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."

SSD power consumption ?

[by Anonymous Coward]

how much power does a SSD take in comparison to a HD ?

Re:

[Brian Gordon (987471)]

Which is more expensive, the power to run a magnetic hard drive and a tree to absorb the pollution or whatever, or a SSD?

Re:

[Disoculated (534967)]

Yes. That's it, that's exactly what he was asking.

OH, if you're looking for an ANSWER, that would be that an SSD takes on average 50% of the power, but perhaps 1/3 to 1/5 of the capacity of a similar form-factor hard drive. Meaning that per-drive they use less and per gig they use more.

Even older technologies are eating less power...

[electrictroy (912290)]

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.

Re:Even older technologies are eating less power..

[LunaticTippy (872397)]

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.

They're also very quiet

[A Friendly Troll (1017492)]

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 [silentpcreview.com]

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.

Re:They're also very quiet

[myxiplx (906307)]

And I can confirm that. We used six of them in a home NAS server based on that review. Six drives in an Antec P182 case and you can't even hear the thing when it turns on.

It was so quiet we took it to an empty office because we couldn't believe what we were hearing, and that's when we found the ticking of my watch is far louder than the noise this computer makes when booting. Awesome drives, and an awesome case. Would highly recommend them both.

Re:They're also very quiet

[TeamSPAM (166583)]

I put one of the WD GP drives in my TiVo HD. In the default settings, it was still to loud for my entertainment center. I took it out so I could run the Feature Tool from Hitachi to change the acoustic levels. After that it seemed my quieter and haven't seen any effect on performance in the TiVo.

Re:

[MrLogic17 (233498)]

for example in a redundant RAID array

Redundant RAID? Redundant.

Ads up

[downix (84795)]

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.

Re:

[Ngarrang (1023425)]

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.

I gotta agree whole-heartedly here. For most people, really high super performance numbers are not that big of an issue. Few of us non-Vista people will every stress the max transfer numbers to really notice the small overall drop. For a brand new system, this would seem like a Good Thing (tm) to add to the shopping list. I am just trying to ponder what *I* would need 1 Tb of disk space for, when my 40Gb drive is barely used.

Re:

[everphilski (877346)]

I am just trying to ponder what *I* would need 1 Tb of disk space for, when my 40Gb drive is barely used.

I was tearing up my 350 GB drive a year ago just with digital pictures. My wife and I have a 6 megapixel camera and we regularly take pictures of the kids to share with the grandparents and relatives who are all a thousand miles away. We have about 20 Mini-DV's worth of video (10GB apiece) of random stuff which I **don't** have uploaded to the computer. Buying a new hard drive and backing that media u

Re:

[MMC Monster (602931)]

Not to mention if you use your home computer to stream media through the house. mp3/ogg files don't typically take up too much space (I can't imagine the vast majority of people using up more than a couple hundred GB), but what about TIVO-type DVRs. They can eat through a terabyte if you're not careful.

Re:

[lazy-ninja (1061312)]

I did this on my most recent system.

During general use (web browsing, chatting, online java games like settlers of catan, etc) it uses around 40-45Watts.

This is switching from a PC that used between 110-120watts for the same thing.

You can save a lot if you shop smart.

The best part is I spent under $500 on the whole machine.
The other best part is machines that efficient are also completely silent without spending big money on super silent fans. I am using stock cooling on it.

Re:

[gEvil (beta) (945888)]

It does add up. The problem is that unless OEMs start including these drives in computers, they probably won't sell very well. Or more likely, the geek who does buy one will end up offsetting the savings by throwing it in his machine with a 750W power supply and monster graphics card(s).

Re:

[Applekid (993327)]

The problem is that unless OEMs start including these drives in computers, they probably won't sell very well.

If someone is looking at an OEM machine, they probably don't know what performance parameters a hard drive could possibly have other than space. They do know "green" so it might make the consumer feel better that it's got a nice eco-friendly label and a picture of a rainforest or something on the box.

