Author: Andrew Schembri Date: December 27, 2007 Manufacturer: Western Digital Provider: Western Digital

Testing » Page 1: Introduction

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With the advent of hybrid cars, being “green conscience” is the new way to be. Even celebrities are ditching their resource wasteful ways in favor of more earth friendly cars and even houses. Not to be left out of the new, emerging trend, Western Digital presents the Green Power series of drives, which claim 4-5 watts less power hungry than other drives.


The WD10EACS drive is not a run of the mill hard drive. It is one of Western Digital’s new Green Power line of drives. Here are some of the features that WD touts for the drives:

IntelliSeek is an interesting firmware tweak that moves the actuator arm only as fast as necessary. This reduces power consumption as well as noise. It should also improve the reliability of the drive.

IntelliPark is a feature that is borrowed from notebook drives. It should improve the shock absobtion capability of the drive.

It is obvious from the above that this drive is aimed to be quiet and power saving. Lets take a look at the specs of the drive verses WD’s older generation, the WD5000AAKS.



WD10EACS specs:
Number of platters: 4
Interface: SATA 3Gbps
Acoustics: 25dBA idle, 27dBA seek
Seek Time: 8.9ms
Power: 7.5W for read/write, 4W for idle
Cache: 16MB
Price: $299 ($255 street)

WD5000AAKS specs:
Number of platters: 3
Interface: SATA 3Gbps
Acoustics: 28dBA idle, 33dBA seek
Seek Time: 8.9ms
Power: 8.77 for read/write, 8.4 watts for idle
Cache: 16MB
Price $105 street

Western Digital claims the drive is 5400 - 7200 RPM. Many on the web have speculated that this means the drive dynamically adjusts the RPM based on load. However, Western Digital has recently come forward announcing that this means some drives run at 5400RPM, while others run at 7200RPM. The drive that is being tested today is 5400RPM.

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Testing » Page 1: Introduction Page 2: Testing Page 3: Acoustics