Samsung Intros Greener Story Station External Hard Drives

[btarunr]

Samsung Electronics is releasing a new energy-efficient version of its Story Station external hard drive. Adhering to the European Union's EuP (Energy Using Products) Directive for Standby Regulation, effective January 2010, the new Story Station draws a mere 0.09W of power when in standby, down from its current 2.5W standby power draw. "User requirements for external hard drives now include eco-friendliness and lower power levels in addition to performance, reliability and exceptional design," said C.H. Lee, vice president, Storage sales & marketing, Samsung Electronics. "Samsung's STORY Station, which has been praised for its appealing external-drive design, takes a huge step forward in setting the stage for the timely introduction of environmentally-conscious hard drive technology," he added. The Story Station external hard drive comes in capacities of 500 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB. Included are features that automatically backup data on to it, encrypting, and password-protecting it. It uses USB 2.0 for connectivity. The new drives will reach stores next month.



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[Delta6326]

wow .09w thats pretty good, any projected prices?$ im in need of a new Ex HD

 

[Munki]

Wow, maybe I need to get one of these. Save some money on the power bill. On top of the fact my current one is an older Seagate with only 160Gigs of space.

 

[pr0n Inspector]

wow 2.41 watts saved by turning off the HDD motor. Who would have thought of that?

 

[Mussels]

they're comparing 2.5W of standby to 0.9W of standby on the old model.


that just means they got a more efficient power pack for it, or newer technology inside the case (the USB side of things, not the HDD side of things)

they dont mention load wattage at all.

 

[pr0n Inspector]

they're comparing 2.5W of standby to 0.9W of standby on the old model.


that just means they got a more efficient power pack for it, or newer technology inside the case (the USB side of things, not the HDD side of things)

they dont mention load wattage at all.

I don't know about you but it's pretty obvious to me that they saved 2.41 watts by spinning down the hard drive while idling.

 

[Mussels]

I don't know about you but it's pretty obvious to me that they saved 2.41 watts by spinning down the hard drive while idling.

USB drives spin down regardless, its an OS setting.
they're talking about idle vs idle - once spun down, their new one uses less power than their old one.

 

[pr0n Inspector]

USB drives spin down regardless, its an OS setting.
they're talking about idle vs idle - once spun down, their new one uses less power than their old one.

I have two enclosures and none of them will spin down after 20 minutes of idling(my previous setting).
USB external drives can simply ignore the spin down command, or enforce their own idle-time-before-spin-down.
What I meant was the old model probably do not spin down when idling while the new model do.

 

[Mussels]

I have two enclosures and none of them will spin down after 20 minutes of idling(my previous setting).
USB external drives can simply ignore the spin down command, or enforce their own idle-time-before-spin-down.
What I meant was the old model probably do not spin down when idling while the new model do.

that would imply that spun up, the drive in the enclosure only uses 2 watts. these are 3.5" drives judging by the capacities, meaning thats impossible - lending weight to my view.

 

[pr0n Inspector]

that would imply that spun up, the drive in the enclosure only uses 2 watts. these are 3.5" drives judging by the capacities, meaning thats impossible - lending weight to my view.

According to spcr, the single-platter 500GB F2 EcoGreen consumes 3.2W at idle, that's not far off from Samsung's claimed 2.5W(of this enclosure+drive)

 

[Baum]

some of my wester digital drive spin down and theres even a great utility not widely spread which can be used to spindown and control the time.

it's just a time inside a small processor onboard the usb controller which starts a countdown after every access thus it spins down during usage if you don't access it for a given time

i will mesure it's idle with stopped Harddrive maybe samsung get's into trouble as these older drives are out of the "green" edition of WD and feature a good firmware from start