Seagate and Western Digital’s new 2TB Drives

Both Seagate and Western Digital have released new 2TB drives, these drives have been designed to use less power by spinning slower and producing less heat. ComputerWorld have ran a head to head comparison of the drives performance. Both drives that were tested are SATA internal 3.5 inch drives.

Seagate’s drive is the “Seagate Barracuda LP SATA 3Gb/s 2TB”, this drive has a 5900rpm spindle speed, and is said to use 50 percent less electricity than standard hard drives, it is also said to use 25 percent less electricity than rivals ‘green’ hard drives.

Another thing that Seagate have considered is becoming more environmentally friendly, they claim that these new drives are said to be 70 percent recyclable and meets RoHS environmental standards. To see how the drive performed in the benchmarks check out ComputerWorld.

Western Digital’s drive is the “WD RE4-GP”, the drive doesn’t mention its spindle speed, instead it just mentions ‘IntelliPower’, according to Western Digital the drive consumes 25 percent less power then its previous ‘Green Power’ drives. To see how the drive performed during benchmarks, check out ComputerWorld.

Overall the Western Digital drive is said to have edged the benchmark tests, however performance compared to standard drives is said to be sub standard, that said most users who just create small documents and use their PC’s for Web and Office type usage will not need a high performance drive, and I’m sure lower power consumption will develop interest.