Storage drives are getting all sorts of fine tuning for the green segment. While a single hard drive might not consume the sort of power that would change things dramatically the amount of power saved across a RAID array of such drives could be impressive.

Legit Reviews has a look at the Western Digital 2TB Caviar green and black drives one of which promises to sip power while the other goes for all out performance. Here’s a look:

The WD Caviar Green 2 TB drive might not shine in the performance benchmarks, but it does shine in other areas like power consumption, heat and noise levels. It uses 4-5 Watts less power while completing seek operations and our testing showed that it was also 6C to 9C cooler depending on the state of the drive.  This makes the Caviar Green 2 TB drive the ideal choice for energy-conscious customers or for those that are building a system in a chassis that doesn’t have good airflow.

Performance or power savings and cooler operating temperatures, decisions decisions.

Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system is being touted as the best reason to upgrade from your old XP install clearly trumping the company’s Vista OS by quite a wide margin when it comes to user friendliness and system response.

Up until now there has been a hidden angle to the operating system, power consumption.

The company has done some optimizing with Windows 7 which sees it offering a better battery life compared to Vista, as reported by CNET, and in our own testing of the OS we saw much improved battery life compared to Windows XP.

Markedly so.

Perhaps it’s making better usage of power saving features or it’s doing more with less whatever the case is if you’re going to stick to Windows land and want to save a bit on the electric bill then the upgrade may be a little more tempting.

There used to be a time when storage space was a major issue especially with so many programs and gaming titles using multiple CD installations which lead to mulling over what files to keep. Moving forward to today’s archiving needs for digital cameras and archiving high definition entertainment the storage crunch continues.

Big Bruin has a look at the Seagate Barracuda LP 2TB SATA hard drive and how it stacks up against the competition. Here’s a peek:

Not wanting to be left out of the green party, Seagate has introduced an energy efficient line of hard drives called Barracuda LP (Low Power). This series of drives includes models with capacities of 1TB, 1.5TB, and 2TB; all of which are intended to run cool, quiet, and with decreased energy consumption.

Greener than your average multi-terabyte hard drive? Sold!

Power Supplies fit into that computing niche of the necessary evil peripheral. The sort of thing which most users don’t give a second thought to and regret it down the line. It can also bite you in the wallet as inefficient power supplies tend to waste more electricity when converting power from the plug to power usable by your computer.

In comes the Enermax Eco 80+ 350W power supply for those with reasonably specced computers, which is the majority of computer users, which boasts over an 80% power efficiency. Driver Heaven has a look:

The base design of the Eco 80+ is very similar to that of the Pro 82+ and Modu 82+ series with slightly lesser components responsible for the lower price and performance. There is only one transformer providing power to all of the power lines, except for the 5VSB line which is powered by its own tiny dedicated transformer. At the primary side of the unit a Hitachi HP3 220μF/400V capacitor can be seen aside a fairly large filtering choke. All of the secondary side capacitors are industrial grade capacitors from CE-TUR (Jen pan). The heatsinks are much larger than what we’d expect to find in a unit with this kind of output.

Capacitors and chokes oh my! A nice unit to keep in mind if you want your next build to draw less power.

Wherever in the world you happen to be tomorrow at 8:30pm, you’ll be in the midst of Earth Hour.

Earth Hour began in Sydney in 2007, when 2.2 million homes and businesses switched off their lights for one hour. In 2008 the message had grown into a global sustainability movement, with 50 million people switching off their lights. Global landmarks such as the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Rome’s Colosseum, the Sydney Opera House and the Coca Cola billboard in Times Square all stood in darkness.

In 2009, Earth Hour is being taken to the next level, with the goal of 1 billion people switching off their lights as part of a global vote.

Participation is easy, just shut off your lights for one hour, which counts as a vote for Vote Earth. And don’t light candles — they’ve been shown to be worse for the environment than regular light bulbs.

Depending on how hard core you are, you can opt to shut down even more electronics, but the point is to make a measurable and visible show of strength before the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this year. If your neighborhood takes Earth Hour it as seriously as Sydney does, then you’ll be sure to witness a noticeable change.

Source: Earth Hour

Where will the next big green tech idea come from? There’s a good chance you may have Uncle Sam to think. Thanks to comparatively flush R&D budgets, militaries might hold the key to an alternatively fueled future.

Deron Lovaas, a Policy Director at the U.S.-based environmental group the Natural Resources Defense Council, says military researchers have a history of spawning transformative technologies that trickle into society, including DARPAnet, the communication system of the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that eventually evolved into the Internet. “What’s exciting here is potential spin-off effects,” he says. “The military can invest so much more than the private sector can. They can invest billions into substitute fuels. And they can take bigger risks.”