. . . the geek who does buy one will end up offsetting the savings by throwing it in his machine with a 750W power supply and monster graphics card(s).

If they're that serious about gaming, they probably would be solely focused on the performance of the drive and what the benchmarks say, skipping version emblazoned with the aforementioned logos and nature pi

Re:Ads up

[camperslo (704715)]

The problem is that unless OEMs start including these drives in computers, they probably won't sell very well. Or more likely, the geek who does buy one will end up offsetting the savings by throwing it in his machine with a 750W power supply and monster graphics card(s).

Yes, the choice of GPU certainly is very significant. A while back I built up a PVR using GMA950 to keep initial and long term costs down. It'd be awful for demanding games, but works great for HD video. Total system power consumption (less display) 82 Watts (measured during video compression). That's with a slightly overclocked Core 2 Duo too. I'm sure an Apple-TV uses far less than 82 Watts, but for scaling 1080i to 720p I needed more CPU.

The raw power rating for the power supply does not tell you anything about how much power you'll consume. That is simply a maximum output rating. It's a bit like saying a 120 Volt outlet in your house is rated to deliver 2400 Watts when fed from a 20 Amp circuit with nothing else running. The actual consumption depends on the load current you draw.
Power supplies do have conversion losses which are reflected by an efficiency rating. The rated numbers still don't tell you exactly what to expect since efficiency varies depending on how much of a load you have, and which outputs are doing the work.
The more you're consuming, the more important the efficiency rating is. I found some really cheap 600 Watt power supplies on sale, shipping included, for $15. No efficiency rating was given, and I'd suspect something so cheap of having problems when actually being asked to deliver close to 600 Watts, but they've worked flawlessly at low power levels.

Actual consumption of components and whole systems is usually quite different from sticker/spec-sheet figures. Some of those reflect maximum capabilities, some reflect things like startup surge currents, all generally change with options and actual use. Even something like running displays at the lowest acceptable brightness makes a significant difference. It's very helpful to use a meter such as the Kill-A-Watt [amazon.com] (set to Watts, not Volt*Amperes) to get a feel for these things.

Since power is fairly expensive where I am, I figure a cost of about $1 per month for every 10 Watts used continuously. Between torrents and recording at all hours, continuous applies for my PVR. Saving 10 Watts doesn't sound like much, but over 5 years that's about $60. If one likes to archive shows, it is quite likely that more than one drive will be used eventually multiplying the costs and savings. Of course if one keeps some archives on externals and powers them down, that would help even more. If OSes are not supporting drive sleep on a drive-by-drive basis, some changes there could save quite a bit too.
Using energy saving drives, using fewer big drives instead of a larger number of older small ones, using an energy efficient CPU, and avoiding a power hungry GPU if it isn't needed all add up to much more substantial energy savings. And remember, it's not just about the cost of energy, there's the environmental impact as well.

I haven't actually made measurements to see how much the power consumption of GPUs varies with what they're doing. I would hope that designs now, or in the near future, will allow a major fallback in consumption when user needs are not very demanding.

When people brag about benchmarks, I'd like to see one more added - one generated by dividing the traditional benchmark by the power consumption.

Re:

[adisakp (705706)]

You forgot to mention energy efficient power supply. Typical power supplies waste 30-45% of the power (only 55-70% efficiency).

Buy a power supply with an "80 Plus" certification and you will save quite a bit of power as these PS are required to reach 80% efficiency at 20%,50% and 100% of their rated loads. Some hit 85-86% efficiency at their optimal loads.

On a computer using 200W of power, the "80 Plus" PS will save you 40W right off the bat - or as much as the savings you mentioned from the HD, CPU,

Just bought one

[robably (1044462)]

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 [techreport.com] I read before I ordered it, with lots of graphs and comparisons.

Re:

[SIGBUS (8236)]

...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.

