Are Green Hard Drives Really That Green?

[Andy Dixon]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://arstechnica.com/hardware/guides/2011/01/ask-ars-are-green-drives-really-that-green.ars' target='_blank'>http://arstechnica.com/hardware/gui...-that-green.ars</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"There are a lot of "green" hard drives out there, which claim to be low-power, low-noise, low-heat, and low-cost. Sadly, they don't save quite as much power as they claim, and here's why. There isn't anything wrong with buying a low-powered drive-after all, we used one in our second Hackintosh build. While drives like the Western Digital Caviar Green are a bit cheaper than their faster counterparts (since they only run at 5400RPM), the "power saving" promise falls short, as they only save you a few watts."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/wpt/auto/1296987607.usr11334.jpg" style="border: #d2d2bb 1px solid;" /></p><p>Green hard drives are very much being pushed as an eco friendly option for your PC, but are they really?&nbsp; Ars Technica asks this question and discusses why this may not be the case depending on what you are going to use it for.&nbsp;I've always considered green disks to simply be slower, quieter disks and not really&nbsp;energy saving devices.&nbsp;If it's for an HTPC that going to live under the TV and is going to be on for long periods, then a quiet&nbsp;disk is probably the right choice.&nbsp; For a gaming PC there really wouldn't be much savings on an eco-friendly disk as you would likely be accessing the disk a lot anyway, albeit at a slower speed.&nbsp; Have a read of the article at Ars Technica and see if using a green disk would be the right choice for you.</p>

[EscapePod]

I used to use the Caviar Green drives in my HTPC, thinking they used less power, ran quieter and cooler. Then, I started having a multitude of drive failures. I started doing a lot of reading on W-D's website, and found that the Green drives seemed to only have a single bearing for the platters. The Black drives, on the other hand, had dual shaft bearings. When I switched to the Black drives, I noticed they didn't make more noise, and didn't run any hotter. The plus is that their MTBF is much longer. Data kept on an HTPC is usually not very critical (unless you are buying and storing movies long-term), so the Green drives may be OK.... IF they actually saved power.

For my main PC, I wouldn't use anything but the Black drives for the data. For OS and Apps, I use the 10K RPM drives. Despite their high speed, the newer models are really 2.25" drives inside beefy heatsinks mounted in 3.5" formfactor cases. They make very little noise and if they are hot, its not as noticeable due to the heatsinks.

[ptyork]

Interesting. I'd never heard the MTBF comparison made before. I'd have thought the slower velocity and lower heat would have made the more reliable, not less. Hmm. I've got five of them now. No problems yet, but I'll keep my ears open for signs of failure.

[Chris Sacksteder]

I have a Caviar Green 2TB in my HTPC too. I had one in my work workstation for a while and it was fine. But I found it did not perform well enough for what I wanted to do (up to 5 HD recordings at once, plus 2 comskip scans, plus a playback), while the Hitachi Deskstar the HP came with could handle this load.

At 10 watts vs. 30 for the black, I assume it makes less heat, which is important to me, but if I had to do it over, the power savings is not worth the performance hit in this application.

It's been running 24x7 for 6 months; no problems. (I'm moving old shows and movies to it, actively recording to the Deskstar.)