Western Digital Green Power Hard Drive Review: Use Less Electricity While Maintain Performance
GreenPower Technology Hard Drives (5 out of 5)
I have been using Western Digital Hard Drives for a long time. With an outstanding warranty and excellent performance, Western Digital drives still show excellent performance and have a great customer service. I recently purchased a performance drive which Western Digital calls their VelociRaptor. This drive runs at 10,000 rpm and is a high performance drive. Although this article isn’t about the aforesaid drive, it is about Western Digital’s other high performance area which is their drive towards environmentally friendly drives.
Western Digital has shown a commitment towards environmental awareness and has made a direct impact on energy awareness with their latest drives. Their hard drives help home users, small and medium size businesses and enterprise users save money and help the environment. These eco-friendly hard drives that are designed today, consume less electricity than standard drives. Their hard drives are designed with Western Digital’s GreenPower™ Technology. These ‘Green’ drives are designed for desktop, enterprise, CE and external hard drives. With IntelliPower, IntelliPark and IntelliSeek, these drives save money for a lower TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). Western Digital provides a flash demo of how these three technologies work.
Our experience alone shows a significant power savings with the number of drives we use. Western Digital has developed hard drives that meet ENERGY STAR 4.0 compliance. With the conversion to energy compliant drives, a company can save only a few watts per drive but with dozens or hundreds of workstations and servers the savings adds up.
With hard drive capacities increasing in size, more power is need to operate these drives. Western Digital states that a typical 1 TB drive can use 13.5 watts of electricity on their website. Their new drives use less electricity than their predecessors by 4 to 5 watts. This savings is greater than most standard hard drives. With a company of 500 computers, 5 watts equals 2500 watts.
Western Digital Calculator (GreenPower)
WDC gives a further example of the savings giving a reduction of CO2 from a vehicle saving 132 lbs of this emission. With more than 100 known computers using this drive at a location that I work at, that is 13200 lbs of CO2 emissions. This savings plays a significant role in saving the environment.
This type of power savings alone can save you money off of your electric / utility bill. Western digital estimates that this (Green Technology) can equal ten dollars per driver per year. These 100 computers can save the aforesaid facility a great deal of money (up to $1000 per year) depending on these workstations’ usage. With many organizations concerned with their carbon foot print, Western Digital is one manufacturer who has made a consolidated effort in helping with the environment.
With products such as the WD RE2-GP1, WD Caviar Green, or WD AV-GP (look for the Green Leaf icon for power savings hard drives) companies can save money and have a small carbon foot print. This ’environmental friendliness’ is not a trade for speed and quality. Western Digital Corporation is making a positive impact on the environment by producing these high quality drives.
For more information, visit Western Digital website.
