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Green Drives.. Worth It??

Indohottie

Indohottie

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 1, 2004
275
0
Hey

So I saw Bestbuy has a pretty solid deal on the new Western Digital Green drives that spin down to 5400 with not in use..

Are these really worth it? Do you have that much in electricity cost that its worth upgrading... or is just trying to be eco-friendly?

I try to be eco cautious as much as I can, but it just seems this might be overkill..

Any ideas?
 
Indohottie said:
Hey

So I saw Bestbuy has a pretty solid deal on the new Western Digital Green drives that spin down to 5400 with not in use..
Click to expand...

These drives do not spin down. They are 5400 all the time. From what I could gather it was a misinterpretation of the "Intellipower" technology and WD mentioning 7200RPM in their literature.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article786-page1.html

That review along with others found that the speeds were consistent with 5400RPM when in use. No evidence has been given to suggest these run at 7200RPM at any time. Not to mention such a feat would get much more press.

Anyhow, the power savings are indeed great.
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article786-page3.html
And they are super quiet. I am running five in a RAID 5 in my G4 server and they are great. I would say that in an application that doesn't require great speed these are great drives and are environmentally friendly.
 
You are inevitable going to pay more because they say "green" It's advertising 101 and while I do pay more for my electricity to have it not come from coal, it may not be the best solution. However, these are ultra-quiet and the difference in price you should pay will be minimal, because this isn't a $20,000 car
 
I picked up two 1TB WD green drives for $250 each at CircuitCity a few weeks ago. I am using them in my Mac Pro. I didn't buy them because they were energy savers, I bought them because they were at such a good price and 1TB storage was what I wanted.

They are extremely quiet. I can never hear them spin down or spin up and I can never hear clicking from disk access like I can with the disk that came with my Mac Pro. Not sure the speed they run at, I could never find anything mentioning that on the WD specs at all but they are fast enough for my use since all I store on them are music and videos purchased from iTunes. They apparently do spin down because if I let my Mac Pro sit awhile and try to start up Front Row, it pauses for several seconds (like my iMac will if the disk is spun down) while the disk spins up.

Go ahead and buy them, well worth it. Again, they are extremely quiet. I have never heard a drive this quiet before.
 
I think they are selling for 170 plus tax in my area.. which I think is a steal for a 1TB drive..
 
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