Three Generations Compared: Why Storage Density Matters

Benchmark Results: Power Consumption

Idle power has decreased considerably between generations. On one hand, there certainly is technological progress on the spindle motor. On the other hand, decreased platter count (five to three to two) contributes most of the savings.

Power required at maximum throughput has decreased by 50% from the original drive to the 7K1000.B. However, the latest drive requires more power for this type of workload.

With HD video playback, the data stream doesn’t cause a lot of stress to the drive. The difference from the oldest to the newest drive is a bit more than 40 percent. This result wouldn't necessarily apply to other drive vendors, since Hitachi is the only one shipping five-platter desktop drives. Thus the difference across three product generations would more likely be between 20% and 30% for other manufacturers.