The constant need to increase the storage capacity of hard drives places relentless pressure on manufacturers.
What’s more, energy consumption must be reduced while speed is increased, which sometimes causes enormous problems…
Recently, helium has come to be seen as an essential component in hard drive production. Indeed, its properties help substantially improve the read and write performance of drives.
A helium hard drive differs from conventional hard drives, since it takes advantage of the particular lightness of this gas to increase the rotation speed of the platters as well as the storage density of the medium.
It is thanks to its minimal mass as well as its excellent thermal conductivity that positioning can be improved, allowing manufacturers to achieve better precision and much higher densities.
Detecting and resolving leaks is therefore essential, as they risk causing the rejection of many drives during production or exposing them to field failures caused by positioning errors resulting from helium loss.
The importance of backing up your data
Nowadays, data loss is an everyday occurrence, regardless of your computer’s storage medium or operating system. Recovering your data is a complex process that requires the intervention of a professional.
Numerous technological solutions, however, make it possible to remedy this effectively.
In any case, it is thanks to a daily backup of your data that you will be able to continue your activity with peace of mind in the event of loss.
To do this, you can use any storage medium:
- USB flash drive
- HDD (hard drive) or external SSD
- NAS
- Cloud server (such as Google Drive or Dropbox)
Thus, after any incident, recovering your data will be much simpler if you have one or more of these services in place.
How to remedy these leaks?
Among the various approaches to detecting leaks is the use of sensor-based detectors. Cleaning them can take twice as long, especially in the event of exposure to a significant leak, and their sensitivity level is rather limited, or even inaccurate in the presence of a high level of helium.
Fortunately, next-generation helium leak detectors, based on the mass spectrometer principle, are capable of processing a significant leak in under a minute and providing accurate readings. This is also the case in the presence of a high level of helium.
In addition, these state-of-the-art detectors are capable of detecting very small leaks.
This shortens the test cycle since better sensitivity means faster detection.
Note that any deviation in the position of the read or write heads is likely to disrupt the device’s operation. The seek time and access time required for data read from and written to the drive are increased as a result.
If the deviations are larger, a data track risks overwriting a neighboring track. In this situation, it constitutes a failure and data loss becomes inevitable.
Using a cleanroom
A cleanroom is a work area subject to controlled temperature and humidity levels in order to protect sensitive devices from any form of contamination, and to recover lost data with complete peace of mind.
Among its usual characteristics are:
- Walls and ceilings made of synthetic material
- External lighting source
- Continuous supply of clean air (dust-free)
It must be cleaned every day to avoid any contamination.
The use of cleanroom technology is essential for carrying out basic recovery procedures.
For a physically damaged hard drive, for example, it must be subjected to a special procedure to recover the data in a cleanroom.
This guarantees the original condition of the medium.
Note that without a cleanroom, there is a risk that contaminating substances will settle on the platters.
Thus, once the hard drive’s platters are soiled, the heads may catch on the particles and scratch the surface of the platter.
This can result in data loss, and a permanent inability to recover it.
Chronodisk – French laboratory specializing in data recovery
Do you have a helium hard drive that was recently damaged, and are you determined to recover the data it contained, which is now lost?
Trusting us means, above all, working with a company with over 15 years of experience and expertise in recovering your data.
So don’t hesitate any longer, contact Chronodisk now.