Skip the "Green" Hard Drives If You're Trying to Save Power
 

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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. Ars Technica explains:

In terms of cost, using a green hard drive compared to a normal one makes very little difference. Assuming your drive spends 4 hours reading and writing and 20 hours idle per day, switching from the WD Black to Green saves you only 45 kilowatt-hours per year. The national average cost of a kilowatt-hour is 11.93 cents, netting you a whopping $5.38 per year for your sacrifice of 1800 RPM. For comparison, changing one 60-watt lightbulb used 4 hours a day to a 7-watt fluorescent one saves you more, about $9.23 per year.

If you're installing a drive into an HTPC, they're probably a good choice since they are a bit quieter and cooler than other drives, and you don't need the drive performance anyways. But if you're building something you'll actually be computing on, you won't be saving any power or money with the green drive—you'll just be slowing your machine down (albeit at a somewhat lower upfront cost). Hit the link to read more.

Skip the "Green" Hard Drives If You're Trying to Save Power

Actually it's worse than that:
Eco-drives are slower than their counterparts..so to write/read same amount of data it takes more time. So regular hard drives idle more than Eco-drives and thus this makes that wattage gap smaller.

CHEAPER??!?! WAHAHAHAAHAA

Hitachi 7200rpm 1TB costs $25 cheaper than WD green 5400rpm 1TB.

Its not only slower but marginally quieter and now proven not to be as power efficient.

Talk about marketing conning the world. Reminds me of the fruit company.

But hey, it's quieter and cheaper.

Just bought the WD Green 5400rpm 1TB for $77, the Hitachi one costs $52 show me?

Hitachi 1TB drives have been $60+ for the past few weeks. WD green drives in Singapore have always cost more than all other brands.

For the past few years, consumers in Singapore have been hoodwinked by "GREEN".

What do you mean by "cheaper" :D

Well I wanted Samsung F2 but it was sold out, F3 available for same price but loud lar.

But hey, there's the example - F3 faster than WD Green and cheaper too.

Most drives are cheaper than WD Green in Singapore btw.

The only drives that cost more than WD Green are ironically WD Blues which are basically non power saving and non quiet drives.

So WD sells its non-green drives even higher than green drives which already cost more than other brands of performance HDDs.

Or you can look at it another way - green drives from the same company are cheaper than non-green from the same company.

finally an article disproving the ecodrive=good myth

i'm even going to sticky this for a month

hah finally some real article on the 'green' gimmick

I hate green drives; sometimes they're even hotter than my old hitachi or seagate drives.

So how're you liking your F4?

Come to think of it, this article do make a lot of sense. The bulb comparison is actually very good. Anyway fast drive consumes more power, but spends more time at idle since they load up faster. Slow drive consumes less power, but loads significantly slower, thus, they are always in active mode. Furthermore, the experience with WD Caviar Green wasn't that great considering that it sort of powers down, and when you double click on it on "My Computer" if you have not used it, it takes a while for it to spin up and respond to your action. Also, it is not as cheap since the average 1TB is going for around 70+ bucks as well. So in actual fact, you are paying more for less. I think true lower power drives will be 2.5 inch 7200rpm drives since I think they do consume less power, and is just slightly slower than the average 3.5 inch 7.2K rpm drives.

This is a known fact long time ago. The fact that it is still a very popular choice is all because of it's cost efficiency.

RE4 anyone?