Samsung releases power-saving drive

March 9, 2009: Samsung has announced its latest capacious “green” hard drive, saying the EcoGreen F2EG delivers 1.5TB on three disks, reducing the amount of power required for operation.

With 500GB per disk, Samsung says that the drive’s increased recording density and reduced number of disks makes it more power efficient, but it also makes it more robust.

“Lower platter count means less power to start the motor, less power to continuously spin the motor and a lighter head-stack which takes less power to seek,” says Andy Higginbotham, director of HDD sales and marketing for the Samsung’s Semiconductor Storage Division. “With fewer heads and disks, the F2EG hard drive has a lower probability of head-disk failures.”

Samsung has also included its EcoTriangle technology in the drive to offer further “green” benefits, claiming it offers lower-power consumption, less heat, and lower noise levels during operation. Overall Samsung says the F2EG drive’s power consumption is 40 percent lower when idle and 45 percent lower during reading/writing than competitive drives.

The drive comes in 500GB, 1TB and 1.5TB capacities with 16MB or 32MB buffer memory, and a 3.0 gigabytes per second (Gbps) Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) interface.

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