Ads
Ads
All about Storage Solutions
 Latest Storage Solutions articles
Sound Proof Your Hard Drive

Sound Proof Your Hard Drive
Hard drive silencers and cases with special suspension hardware promise to reduce hard drive noise. We looked at two different products, and were really surprised by the results. Are these things gimmicks, or is there some real value here? Read More

  • Tom's Storage Charts 2009: A New Test Environment
    Our old 3.6 GHz Xeon is making way for a brand new X58-based Core i7 solution with PCI-X and PCIe, which we will use to test hard drives, SSDs, controllers, and other storage products. We introduce you to our new reference platform and talk about testing! Read More
All Storage Solutions articles
 Storage Solutions performance charts
All performance charts
 Latest Storage Solutions news
All Storage Solutions news

Newsletters


Need help ?
  • Ask your question about IT issues
  • Post

Partners

The Games selection

violent : Friday the 24th Exterminate Santa Claus's elves. Use the arrows to move, S to grab the elves, and A or W to attack them with your sword.
violent : Interactive Buddy Unwind on your interactive buddy: Do anything you want to him, it will earn you money, and you can buy other stuff to torture him with.
Ads

Sponsored links

HP Pitches Green Printers, Samsung Green Hard Drives

Next news
7:30 PM - May 22, 2008 by Wolfgang Gruener

 

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.

Source : Tom's Hardware US

Talkback
Add your comment
thogrom 05/23/2008 2:03 AM
Hide
--1+

good to know about hard drives... not... hdds use so little power today it's almost inconsequential compared to everything else in use

liemfukliang 05/23/2008 4:15 AM
Hide
-1+

Why they can make 15.000 rpm HDD without so much power compared to GT200, but to make green 7200 rpm they have to change to 5400 rpm?

waffle911 05/23/2008 6:45 AM
Hide
-1+

"Later this summer, HP plans to introduce this summer..."

I wonder if HP is doing anything this summer.

If Tom's is hiring copy editors (and at this rate, they need an entire editing department), I'd be willing to help out a bit.

Might I suggest two very important writing reference materials that the entire Tom's writing staff should read:

The Elements of Style
MLA Style Guide

kapute 05/23/2008 11:27 AM
Hide
-1+

If it costs more to refill the printer with ink than it does to buy a new one, then the device will end up as landfill as soon as it's empty. This is probably not all that good for the environment. Printers that refuse to print because their internal computer says its time for a service also end up being dumped, as its cheaper to buy a new one than get it fixed. Companies serious about their products environmental impact might want to give them large ink tanks that are cheap to refill, and able to be easily serviced by user when it fills internally with ink.

Comments are closed on this page.

Sponsored links