I installed the WD Caviar GP 500 GB model in a Mac Pro. Though WD doesn't elaborate on the drive's spindle speed (it's apparently somewhere between 5400 and 7200 rpm), it works as well as any other hard drive I've used and is easy to install (as are pretty much all such devices in the Mac pro desktop). I noticed no sluggishness in the drive despite its "green" features.

Speaking of which, the 3.5-inch SATA drive consumes just 3.3 watts in idle mode and six watts during seek mode, thanks to the use of IntelliPower, IntelliSeek and IntelliPark technologies. According to the folks at WD, the drive -- and others in its family -- yield average drive power savings of 4-5 watts over competitors' drives and also reduce your electric bill a bit. How much? That depends on a variety of factors, but you can see a chart on the subject [url=http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/greenpower/index.asp?language=en]here[/url].

You won't buy a new house from the savings if you're a home user. The bigger impact is on larger companies. According to WD a "a data center with 10,000 drives can save $100,000 in annual energy costs, and reduce CO2 emission by 600 metric tons -- the equivalent of taking almost 400 cars off the road for a year."

Now let me say that I have absolutely no way to verify these figures. And there's probably a bit of PR spin and hype in those numbers. But if the "green" drives offer any energy savings at all, that's a trend I'd like to encourage and support. And since the WD Caviar GP 600 GB works fine in my eval Mac Pro unit and is competitively priced (US$149.99) I have no reason not to recommend it.

(For more on tech companies working on environmentally friendly technologies, check out the [url=http://www.climatesaverscomputing.org/]Climates Savers Smart Computing site[/url].)

Macsimum rating: 9 out of 10.

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