Green Caviar Keeps Power Consumption Lean

By Greg McNevin

July 26, 2007: With green being the new black and the bottom line benefits of energy efficiency really beginning to hit home, many manufacturers are ramping up focus on low-power products, with Western Digital becoming the latest to offer a new line of hard drives it claims will cut $11 each per year off power bills.

The company says the GreenPower family of desktop, enterprise and external hard drives will save up to 40% in power consumption and are, according to WD, the first 3.5” platform designed specifically with power savings in mind.

Shipping in August, the 1 terabyte WD Caviar GP will be the first drive available to take advantage of the company’s new low-power technology and will come with an energy star 4.0 rating, reducing both a corporations carbon footprint and electricity costs.

WD estimates that the new drives can save $11 per drive per year in electricity costs - a number that adds up quickly in data centres with 10,000 or more. In these circumstances, the drives can save $110,000 in annual energy costs and reduce CO2 emission by 600 metric tons – roughly the equivalent of taking 400 cars off the road for a year.

“With the GreenPower family, WD is improving the environment while reducing cost of ownership,” said John Coyne, WD president and chief executive officer.

The new Caviar’s will are shipping during July and August in capacities from 320 gigabytes to one terabyte. WD’s MyBook external storage devices will sport the new green features first, with desktop and enterprise drives to follow shortly afterwards.

Comment on this story