Digital Home Thoughts: Are Green Hard Drives Really That Green?

"There are a lot of "green" hard drives out there, which claim to be low-power, low-noise, low-heat, and low-cost. Sadly, they don't save quite as much power as they claim, and here's why. There isn't anything wrong with buying a low-powered drive-after all, we used one in our second Hackintosh build. While drives like the Western Digital Caviar Green are a bit cheaper than their faster counterparts (since they only run at 5400RPM), the "power saving" promise falls short, as they only save you a few watts."

Green hard drives are very much being pushed as an eco friendly option for your PC, but are they really? Ars Technica asks this question and discusses why this may not be the case depending on what you are going to use it for. I've always considered green disks to simply be slower, quieter disks and not really energy saving devices. If it's for an HTPC that going to live under the TV and is going to be on for long periods, then a quiet disk is probably the right choice. For a gaming PC there really wouldn't be much savings on an eco-friendly disk as you would likely be accessing the disk a lot anyway, albeit at a slower speed. Have a read of the article at Ars Technica and see if using a green disk would be the right choice for you.