Posted on Friday, November 23 2007 @ 19:52 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Western Digital unveiled new GreenPower RE2-GP 500GB, 750GB and 1GB hard drives that, on average, use 4-5W less than similar-sized HDDs from rivals.
Western Digital said that large data centers could save up to $100,000 annually if they replaced 10,000 standard drives with GreenPower drives. At a PC level, users might save $10 a year per drive.
Tom McDorman, general manager of Western Digital's enterprise business unit, said 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."
Data center suppliers already selling more power-efficient products were quick to endorse Western Digital's new line.
Special energy features:
IntelliPower balances spin speed, transfer rate and caching algorithms to avoid always spinning at top speed. And less current is used during start-up, which allows more drives to spin up simultaneously, resulting in faster system readiness.
IntelliSeek optimizes seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise and vibration.
IntelliPark automatically unloads the recording heads during idle mode to reduce aerodynamic drag and disables read/write channel electronics.
Active Power Management monitors a drive's workload and automatically puts the drive in idle mode whenever possible to reduce unnecessary power consumption. Drive recovery time from idle mode is less than one second.
Source: ComputerWorld
