Chicago (IL) - If there is one trend in the IT industry that you simply can miss than it is green technology and we are seeing more and more companies increasing their product and marketing focus on this topic every day. Today it is Samsung that announced a more power efficient hard drive and HP, which announced a big effort to reduce the impact of its printers on the environment - reaching from printer-labels, reduced power consumption to the production of new printers using closed-loop materials.

Samsung promises that its EcoGreen F1 hard drive will consume about 50% less power than traditional hard drives and about 15% less than "other low-power" 1 TB hard drives. The company did not provide the exact specifications, but assumed that Samsung considered the 13.4 watt maximum power consumption of its own 1 TB hard drive as well as Western Digital’s Greenpower hard drives, which claim to consume at least 4 watts less than other 1 TB hard drives, our math would put the Samsung drive into the 7 - 8 watt maximum power range.

The reduction in power consumption is mainly a result of a slower platter rotation speed (down from 7200 to 5400 rpm). Samsung also has an advantage in this field as the company is able to reach 1 TB capacity with only three platters (334 GB) each, its rivals Seagate and WD use four (250 GB) platters. Interestingly, within this group Samsung’s mainstream 1 TB hard drive is the most power hungry drive: Samsung claims the drive consumes somewhere between 5.4 (idle) and 13.4 watts (seek), while Seagate for example rates its 1 TB hard drive at 8 to 11.6 watts.

Samsung said the EcoGreen hard drive will become available during the current quarter with a suggested retail price of $199.

In unrelated news, Hewlett-Packard (HP) announced a far-reaching eco-initiative mainly targeting its printer business. Besides a carbon footprint calculator (which is also offered by Xerox) and a printer power calculator, HP said it has implemented a "global paper policy", which is governing the sustainable manufacture and use of paper HP sells to customers.

HP said that it will aim to improve the energy efficiency of its ink and laser printing products by 40% by 2011 and will begin bringing power saving technologies such as its auto-on and auto-off feature to its LaserJet series in 2009. Additionally, the company will advance its program to use recycled materials to build new printers: 83% of the total plastic weight of the new Deskjet D2545, which sells for about $45, are made from recycled materials, according to the company. Later this summer, HP plans to introduce this summer a printer that will feature recycled plastic derived from the company’s "closed loop" plastic recycling system, which incorporates a variety of post-consumer recycled plastics, from HP inkjet cartridges to water bottles.

Over time, the company will put "Eco Highlights" stickers on its printers, which HP says will help customers identify environmental attributes of a product.