{"id":29161,"date":"2015-04-16T15:48:06","date_gmt":"2015-04-16T22:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/?p=29161"},"modified":"2021-08-13T03:36:14","modified_gmt":"2021-08-13T10:36:14","slug":"smart-22-is-a-gas-gas-gas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/smart-22-is-a-gas-gas-gas\/","title":{"rendered":"SMART 22 Is a Gas, Gas, Gas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-29171\" src=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/blog_helium_pod-v1.jpg\" alt=\"Backblaze Helium Pod\" width=\"720\" height=\"405\" srcset=\"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/blog_helium_pod-v1.jpg 720w, https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/blog_helium_pod-v1-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/blog_helium_pod-v1-560x315.jpg 560w, https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/blog_helium_pod-v1-220x124.jpg 220w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\" \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"bzdropcap\">We recently filled a Backblaze <a href=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/cloud-storage\/resources\/storage-pod\">Storage Pod<\/a> with 45 <a title=\"HGST 8TB Helium Hard Drive\" href=\"http:\/\/www.hgst.com\/hard-drives\/enterprise-hard-drives\/enterprise-sas-drives\/ultrastar-he8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">HGST Ultrastar\u00ae He8<\/a> hard drives. For the uninitiated, these are 8TB drives filled with helium. The helium, so says the literature, allows the drives to run cooler and quieter, and reduces power consumption.<\/p>\n<p>When we wire up a new <a href=\"\/blog\/life-and-times-of-a-backblaze-hard-drive\/\">hard drive<\/a> model into our infrastructure, one of the things we need to do is figure out which <a title=\"Hard Drive Smart Stats\" href=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/hard-drive-smart-stats\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">SMART attributes the drive reports<\/a>, since nearly every different drive model reports a slightly different set of attributes. Below are the first few <a href=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog-smart-stats-2014-8.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">SMART attributes<\/a> reported by one of the <a href=\"\/blog\/hgst-8tb-drives-helium-makes-them-fly\/\">8TB HGST<\/a> drives:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-29211\" src=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/blog-smart-table.png\" alt=\"Smart Attribute 22\" width=\"701\" height=\"322\" srcset=\"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/blog-smart-table.png 701w, https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/blog-smart-table-300x138.png 300w, https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/blog-smart-table-560x257.png 560w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 701px) 100vw, 701px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The attribute highlighted in <span style=\"color: red;\">red<\/span> is SMART 22, and we had never seen that one before. We researched this &#8220;Unknown_Attribute&#8221; and couldn\u2019t find anything online so we asked the HGST folks. They responded by saying that attribute 22 is the status of the helium in a drive. It is a pre-fail attribute that trips once the drive detects that the internal environment is out of specification. They did not share the amount of helium in a given drive or the \u201ctrip points\u201d related to the amount of helium although there is a normalized threshold value of \u201c25\u201d listed.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ll be monitoring this Helium filled Pod over the next several weeks and let you know how things go. In the meantime, feel free to impress your colleagues with your newfound SMART 22 knowledge. And just for fun, here are a handful of helium facts&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The atomic number of helium is 2.<\/li>\n<li>Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe with helium atoms making up a quarter of the mass in the Universe, but it is much less common on Earth.<\/li>\n<li>Helium is so light that Earth\u2019s gravity is not strong enough to hold on to it. When helium atoms are released into the atmosphere, they rise until they escape into space.<\/li>\n<li>Helium exists in Earth\u2019s atmosphere only because it is constantly resupplied from two sources\u2014decay of radioactive elements on Earth, and cosmic rays, about 9% of which are high-energy helium nuclei.<\/li>\n<li>The helium we buy in cylinders is produced by the natural radioactive decay of radioactive elements in the earth\u2019s crust\u2014principally thorium and uranium.<\/li>\n<li>Current world production of helium is over 30,000 metric tons a year. Helium has been accumulating for many millions of years in a few natural gas fields, therefore we can currently extract more each year than is being created by uranium and thorium decay.<\/li>\n<li>Helium is colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, and inert.<\/li>\n<li>Helium makes up 0.0005% of all the air we breathe!<\/li>\n<li>Inhaling helium temporarily changes the sound of a person&#8217;s voice. Though helium is non-toxic, breathing it can result in asphyxiation due to oxygen deprivation.<\/li>\n<li>At temperatures close to absolute zero, helium condenses to a liquid with amazing properties\u2014the properties of a superfluid, flowing with zero friction up and over the walls of containers.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>Sources:<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.chemicool.com\/elements\/helium-facts.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">www.chemicool.com\/elements\/helium-facts.html<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thoughtco.com\/helium-element-facts-606473\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">chemistry.about.com\/od\/elementfacts\/a\/10-helium-facts.htm<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>FYI, if the <a href=\"\/blog\/helium-filled-hard-drive-failure-rates\/\">helium drives<\/a> don&#8217;t work out, we&#8217;ve got another use for the helium.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-29181\" src=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/blog-helium-shark.png\" alt=\"blog-helium-shark\" width=\"700\" height=\"391\" srcset=\"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/blog-helium-shark.png 700w, https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/blog-helium-shark-300x168.png 300w, https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/blog-helium-shark-560x313.png 560w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We recently filled a Backblaze Storage Pod with 45 HGST Ultrastar\u00ae He8 hard drives. For the uninitiated, these are 8TB drives filled with helium. The helium, so says the literature, allows the drives to run cooler and quieter, and reduces power consumption. When we wire up a new hard drive model into our infrastructure, one&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/smart-22-is-a-gas-gas-gas\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">SMART 22 Is a Gas, Gas, Gas<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":29171,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[131],"tags":[470],"class_list":["post-29161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-backblaze-bits","tag-newsletter","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>SMART Hard Drive Attributes: SMART 22 is a Gas Gas Gas<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"We recently filled a Backblaze Storage Pod with 45 HGST Ultrastar\u00ae He8 hard drives. For the uninitiated, these are 8TB drives filled with helium. The\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/smart-22-is-a-gas-gas-gas\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"SMART Hard Drive Attributes: SMART 22 is a Gas Gas Gas\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We recently filled a Backblaze Storage Pod with 45 HGST Ultrastar\u00ae He8 hard drives. For the uninitiated, these are 8TB drives filled with helium. The\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/smart-22-is-a-gas-gas-gas\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage &amp; Cloud Backup\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/backblaze\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-04-16T22:48:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-08-13T10:36:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/blog_helium_pod-v1.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"405\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Andy Klein\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@backblaze\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@backblaze\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Andy Klein\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"SMART Hard Drive Attributes: SMART 22 is a Gas Gas Gas","description":"We recently filled a Backblaze Storage Pod with 45 HGST Ultrastar\u00ae He8 hard drives. 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