14 DAY TRIAL // Western Digital has announced a new line of hard disks that practically spare up to 40 percent of power, as compared to the competition's products. The GreenPower compliant class of SATA drives (RE2-GP) feature capacities ranging from 500GB up to 1TB and use around 5 watts less at no performance loss.
This performance boost is the result of Western Digital's branded features. IntelliPower uses caching algorithms, data transfer rate and platters' spinning speed adjustments to prevent the disk from always spinning at its maximum RPM value. IntelliSeek optimizes seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise and vibration, while Active Power Management monitors the drive's status and sends it to sleep whenever possible. When required, the disk recovers from idle mode in less than a second.
Tom McDorman, general manager of Western Digital's enterprise business unit, said that "the new enterprise line of hard drives allows users to expand their storage needs, reduce their total cost of ownership and improve the environment all at the same time."
Western Digital also conducted a study about the efficiency of the GreenPower series. According to it, the main benefactors of the new technology are data centers, as they could save up to $100,000 annually if they decided to replace 10,000 standard drives with GreenPower units. The same algorithm, however, cannot be applied at home, where a single GreenPower drive could save a maximum of $10 a year.
Power saving has become the new obsession among the hardware manufacturers. Although a single component is not yet able to deliver spectacular savings and at the same time maintain the original functionality, a joint effort in building a system using power-saving hardware could deliver spectacular results in this direction.
The new drives are already on sale on Western Digital's online store, with prices from $149.99 for the 500GB version to $349.99 for the 1TB drives.