WD goes green for data centres

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 22 January 2008 08:52

Business IT - Technology

New power-saving hard drives from Western Digital trim electricity consumption by around one third compared with competing units.

The RE2 GreenPower drives are available in 500G, 750G and 1T models, and are designed to save power while delivering high storage densities.

"[E]ach WD RE2-GP hard drive consumes an average of 4-5 watts less than competitive hard drives, making it possible for energy-conscious enterprise customers to build servers and storage subsystems with higher capacities, consistent performance, and assured reliability, all while promoting energy conservation," said WD officials.

The company estimates this will save around $US10 per drive per year, which can translate to a substantial saving in a large data centre. The company provides an online power savings estimator.

A secondary benefit is that reducing the power consumption also reduces the heat emitted, reducing the cooling load and thereby delivering a secondary power usage.

"Energy efficiency is a huge concern for our customers," said Tom McDorman, vice president and general manager of Western Digital's enterprise business unit. "GreenPower drives are enabling them to meet their customer's system requirements for storage capacity, reliability, performance, and cost by integrating an enterprise-class drive that simply consumes far less power."

The 1T RE2 GreenPower drive costs $US349.99/$A499.