Seagate Delivers Green Drives for Earth Day

This earth Day, hard drive manufacturer Seagate has released its own line of drives to give adequate performance while using less energy. As usual, the largest manufacturer of hard drives states that the Barracuda LP line of drives is the highest performing of any of the ‘green’ designation.

from ExtremeTech

For Earth Day, Seagate introduced the Barracuda LP hard drive line, which the company claims is the highest-performing, low-powered line of hard drives on the market.

The Barracuda LP is built with a 3.5-inch desktop class mechanism, spinning at 5,900 RPM versus the 5,400 rpm of competing drives, and will ship at three capacity points: 1TB, 1.5TB, and 2TB.

Why 5,900 RPM? “In our testing to achieve the right balance of performance and low power, this is what they came up with,” said Anne Haggar of Seagate.

The Barracuda LP drives are aimed at the low-powered green PCs that are starting to become prevalent on the market, as well as fanless external drive enclosures and SOHO NAS products. These types of products benefit from the Barracuda LP’s low-noise, low-power consumption, and large capacities.

The Barracuda LP only uses 3 watts of power while idling, and 5.6 watts while operating. It is also quieter and has higher PCMark05 scores than competing 5,400-rpm drives from Samsung and Western Digital. In general, it draws 50 percent less power than a 7,200-RPM drive, Haggar said.

The drives follow Seagate’s green initiatives, including RoHS, BFR-free, and 70 percent recyclability. Look for the Barracuda LP in entry-level PCs, external hard drives, and NAS applications in the coming months.

The 1TB version of the Barracuda LP hard drive is priced at $118. The 1.5TB and 2TB versions will sell for $156 and $358, respectively.

Those are good specs, and if the drives don’t fail, it will be a decent drive for non-performance applications.

The claims of better performance than Western Digital or Samsung drives will have to be proven to me, however, as I can recall many times when Western Digital drives were spinning slower than others, yet derived better performance (Remember when WDs had 5200 RPM specs, and Seagate Connor, and Maxtor were all using 5400 RPM ? The tests showed that the WDs, running slower, with less cache, somehow delivered a better performance story.)

Still, Seagate did not get to number one by making bad drives, so most people will probably have good luck with these drives.

A few less pounds of coal will be spent running them as well.

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