It's coming to the point where eSATA is the only realistic solution for external drives. USB2 and FireWire 400 just don't cut it any more, and I haven't seen many systems supporting FireWire 800.

Re:

[jimicus (737525)]

It's coming to the point where eSATA is the only realistic solution for external drives. USB2 and FireWire 400 just don't cut it any more, and I haven't seen many systems supporting FireWire 800.


This won't necessarily help much. The transfer rates quoted for SATA are either burst rates (ie. how quickly it can shift data off the cache) or they assume you'll be doing practically zero seeking - which is true if you've got one large contiguous file but on a filesystem, the order you request files in could be a

Re:

[Hatta (162192)]

So start rsync before you go to bed and let it do its job. You've only got to fill it once.

just keep on dumping it in China

[tero (39203)]

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 [wikipedia.org] deal which restricts the export of e-waste so the children of Guiyu [wikipedia.org] wouldn't have to waste away their lives [nwsource.com] 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.

Re:

[mh1997 (1065630)]

[Guyiu] City officials are proud of the e-waste industry but sensitive about its reputation as a dirty business that feeds off smuggled waste and abuses workers. Journalists who probe quickly find themselves detained by local thugs or police, and their digital photographs or video footage erased.

Local bosses pay little regard to workers' health or to regulations that prohibit dumping acid baths into rivers and venting toxic fumes...

...E-waste recyclers in the United States can't cover their costs with su

Re:

[tero (39203)]

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.

saving 10 watts!

[John Sokol (109591)]

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.

Re:

[MarkEst1973 (769601)]

According to the Energy Infomration Administration [doe.gov], there are 107 million households in the US. The end-use consumption of electricity by household [doe.gov] shows 318 kWh (kilowatt hours) used for a dekstop PC on average per household. There is, unfortunately, no breakdown of the electricity consumption per component in the PC, so I'm left to wonder how much is used by the hard drive specifically.

Profiling your code proves the 80/20 rule is correct. Your program spends 80% of its CPU time in 20% of the code. Y

heat isn't so bad

[adpowers (153922)]

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.

Heat isn't necessarily so bad. From Google's research on hard disk failure trends [google.com] [PDF]:

The figure shows that failures do not increase when the average temperature increases. In fact, there is a clear trend showing that lower temperatures are associated with higher failure rates. Only at very high temperatures is there a slight reversal of this trend.

Wrong Standard?

[Sponge Bath (413667)]

...disposal of these products is being regulated now by such things as the RoHS compliance standard

RoHS says which materials can be used in construction, WEEE covers disposal. (In the EU at least)

Performance

[gravis777 (123605)]

FTA:

A very interesting feature of the GreenPower drives is IntelliPower, which is a "fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate, and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance" according to WD. What this means to potential users is that WD isn't telling us the exact spindle speed of these drives. We know that they are likely spinning at a speed between 5400 and 7200 RPM and that each GreenPower model may use a different, invariable RPM. So, while WD made power the priority with the GreenPower platform, it did so without disregarding solid performance, a wise choice in our opinion.

That was my number one concern. If I am putting these in a data center, I would be a lot more worried about drive performance over how much power it consumes. However, if it consumes less power while offering the same performance, I am all for it.

Great Summery Grammar...

[aitikin (909209)]

...by being the first drive manufacture to produce and market a lower power version of their Caviar line of hard drives.

It'd be a good trick for another manufacturer to produce and market a lower power version of the Caviar, seeing as that's a WD TM...

Review at the register: Not so good.

[amcdiarmid (856796)]

The Register reviewed four 1Tb drives, including this one.
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/03/26/review_four_terabyte_hard_drives/ [reghardware.co.uk]

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

Re:

[MrNemesis (587188)]

I guess it depends on your requirements. I have two 1TB GP's that I use for media storage; in sequential copies (i.e. copying my data on to the drive in the first place) they averaged 50-60MB/s, with the preceding drive (a WD 750GB AAKS) managed more like 55-62MB/s when I initially loaded it up. That's the only tim eI've ever maxed out this drive, as even recording three DVB streams to it and watching two from it simultaneously keeps it barely ticking over.

