard drive capabilities even further. This drive holds just over 1 billion times as much data as my first hard drive – and that one was the size of a washing machine...
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