Mac Mini Drive Replacement Option(s)

Where’s the fun in being logical?😊

No, you're not stupid. First the drives HGST is selling with Helium in them are "enterprise class", meaning they're supposed to be put into servers where heat can be a problem, and in addition the drives are on the order of terabytes. Heat is one of the leading killers of drives working in environments like that and helium (apparently) causes them to run much cooler and consume less power.

A few years from now it might be a viable option but right now an SSD of that size, especially if ordered and installed in bulk, would be too costly.

For the cost, however, I would think a pair of drives set up in a mirroring configuration without going the helium route would be more cost effective. Some drives are so unbelievably cheap right now you can by several for the price of just one helium drive.

I think I'll float off now….

MacBook Air? How about the MacBook Helium? You knock it off the edge of your desk and instead of falling it just sort of hovers. I'd better get to the patent office ASAP.

I can't possibly see that helium filled drive selling. I also can't see the original drive (dual SSD/HDD) mentioned in the earlier posts selling well either unless the price goes down.

The only benefit of that WD setup is that it's all in one container. It would be cheaper to buy an SSD and an HDD separately, you would have better control over the system, and you wouldn't need some of the weird unlocking software that WD requires you to use. For those that don't remember, when Mavericks was first released some of WD's proprietary software was deleting files from backups, and if I recall correctly, in some cases deleting the entire contents of the drive - it was backup software by the way.

A factor with helium, is that most containers will leak eventually. Depending

on technological limitation, cost factors, and expected life, moving parts may

outlast the helium gas before it leaks out. If it were liquid, it'd run super cool.

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2013/11/08/helium-hard-drive-using-i mmersion-cooling/

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=helium-filled+leakproof+hard+disk+drives&t=ffsb

For the value vs cost, one may need to see results of advanced unbiased testing. 😐

It sounds entirely impractical, IMHO, both functionally and cost wise.

No helium in SSDs! 😁

Maybe this is the wrong place to ask this, but with a drive like the WD "dual drive" in the original post, will that thing even be able to be accessed if rootless mode in El Capitan is enabled? What about other device drivers?

With respect to the original post and the mention of the WD dual hard drive, I think it's been dropped from their line up. Clicking on the supplied link in the original post now just takes you to the main WD page, and searching through their site the only thing I could that came close were WD "blue" SSHDs, and most of them had, in my opinion, puny amounts of flash memory. It's too bad because the idea sounded interesting.

I read somewhere, I think on this site, that SanDisk was bought by Western Digital. Here's more info if interested:

http://www.siliconbeat.com/2016/03/15/shareholders-ok-western-digital-sandisk-me rger/

That said, maybe the combination of decent sized SSDs and large HDDs in some type of super hybrid may not be that far off in the future. It would kind of put a damper on Fusion drives, I would think.

MrWilliams201 wrote:

I read somewhere, I think on this site, that SanDisk was bought by Western Digital. Here's more info if interested:

http://www.siliconbeat.com/2016/03/15/shareholders-ok-western-digital-sandisk-me rger/

That said, maybe the combination of decent sized SSDs and large HDDs in some type of super hybrid may not be that far off in the future. It would kind of put a damper on Fusion drives, I would think.

I doubt that. If WD did something like making some dual drive it would mean Apple would be buying from them unless others started doing the same thing. Right now they're free to choose any brand for any component they want.

If you're talking about the WD "dual drive" with an SSD and an HDD in one package, WD killed it. I know a few months ago they still had it on their site but it's completely gone now. Right now I can get a 3TB Toshiba HDD for about $40(US) and a 240GB SSD for about $60(US). That thing WD was making was selling for about $180(US) if I recall correctly.