Hard drive enclosure power consumption for backups
Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2010 4:59 am
I have an external hard drive from LaCie that I use exclusively for daily backups. This means it's only typically used for something like 30min - 1 hour per day but the time does vary depending on how much new data I have managed to generate in the 24h period. I do the first obvious thing to do for saving power which is to spin it down after each backup operation and that gives me a change from 10w to 4w consumption when idle. I also obtained a timer that I could use to cut power from the external brick completely but due to the varying times it takes to make the backup that has not worked reliably enough. Maybe the disk also has some issues with not properly powering up every time.
I'm thinking of upgrading my storage space and that got me thinking about different options for shaving off all or some of the remaining consumption. It seems to be hard to find information on external hard disk/enclosure power consumption and saving features. There has been a now discontinued product line named GreenStar from Welland that offered the option of completely powering down the hard disk inside the enclosure. I also know there are devices designed for restarting a colocated computer remotely but I doubt they'd be an improvement here.
I guess just reducing the idle power draw would be good, but there are so few tests around that I'm left guessing. The only thing I found with Google is this, but it is old enough that things could have changed and ideally I'd like an enclosure I can put my own disk in. The LaCie device fares pretty well there and they do also have an enclosure.
Any products I've missed, recommendations for good ones or alternate backup solutions?
I'm thinking of upgrading my storage space and that got me thinking about different options for shaving off all or some of the remaining consumption. It seems to be hard to find information on external hard disk/enclosure power consumption and saving features. There has been a now discontinued product line named GreenStar from Welland that offered the option of completely powering down the hard disk inside the enclosure. I also know there are devices designed for restarting a colocated computer remotely but I doubt they'd be an improvement here.
I guess just reducing the idle power draw would be good, but there are so few tests around that I'm left guessing. The only thing I found with Google is this, but it is old enough that things could have changed and ideally I'd like an enclosure I can put my own disk in. The LaCie device fares pretty well there and they do also have an enclosure.
Any products I've missed, recommendations for good ones or alternate backup solutions?