WD GreenPower drives promise energy savings

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 24 July 2007 08:26

Business IT - Technology

Western Digital claims its new GreenPower hard drive family is the first to make power saving a primary attribute, and that the drives use up to 40 percent less energy than alternatives.

Various models will cover enterprise, desktop and consumer electronics applications. A 1T Caviar GP drive will be the first in the family to ship, and will appear this month in MyBook storage appliances.

A 1T desktop drive will follow in August, with RE (enterprise) and AV (consumer electronics) models by the end of September.

According to WD officials, 1T drives have a typical power consumption of 13.5W, but the GreenPower drives can reduce that by over 5W.

This is achieved by balancing spin speed, transfer rate and cache size; unloading the heads when idle; and optimising seek speeds. Side-effects include reduced heat, noise and vibration.

Exactly what savings can be achieved by substituting these drives depends on a variety of factors, but WD estimates it can be around $US10 per year for a heavily used enterprise drive (eg, one in action at a financial institution or search engine service), around $5 in a set top box or other always-on home appliance, or about $2 in a desktop PC.

"For example, a data center with 10,000 drives can save $100,000 in annual energy costs, and reduce CO2 emission by 600 metric tons - the equivalent of taking almost 400 cars off the road for a year," WD officials said.

On a smaller scale, using a GreenPower drive in a PVR is said to be the equivalent to taking a car off the road for a week, at least as far as CO2 emission are concerned.