As noted, it's byt far the quietest and coolest dri

Re:watts != Green

[sakdoctor (1087155)]

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.

Re:

[e2d2 (115622)]

Yes but one could argue that more power consumption leads us to such power needs. How can you move to alternate energy production if everyone is consuming power at an exponential rate?

Also, using less power means less power produced. And since virtually 100% of all power produced impacts the environment..

It's a good thing because it's practical to save energy where we can. That's good engineering. Pay no attention to the bullshit marketing, which I'm sure we'll see a lot more of in the coming years.

Re:

[bkr1_2k (237627)]

Of course it matters! No matter what the supply source is, less consumption means less production requirement, which means less pollution (no matter nuclear or coal) in the final numbers. Do we need a better standard for measurement? Sure, but that doesn't mean that this isn't a valid improvement.

Re:

[gfxguy (98788)]

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.

Re:

[CheeseTroll (696413)]

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.

Re:watts != Green

[Hatta (162192)]

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.

Re:

[edremy (36408)]

I know you're beiung funny, but in reality this doesn't matter. I built a PC back when I was in VA- my power provider was AEP, which is probably the worst polluter in the country- lots of old, dirty coal plants. I moved up to PA a month later- I'm in a electric co-op now, with 60% of the power being nuclear and 20% hydro, very little from coal.

Did the computer suddenly get more green just beacause I moved it north 200 miles?

Re:

[xZgf6xHx2uhoAj9D (1160707)]

First of all, Apple's devices are the only ones out there that produce smug. Measuring greenness based on smug output is unfair to Apple.

Secondly, what? The amount of power a device consumes and the source of the power are completely independent things. There's no reason for them to be considered in the same breath.

Re:

[bhima (46039)]

I don't really agree with that thinking.

Most folks can't control how the power that comes to home or business is generated but they can at least reduce what they consume.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

Re:

[gEvil (beta) (945888)]

Maybe "not-as-vane-as-driving-a-1963-chrysler-turbine-car" would make more sense.

Yeah, the tails on those Chryslers from the 60s were pretty insane. Oh, did you guys mean vain?

...mean Much Lower Noise!

[StCredZero (169093)]

The Green Power drives are also impressively quiet! [avsforum.com] 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.)

Re:

[CompMD (522020)]

Agreed, I purchased a pair of 1TB "green" drives from WD, and they are unbelievably silent when running. Which is good, because I knew that I had a bad drive when I suddenly heard horrendous noises emanate from one of them. :)

Re:86400 Watts*Hours

[lazy-ninja (1061312)]

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.

The earth is worth it!

[flithm (756019)]

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.

Re:

[BlackPignouf (1017012)]

I globally agree with you.

But whatever we improve, IT still represents an ecological disaster.
Take a look at every tech stuff around you. Where will they be in 5 years? Surely not around anymore!

Obviously, those "green drives" are better than nothing, but in some years, nobody will want to use any 1TB hard drive anymore, and this improvement in power consumption only took place because millions of hard drive have been produced.
Just like for cars, we reduce the environmental impact of each product separately

Re:

[etymxris (121288)]

No, they have a pretty average failure rate actually. Check the newegg reviews for the 750GB model. I just got burned on mine. It lasted four days and then went kaput. Time to RMA.

Mar 26 09:36:31 opteron kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdg1, logical block 5912
Mar 26 09:36:36 opteron kernel: printk: 1579 messages suppressed.

Not sure how true it is, but some people are saying these drives are just binned 7200rpms that didn't make the cut. In any case, it seems clear that these drives are actually 5400rp

Re:

[aquarajustin (1070708)]

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.