Western Digital Caviar Green Drives

Western Digital divides their internal hard drives into three distinct families - the WD Caviar Blue for their basic hard drives, the WD Caviar Green for their quieter, cooler hard drives and the WD Caviar Black for their performance-grade hard drives.

According to Western Digital, the Caviar Green hard drives offer an average power saving of 4-5 watts over their competitors, a feat that they claim is equivalent to reducing CO₂ emissions by 13.8 kg per year. Of course, that's a mere drop in the ocean but if you can help save the environment while you work or play on your computer, why not?

At press time, Western Digital has seven different Caviar GP models, all of which support the following features :

Reduced power consumption - WD has reduced power consumption by up to 40 percent compared to standard desktop drives with the combination of WD's IntelliSeek™, NoTouch™, and IntelliPower™ technologies.

Cool and quiet - GreenPower™ technology yields lower operating temperatures for increased reliability and low acoustics for ultra-quiet PCs and external drives.

IntelliPower - A fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance.

IntelliSeek - Calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise, and vibration.

NoTouch ramp load technology - The recording head never touches the disk media ensuring significantly less wear to the recording head and media as well as better drive protection in transit.

The larger models (750 GB and above) support this additional feature :

StableTrac™ - The motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking, during read and write operations.

Today, we will look at Western Digital's latest Caviar Green hard disk drive - the WD20EADS. This hard disk drive is not only quieter and cooler than regular hard disk drive, it also packs a whooping storage capacity of 2 terabytes! Let's take a look at it!

Packaging

Like most OEM-packed hard drives, the WD Caviar Green 2TB hard disk drive came in just a sealed anti-static plastic packet with a sachet of dessicants to keep it dry. Other than the sparse packaging (and no documentation), this OEM-packed drive is no different from the retail version, right down to the 3-year warranty.

All you need to do is just cut open the plastic packet and slide out the drive. Be sure to ground yourself before removing and handling the hard disk drive as static can damage it. In particular, you should try to avoid touching the exposed PCB located at the base of the drive.

If you like your packaging or need to deliver this hard disk drive by mail, you can always opt for the retail version of the drive. It comes with its own box and proper padding to ensure the drive survives a mail delivery. Of course, the retail package comes with a price premium as well.

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