Western Digital’s Caviar GreenPower is a large storage drive with a mission, offering high capacity (500GB, 750GB & 1TB) with a low energy requirement.  The mystery comes in when you try to determine the spindle speed and maximum sustained transfer rate which fall under WD’s new IntelliPower, that will vary spindle speed based on storage capacity.  This backs up their claim to green power, as the drive is focused on efficiency, not speed records.  The Tech Report found WD to have done a very good job implementing this new focus, you get a terabyte sized drive with solid (if not blazing fast) performance, lowered power consumption, and all for under $300.

“This push toward environmental friendliness has even permeated the PC industry. Most new components comply with the Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive, for example. The recent trend toward lowering power consumption and improving energy efficiency also lends itself to hugging the planet, even if it was mostly inspired by a desire to reduce the noise generated by Prescott heatsinks.

There’s no ulterior motive behind the latest component to hop on the green bandwagon, though. Western Digital’s new Caviar GP hard drive breaks new ground as the first desktop drive we’ve seen designed explicitly to lower power consumption. Energy efficiency isn’t new in the hard drive world, of course; mobile drives have carefully sipped power to conserve notebook battery life for years. However, the Caviar GP is a 3.5″ drive meant for desktops, and that makes it rather special.

There’s more to the Caviar GP than its Birkenstocks, too. The drive packs a mind-bending 250GB per platter and is available in capacities up to a cool terabyte, making it the biggest drive in the Caviar line. There’s a catch, of course. While most desktop drives spin at either 5,400 or 7,200RPM, the Caviar GP’s spindle speed lies somewhere between the two, and Western Digital won’t say exactly where.”

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