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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."
how much power does a SSD take in comparison to a HD ?
In fact, WD GP drives are the quietest on the market. Found this gem just the other day:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article804-page2.html
Idle and seek noise are extremely low, and vibrations almost negligible (this is also a very important thing when you have two same drives, for example in a redundant RAID array *cough*).
The power savings aren't 10W, though.
You get a HD with 10W less power need, a northbridge with 5W less power need, a CPU with 5W less power need, a video card with 15W less power need, a soundcard with 5W less power need, you've saved 40W already with minimal change in performance.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Mine just arrived this morning (the 1TB Caviar model) and it is extremely quiet (I bought it for a Home Theatre PC). It brings home the point, though, that they may have made great strides in power savings and noise reduction, but the real hurdle with a 1TB drive is the time it takes to copy 1TB of data. I'm transferring everything across from my old 500GB drive via Firewire 400 and it's going to take a total of 7 hours. That's just to half-fill the drive.
Anyway, the article the summary seems to be slashdotted, so here's the review at TechReport I read before I ordered it, with lots of graphs and comparisons.
Exactly. What we need is computers that are powered by the users self-satisfaction.
Come to think of it, this will probably be more practical for mac users, and not because they use less energy.
It's great to see new technologies that are easier to recycle.
Now if U.S could just stop pretending and sign the Basel Convention deal which restricts the export of e-waste so the children of Guiyu wouldn't have to waste away their lives in toxic pits melting our "green" and ecologically "safe" drives.
Recycling is great, recycling it near the consumpition is also great. Dumping it to China is not great, out of sight out of mind mentality comes and bites you in the ass sooner or later.
The Green Power drives are also impressively quiet! I've been looking for drives like this for years! This is perfect for those who want to build recording studio PCs, do lots of music production work, people building multimedia PCs, or those who just plain like quiet drives. You can even use a smaller SSD drive to get blazing random access performance just for games while using the Green Power for other purposes, and get the best of both worlds. (The Gigabyte iRam is spec'd perfectly for this, but it's a bit pricey.)
Actually seeing as the drive only costs about $5 more than the previous/similar models, I would say it IS worth it. It is not worth it to run out and replace your drives, but if you are buying a new 500-1000gb drive I would say the savings is nice. Honestly, to me the specs on how bloody quiet these things are is the real selling point.
I have found most drives run at around 12 watts, so saving 10 is really significant.
Also with less power the drives should run cooler, this would really increase drive reliability.
I found most CoLo servers don't properly cool their drives especially 1U servers, where it seems I loose a few every year, but at home I can run those same drives for 5 years or more. Even the desktop servers I run in a dusty shed that freeze in the winter and bakes in the summer the drives are more reliable then the ones running in a CoLo with constant 50 degree super clean air, just because drives in 1U's run hotter constantly and under a heaver load.
RoHS is another story, it's been a somewhat difficult transition, unexpectedly is make passing FCC compliance more difficult because for the exact same board layout it had higher RF emissions. Don't know why, wonder if others have also seen that.
I don't see how RoHS is going to be any more "green", the largest change is moving away from tin/lead to Lead-free solders that contain some mix of tin, copper, silver, bismuth, indium, zinc, and antimony.
It's more expensive, and brittle which could decrease reliablity.
If the circuit boards are actually getting recycled instead of landfilled, it wouldn't make much difference anyhow.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
Reduced wattage is reduced wattage.... it's better to use only 10 watts, rather than 20, regardless of the source of your electricity. It's 10 versus 20 coal, but even 10 versus 20 nuclear can reduce demand on coal by another 10 watts.
You're being too cynical. Any reduction is beneficial and can result in less use of "dirtier" sources, even if you're not directly powered by them.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
However, Western Digital has zero control over how you generate electricity in your region. 10 watts saved is 10 watts saved, and the most efficient way to reduce the impact of power plants on the environment is to have fewer of them.
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
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.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
RoHS says which materials can be used in construction, WEEE covers disposal. (In the EU at least)
I have a friend with a 500GB WD GP drive. He uses the rig mostly for gaming, and is now sorry that he bought the WD drive. When he's playing FPSs, the drive spins down until it needs to access a certain texture or sound file. When the time comes to access that file from the drive, the game freezes for 1-3 seconds while the drive spins back up for access. It's painful. I don't play games on my computer, so having a GP drive wouldn't bother me.
It's also important to point out that just because it only saves a single user 10 watts, that doesn't mean it's not a worthwhile endeavor. The post text suggests that this could add up for datacenters, but datacenters are nothing compared to the number of home computers our there, just imagine the impact on our global electricity infrastructure if every single computer's power consumption dropped by 10 watts. That's huge! Then think about the impact that would have on the environment (ie using less non-renewable resources). I think it would surely be noticed.
So yeah it's unrealistic to believe that every person is going to swap out their drives to use these, but when thinking about environmental issues it's important to put yourself in that frame of mind. I try do what I wish everyone would do. If everyone thought that way we'd get there eventually.
That being said I'm not going to swap out all my drives for these babies, but next time I need to buy or replace a drive, yeah for sure I'll cough up a little extra cash. As long as it's not just a marketing gimmick, and the price increase isn't too much, I'd be willing to take a slight loss on the principal alone. It's not just our pocket books that needs protecting.
But, as someone pointed out already, these drives are only a few bucks more than their non-green counterparts, so not only will they eventually save some cash, but they have the ability to make a difference too.
As a final thought, another thing that's important is make a point with manufacturers (through your wallet) that environmental issues matter. The more we think about it, and the more we get in the habit of making the small choices that all add up to a larger statement, the better off we all are.
Great attitude buddy. So as long as someone takes it off your hands (and you can make a buck!) you don't need to know where the waste goes? Makes me really believe in future of mankind. Good stuff.
Now open your eyes and start acting responsibly, recycle your own waste in U.S and stop dumping/selling it around the world.
The Register reviewed four 1Tb drives, including this one.
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/03/26/review_four_terabyte_hard_drives/
Product
Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000
Verdict
The Hitachi set a decent benchmark for performance as a standalone drive.
Rating
70%
Suggested Price
£159
Product
Samsung SpinPoint F1 HD103UJ
Verdict
It's a straight fight between the Seagate and Samsung, and on balance we favour the Sammy despite its higher price.
Rating
85%
Suggested Price
£194
Product
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31000340NS
Verdict
The Seagate delivers sterling performance with the minimum of fuss, yet it is the cheapest of the drives on test.
Rating
80%
Suggested Price
£149
Product
Western Digital WD1000FYPS RE2-GP
Verdict
We're all in favour of reducing our dependence on electricity but the RE2-GP lagged behind in every one of our tests.
Rating
60%
Suggested Price
£159
GE has developed an incandescent "60 watt" bulb that only uses 30 watts. They are trying to create one that only uses 15 watts.
Such a bulb would have the same efficiency as a compact flourescent light, but with the "instant on" advantages of incandescents and no poisonous mercury to clean up if the bulb accidently breaks.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
Do you have a link?
Typically thinner filaments are more efficient but more fragile. If they developed a filament material that is less fragile and thinner it would be a serious breakthrough.
Man, you really need that seminar!