And we all know how DARPAnet changed the world…

Source: Time

According to the GreenFactor study conducted by firms by Strategic Oxygen and Cohn & Wolfe, Dell takes home the honor of being named the greenest brand among IT buyers. Among the factors considered in labeling IT wares “green” are “efficient power consumption, recyclable/reusable packaging, recycling offers for older equipment, use of non-toxic materials, or making investments in future “green” concepts such as alternative materials.”

Although other companies like IBM, HP, and Microsoft scored well among the study’s 3,500 enterprise IT decision makers across 11 countries, Dell’s recycling program resonated with IT managers and C-level tech executives.

..Global IT buyers continue to see little differentiation among the various green offerings, yet brand rankings among companies shifted somewhat with Dell at 30% moving to number one, replacing HP, which fell to number two at 26%. Similar to the July findings, no single enterprise IT brand is a clear “green” leader globally and there is little statistical difference between the leaders.

But it’s no time to sit on one’s laurels…

According to Michael Gale, president of Strategic Oxygen, “As we watch companies make financial commitments to the environment with innovation and marketing, it is interesting that the differentiation among the various brands is so small. However, given Dell’s long-term and consistent commitment to sustainability, I am not surprised to see it at the top. The challenge is going to be building differentiated value over time.”

Source: Press Release [via Treehugger]

Did you know there are Federal standards mandating the procurement of energy efficient IT equipment? There are, and according to the rules, agencies must spend no less 95 percent of their computer and monitor budgets on EPEAT rated hardware.

The taxpayer, in a reversal from recent economic woes–and the environment, let’s not forget–appears to be benefiting from the practice.

According to a 2007 Environmental Protection Agency report, EPEAT products purchased that year will save government $4 billion in energy costs over their lifetimes. Green computers also reduced energy consumption by 42 billion kilowatt hours and reduced carbon emissions by 3.3 million metric tons, according to the report.

And in a lesson that hopefully spills over into businesses at large, the House of Representatives adopted virtualization in a big way, which impacted more than just power consumption.

The 440-plus servers that resided in individual member officers were replaced by centrally located and managed virtual servers. Not only has this saved power, but it also has improved security by taking management out of the hands of individual offices. Security patches, backup and intrusion monitoring are now centrally deployed, strengthening the network, Nichols said.

The consolidation has resulted in a 35 percent cost savings. The savings generated not only include reduced power consumption and storage costs, but also reduced costs to member offices, which no longer have to budget for hardware, software or maintenance, he said.

With all the bad news surrounding Washington DC, it appears that some things are going right.

Source: FederalTimes.com

Going green has plenty of marketing benefits and that socially responsible streak that make everyone feel great inside but for Microsoft the move may mean quite a bit of savings in the long run. The company’s Software Enabled Earth blog notes the company’s focus on saving energy and using fewer resources while maintaining the same level of productivity. Here’s a peek:

In coming posts, I will talk about how we view software as a key foundational component of helping accelerate scientific breakthroughs in better understanding our world and the changes that are likely to come. I will also discuss how we can enable the IT industry to significantly increase computing capacity around the globe, while simultaneously reducing the amount of energy required by our industry.

Today, I want to focus on our carbon footprint goal. We understand that environmental action must begin at home. Today, Steve announced to all employees that Microsoft has set a goal to reduce its carbon emissions per unit of revenue by at least 30% compared with 2007 levels by 2012. We’ll achieve this goal by improving energy use in our buildings and operations, reducing air travel, and increasing our use of renewable energy. As a technology company, we believe that our footprint goals will be met by leveraging software and technology. We will work to provide advances in our building operations, we will continue to expand our use of our Unified Communications tools (just last year we saved over $90 million on travel through the increased use of our UC tools), and will look for new ways to reduce our use of resources in our data centers by continuing to push the envelope on innovation in how data centers are designed, built and operated.

If they manage to stick with their plan it could mean huge savings for the company and, hopefully, some new technologies for consumers.

After dropping flash drives into its Sun Storage 7000 storage arrays, Sun is now eyeing “Flash Driven” rack and blade application servers for the fast performing and energy efficient data storage technology. Sure, they cost more than servers with traditional hard drives. But nevermind that, application performance is where it’s at according to Sun.

Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced the next step in its end-to-end enterprise Flash strategy with the availability of robust solid state drive (SSD) Flash technology in its x64, chip multi-threaded (CMT) Rack and Blade systems. Selected Sun x64 and CMT systems are available for free 60-day trials via Sun’s Try and Buy program, with up to 20-40 percent discount if the system is purchased at http://www.sun.com/tryandbuy

Sun’s unique systems design approach to SSD integration across software, systems and storage leverages enterprise-class components and redefines the storage hierarchy. This holistic systems approach helps customers achieve up to 65x faster response times, up to eight times better throughput, and up to 38% less power consumption than servers with traditional spinning hard disk drives.

Those that act fast may enjoy that discount. Everyone else, good luck getting it past the budget overlords. Though the energy savings *might* tip things into your green datacenter plans.

Source: Press Release