It depends.
In 1980, it was 4.5 megawatts from 200,000 drives. Today with a drive like the new Seagate Barracuda LP drive, it’s 3.0 watts from one drive. Even less per terabyte with a 2 TB version of the Barracuda LP.
That’s a million-fold reduction in power consumption over 30 years. Imagine the auto industry making that kind of progress with gas mileage!
Despite this, storage power is a growing challenge for the planet. That’s because data is growing as fast or faster than storage power consumption in decreasing.
Expect continued innovation from storage device makers and system manufacturers to continue to increase the efficiency of storage.
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