Seagate's desktop hard drive gets extra green
To celebrate Earth day, Seagate announced Wednesday the availability of its new, extra-low-power desktop hard drive, the Barracuda LP (LP stands for low power).
(Credit:
Seagate)
If Western Digital's new WD RE4-GP desktop hard drive has no spinning rpm specification, Seagate's Barracuda LP has a rather unconventional spinning speed of 5,900rpm.
Generally, the spinning speed is associated with the performance of hard drives. For example, drives with 5,400rpm tend to have a lower performance than those with 7,200rpm, which is the current spinning speed of most desktop hard drives.
However, the faster the hard drive spins, the more energy it uses. It's almost impossible to increase the power efficiency of a hard drive without changing its spinning speed.
With that said, the new Barracuda LP is more suitable for applications that don't require a high level of performance, but rather stability and power efficiency.
Example of these applications are low-power personal computers, external PC storage and multiple-drive home networking systems, such as NAS servers. And these are exactly the market that Seagate is targeting with its new hard drive.
The company claims that the Barracuda LP helps reduce system power costs, runs more quietly than traditional drives, operates at lower temperatures and, most importantly, uses as much as 25 percent less electricity than competing "green" hard drives.
The new Barracuda LB comes in 3.5-inch form factor and uses SATA standard. It's available in 1TB, 1.5TB, and 2TB version that costs $118, $156, and $358, respectively.
Dong Ngo is a CNET editor who covers networking and network storage, and writes about anything else he finds interesting. You can also listen to his podcast at insidecnetlabs.cnet.com. E-mail Dong. 
