I’ve been looking at getting another external hard drive. I have a Fantom GreenDrive that I love.
Anyway I noticed Fantom makes two drives that seem to be the exact same, The Fantom GreenDrive and the Fantom Drive. The “Green” Drive is about $10.00 more.
(I also realize that Fantom is not a maker of drives but just packages them)
I noticed that Western Digital and others also make “green drives”
So what exactly makes it “Green”
A quick Google around seems to indicate a saving in power but it’s not clear if there’s any advantage to it. I don’t pay for electricity for my flat anyway
About all of 3W difference. Significant perhaps if you pack several hundred into a datacenter rack, but really not much.
The savings come from twp sources: One is changes to the settings (how the heads move, how fast it spins, how soon it shuts down). Mostly, though, it’s that the WD Black and Blue are all 7200, while WD Green are something closer to 5400. The Greens should in fact be cheaper.
Yup, marketing bullshit capitalising on envirohype.
Oh, also there’s a more significant reduction in noise, from 34/29dBA (seeking/idle) to 29/26. Significant, that is, if you’re building a noiseless, fanless PC.
