Western Digital's "Green" Hard Drives

MojoKid writes "Eco-friendly or 'green' products are becoming much more fashionable these days, especially in things like high-end electronics, where the impact on the environment and the disposal of these products is being regulated now by such things as the RoHS compliance standard. In addition, power consumption is also being looked at more closely for all the obvious reasons. Hard Drive manufacturer Western Digital recently took the initiative by being the first drive manufacture to produce and market a lower power version of their Caviar line of hard drives. The numbers here show that a green hard drive will probably only save an average end user about 10 watts in total system power consumption. However, from a data center perspective, where demand for storage is growing by the petabyte at an alarming rate, 10 watts per drive can certainly add up quickly."

Comments

Re:watts != Green

[Hatta]

Since you don't get to choose how your power is generated, that's largely irrelevant. You do get to choose your hard drive though. If you choose one which uses 10W less power, whether your power is nuclear or coal, the environment (and your wallet) is that much better off.