Why Seagate said goodbye to “green” drives

It feels like only a year ago that Seagate came out with Barracuda Green.

That’s because it was only a year ago that Seagate changed the name of its Barracuda LP drive to Barracuda Green. In a post I wrote in November of 2010, I asked fellow blogger and Product Marketing Manager for Seagate’s Barracuda family- Dave Burks why the name change.  The answer, short and sweet, “It just makes sense.”  And back then it did make sense. No one knew what Barracuda LP was. Was it low price, low power, low performance? Attaching the green name to Barracuda would make it easier for partners and consumers to understand where the product fits in the Barracuda Family.  Fast forward to today, and I asked Dave, “why get rid of Barracuda Green?”  The answer, once again…”It just makes sense.”

Huh?

Then Dave explained it to me. “The new 1TB/disk Barracuda drives have a nearly identical power-consumption as Barracuda Green, but deliver much higher performance. We changed Barracuda LP to Barracuda Green to make it easier for our customers and partners, and it did. Now with the strides we have made with areal density, power, and performance, the value proposition for “green” drives just isn’t there anymore. If you consider the annual power savings for a “green” drive over a 7200 RPM desktop drive like Barracuda it was next to nothing. We’re talking a matter of 40 cents per year”

There are numerous reasons in addition to power, but I won’t go into them in detail here. You can check out the press release, or new product page for more details.

Obviously, I like the move. Seagate’s calling it the Power of One.

  • 1 Terabyte per Disk
  • 1 Hard Drive Platform for every capacity point from 250GB to 3TB
  • 1 Drive to choose from no matter your need

Well, at least until Barracuda XT goes all solid state hybrid drive on us…

What’s your take on Seagate’s  “green” drive move?

Related Posts:

“Hybrids are the Next Big Thing in storage devices”…music to my ears
Seagate first in the 1TB/disk race…so what?
Seagate “easily” breaks the 3.0TB ceiling
Barracuda LP gets a new last name

2011-11-01T11:44:09+00:00

About the Author:

4 Comments

  1. […] opportunity for the next generation of capacity improvements. AcuTrac is a feature found in the new Barracuda line of desktop hard drives and enables significant increases in TPI. The result: a reliable […]

  2. […] discontinuing the Barracuda Green drive, admitting that the green label was more marketing than substance, is not a strike against […]

  3. LeRoy G. Van Maanen June 13, 2012 at 10:00 am - Reply

    Enjoyed site

  4. Quora July 16, 2012 at 7:08 am - Reply

    Are “green” hard drives significantly cheaper and cooler to run than standard HDDs?…

    From “http://blog.seagate.com/business/why-seagate-said-goodbye-to-green-drives/” a HDD rep says: “if you consider the annual power savings for a “green” drive over a 7200 RPM desktop drive like Barracuda it was next to …

Leave A Comment