14 DAY TRIAL // Everyone's concerned about the environment nowadays and this applies especially for the various manufacturers of electronic equipments, whose products require electrical power both during normal operation as well as during the manufacturing process, thus indirectly affecting the surrounding environment. This is exactly the reason why the Kanguru company, a traditional manufacturer of storage solutions, has launched the Eco Drive, which they tout to be the most environmentally friendly and energy efficient external hard drive on the market.
Thus, as it sports three built in Power Saving modes, the Kanguru Eco Drive automatically gauges hard drive usage to reduce power consumption by up to 75% and extends the life of the hard drive itself. The three modes include Idle mode (drive operates at 80% of normal consumption after 3 seconds of inactivity), Standby mode (drive operates at 10-20% of normal consumption after 3 minutes of inactivity) and Power Down (drive operates at 5-10% of normal consumption after 5 minutes of inactivity). Moreover, all the power modes are configurable through included software for Windows platforms (Windows 2000, XP and Vista only).
The drives from the Eco Drive family provide USB2.0-grade data transfer rates (up to 480 Mbps) and are available in 80 GB, 160 GB, 250 GB, 500 GB and 750GB versions. The Kanguru Eco Drive is compatible with Windows (98 and above), including Windows Vista and with Mac OS X and above.
"With energy costs and environmental concerns on the rise Kanguru is setting the standard for environmentally concerned manufacturers. We are proud to be able to offer a high quality and cost effective storage solution that is environmentally friendly." said Nate Cote, VP of Product Management at Kanguru Solutions.
The drives have relatively affordable prices for devices of this type, ranging from around 95 US dollars (the 80 GB version) up to 350 US dollars (the 750 GB version), the top of the range actually retailing for less than 0.5 US dollars per GB, which is not too bad of a price, considering the fact that the user will also bring his/her contribution to saving the environment.
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