Seagate's Energy-friendly 5,900 RPM HDDs
Would Heart be proud of this version of Barracuda?
It’s Earth Day today, a day that Seagate chose to announce its new Barracuda LP line of hard disk drives.
The LP in the model name is for Low Power – the feature angle of this line of drives. Seagate says that the Barracuda LP “combines the largest storage capacity available with the best power efficiency and performance in its class, using as much as 50 percent less electricity than standard desktop hard drives.”
Of course, the energy savings have to come from somewhere, and in this case it’s immediately apparent that some of it is rotational speed. Most of the mainstream drives we use today spin at 7,200 RPM, but the Barracuda LP’s run at only 5,900 RPM.
This gives the Barracuda LP an average latency of 5.5 ms. Powerwise, the 1 TB model is rated for 3 W while idle and 5.7 W operating. The 1.5 TB and 2 TB models hit 5.5 W idle and 6.8 W operating.
Earlier this week, Western Digital introduced its 2 TB “GreenPower” hard disk drive, though that model is targeted towards enterprises with a beefy 64 MB cache and 1.2 million hours MTBF.
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In the interest of editorial douchebaggery, I hope this is a typo:
Earlier this week, Western Digital
introduced its 2 GB “GreenPower”
Otherwise, that seems a tad small...
5900RPM? thats an odd number
In the interest of editorial douchebaggery, I hope this is a typo:Earlier this week, Western Digitalintroduced its 2 GB “GreenPower”Otherwise, that seems a tad small...
Yah it's a 2TB drive and it eats this drive. Read/Write 6.00 Watts Idle 3.7 Watts... I bet it's faster, too.... WD FTW!
5900RPM, what?
I guess if it can speed up a 5400RPM spindle speed faster yet save energy, I guess that's the bottom line right? Too bad they can't make it at least 6000 RPM.
5900RPM, what?I guess if it can speed up a 5400RPM spindle speed faster yet save energy, I guess that's the bottom line right? Too bad they can't make it at least 6000 RPM.
yeah or 6001, that would be nice...
yea go western digital, a whopping 2 gb hard drive, thats the biggest one ive seen yet!
I need at least 6002.
But seriously, this drive is not a bad idea.
This is really good news. I have given up finding 5400 RPM drives at 3.5 size. I don't mind waiting an extra second for the lower heat dissipation and lower electrical bill. It's good for all the other components too, since there's less interior heat. I wish they had not stopped making 5400 RPM drives, but these 5900 RPMs should do just fine. I'm sure Seagate chose that number for a good reason, as it made the most sense in terms of the compromise between power and performance. Going to 6000 because it's on a thousand boundary thankfully didn't matter to much to the engineers.
yea go western digital, a whopping 2 gb hard drive, thats the biggest one ive seen yet!
2GB?! you call that big!?
Looking forward to seeing these in netbooks soon? Yes?
2GB?! you call that big!?
I believe you fell victim to what's commonly known as sarcasm, my friend.
Looking forward to seeing these in netbooks soon? Yes?
No - these are 3.5" drives - almost as big as the whole netbook!
After Seagate got away with its bad firmware & "Super Clicky" post-recovery/post-unbricking of Seagate ST31000340AS 1TB firmware, NEVER AGAIN.
I'm just surprised and disappointed at the same time that websites like Tomshardware continues to praise Seagate and refuses to publish articles about how those post-unbricking ST31000340AS performance compares with that of early release with bad firmware.
5900RPM? thats an odd number
No, that's an even number.
This thing sucks.... now if they made it 6003 rpm then we would have something efficient and fast!!!

sorry couldn't help myself
You could just overclock the motor on your existing drive, thereby making it 6003 rpm
I will never buy a seagate again. There crappy 5900 crashed as a back up at a very critical and I lost 3 years of professional photographer imagery. Never....not even once did I get a letter with them telling they are having a problem with their hardrives.......I am a heart breath away from being out of business because that damn drive.......jeez would it have hurt them to send a simple letter say hey we are having problems beware....
Oh! i forgot to rate it....well its not neutral