A Bit of Background
A helium hard drive is a mechanical hard disk drive with an internal enclosure filled with helium gas instead of oxygen. The enclosure is then hermetically sealed to slow the escape of gas. Helium creates a unique low density environment where the internal hardware can operate more efficiently resulting in less turbulence compared to air. With less rigidity in platter thickness required, this allows manufacturers to increase hard drive capacity by adding more slimmer platters into the same amount of space.
The Data Recovery Challenges
Less turbulence means less resistance so ideally opening a helium hard drive would be carried out in a helium filled environment. We have been successful in carrying out internal rework to allow access and attempt data recovery from helium hard drives in our clean room environment by using a strict and controlled process.
Cutting Open a Helium Hard Drive
Helium hard drives have a sealed aluminium top cover that is welded to its outer casting, so needs to be forcibly removed using a sharp implement. Some videos online show people using CNC mills, or saws to open the case, however we found1 that these allow small particles of metal to find their way inside the enclosure. This top cover keeps the helium gas trapped inside the hard drive. Once the external aluminium cover is removed the hard drive can then be taken into our clean room for decontamination. The internal cover can then be removed to carry out any internal rework required and then replaced once complete. The process of accessing the helium hard drive for data recovery uses the same hardware and technology as with standard hard drives. ie. Mapping used sectors, cloning to a working disk, and then extracting the files.
Parts
Helium filled disks are some of the largest on the market, so donor parts can work out expensive. In some cases the parts can cost as much as the recovery itself, especially when we need to match a certain revision or date of manufacture.
The Outcome
Recovering data from a helium disk is often a challenge, but something we’re happy to take on. Now if only all hard disks had a welded top cover, we’d never have to worry about people opening disks outside of the cleanroom any more!
Footnotes
- In testing, not with customer disks! ↩︎