Testing (continued):
Thermal Testing:
Thermal testing involved using CPUID's HWMonitor 1.13 to keep an eye on the temperature of the drives as they were run from idle to load conditions. The idle condition was established by letting the drive sit at the Window's desktop with nothing running for a period of about one hour. The load condition was established by running an HD Tune error scan on the drive while simultaneously transfering data to and from the drive, also for a period of about one hour. The chart below details the results.
What we see is that the drive might just be able to back up its green name. It starts out the coolest, and stays that way at all times. In addition to being very cool, it is also very quiet. Drives were tested laying on a desktop, with no vibration isolation, and the Caviar Green drive barely made a hum.
Power Consumption Testing:
Power consumption testing had not been conducted during an internal hard drive review at Bigbruin.com previously, and required the help of some external drive technology to get it done. Each drive was installed in a Thermaltake Vi-On enclosure that was connected to the test system via USB, and plugged into a Seasonic Power Angel at the wall outlet.
The idle and load conditions detailed in the thermal testing also apply to this portion of the review, as the two tests were conducted in the same way. Without a drive installed in the Vi-On the AC power draw was 2W, and the chart below details the idle and load power draw of the three drives plus that of the enclosure.
What we see is that the two 750GB drives draw the same amount, and really don't fluctuate much from idle to load. By contrast, the setup with the Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB hard drive drew just 6W at idle, and required only 9W under load. Subtracting the 2W for the enclosure itself, that is a 60% power saving at idle, and a 36% power saving under load. Rather impressive in my opinion.
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