What Is Very Green & Can Store Up To 1 TB?
If you said Western Digital's new RE2-GP series of drives, then you are correct.
The entire IT industry is doing their best to look as energy efficient (or green) as possible these days, and it seems that the trend hasn't left any product category untouched. So what exactly does it take to be a 'green' hard drive?
“Western Digital isn't shy about the efficiency of its new enterprise drive and claims the RE2-GP is up to 40 percent more efficient than competitors, drawing 4-5W less power while in operation. Western Digital uses three types of optimization that the company refers to as IntelliPower, IntelliPark, and IntelliSeek to deliver the RE2-GP's increased efficiency without compromising performance.
IntelliPower refers to the drive's transfer rate, caching algorithms, and spin speed. Significantly, Western Digital doesn't actually list the RPM of any GreenPower drive, but states that the rate (assumed to be between 5400 to 7200 RPM) is constant for all drives in a series. This means that while all 500GB drives spin at the same speed, and all 1TB drives spin at the same speed, the 500GB and 1TB models do not necessarily spin at the same speed.”
While their assumption about spindle speed is interesting, we're waiting for the cold, hard facts on this one. Given the mechanical nature of hard drives, it seems odd that such a large savings could be found without either relying on flash memory to cache out commonly accessed files (such as in hybrid drives) or some mechanical changes.
Regardless of spindle speeds and possible new technologies, a green TB sounds nice to us!
The entire IT industry is doing their best to look as energy efficient (or green) as possible these days, and it seems that the trend hasn't left any product category untouched. So what exactly does it take to be a 'green' hard drive?
“Western Digital isn't shy about the efficiency of its new enterprise drive and claims the RE2-GP is up to 40 percent more efficient than competitors, drawing 4-5W less power while in operation. Western Digital uses three types of optimization that the company refers to as IntelliPower, IntelliPark, and IntelliSeek to deliver the RE2-GP's increased efficiency without compromising performance.
IntelliPower refers to the drive's transfer rate, caching algorithms, and spin speed. Significantly, Western Digital doesn't actually list the RPM of any GreenPower drive, but states that the rate (assumed to be between 5400 to 7200 RPM) is constant for all drives in a series. This means that while all 500GB drives spin at the same speed, and all 1TB drives spin at the same speed, the 500GB and 1TB models do not necessarily spin at the same speed.”
While their assumption about spindle speed is interesting, we're waiting for the cold, hard facts on this one. Given the mechanical nature of hard drives, it seems odd that such a large savings could be found without either relying on flash memory to cache out commonly accessed files (such as in hybrid drives) or some mechanical changes.
Regardless of spindle speeds and possible new technologies, a green TB sounds nice to us!
