Just saw this article on Lifehacker.com, saying so-called 'green' hard drives usually aren't. Since this is a user-base obsessed with low power consumption, what are your thoughts?

 

http://lifehacker.com/5749345/skip-the-green-hard-drives-if-youre-trying-to-save-power

 

I'm not sure if I agree w/ their synopsis, but I can see the point

The performance/power thing is valid if you have 1 or 2 drives in a PC. Not so valid once you get to 8, 16 or 22 drives.

 

The other 2 big issues for us are:

 

1) Green drives are cheaper to buy, not just run, than 7200rpm drives

 

2) You can use a cheaper PSU if you use Green drives.

less cooling too. using their own stats you would be saving $55 a year if you have 10 green drives.  Pretty decent saving if u ask me.

less cooling too. using their own stats you would be saving $55 a year if you have 10 green drives.  Pretty decent saving if u ask me.

 

Not to mention it's cooler (therefor less cooling = power required). I think they're right, in small quantities it doesn't really matter. But when you're looking at 7,8,9 and more drives, it starts to make sense.

Don't forget about noise, too. 10 drives that are even a LITTLE bit less noisy can be a huge difference.

I agree that the reduction is heat is as important as power.  I changed from 7200 to green for that reason alone.

Just saw this article on Lifehacker.com, saying so-called 'green' hard drives usually aren't. Since this is a user-base obsessed with low power consumption, what are your thoughts?

 

http://lifehacker.com/5749345/skip-the-green-hard-drives-if-youre-trying-to-save-power

 

I'm not sure if I agree w/ their synopsis, but I can see the point

 

I think this article was aimed more at desktop builds, not server builds.

 

Even though the unRAID is a "modest" server by corporate standards, it is definatly a server. many people pack their unraids with drives, 10, 15, even 22 drives. In those numbers you can really see the difference that green drives can make. Not to mention heat and even the initial cost of the drive itself.

 

I know for me, the main intention of my server was to serve up video to my TV, no need for 7200 RPM's there.

 

By the same token, when building a new workstation I would have no issues buying a 7200 RPM drive for that.

In the end, the end of a year powering a "green" unRAID server compared to a non-green unRAID server will just be as much as a nice lunch for myself. In the grand scheme of things I'll take that small little tiny performance increase at every turn.