Western Digital to begin shipping hard drives packed with helium

The only news you ever really hear about hard drives is about lower prices and increased storage, but now Western Digital is mixing things up by announcing that they’re going to be shipping hard drives packed with helium.

Today, Western Digital is going to announce something a little different and interesting in the world of enterprise hard drives, and you should probably pay attention to it. Starting today, it will begin shipping hard drives packed with helium — as in the inert gas that makes balloons float, makes people’s voices sound funny, and which happens to be the second-most-abundant element in the known universe, after hydrogen.