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We got some new drives in the lab today and I accidentally looked at the power consumption of these 1TB SATA drives and discovered that the +5V line required 700mA and the +12V line required a mere 550mA to operate. I compared it to 200GB Maxtor drive and noted that the +5V rating was about the same, however, the +12V rating was 1500mA. The 12W power rating reduction is impressive. WD’s product specifications page notes that read/write power is about 7W while idle power consumption is around 4W. Anandtech claims that Seagate’s 1TB drive is also fairly efficient. Please understand that I have no financial interest in selling these drives, I am simply impressed that we can get 1TB of storage in such an energy-efficient footprint. Combining this with one of an energy-efficient x86 system could soon become the new trend in always-on home media servers.

 
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