WD hard drive that varies its speed?

[SonicWRX]

Ok i was just looking though hard drives at newegg and saw this. I had not head a word about this drive till now.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136151

[sushrukh]

Ya, actually these drives supports a max rotation speed of 7.2K but they can lower the speed to 5.4K when the HDD is idle, to save power.Wd calls this IntelliPower™.Doesn't seem very useful/interesting to me much though. ;-)

[PP Mguire]

Just gives the drive more wear and tear becasue the motors are adjusting speed constantly. Its stupid.

[Kougar]

I would wonder how easily the speed can be adjusted. It if can be manually controlled it would prove to be extremely useful, to cut down on heat, noise, wear, and power when the system is left on idle.

As you said though, if the drive is constantly adjusting it's speed on the fly (as it seems to say), then that would be a good deal of unneeded wear and lower performance. I still think it is a promising idea, laptop drives especially need this.

[PP Mguire]

Since newer laptop drives barely use any power at all anymore it really isnt neccesary.

[Kougar]

Some newer drives are very efficient, but even then 7200RPM drives consume more power than say a equally new/efficient 5400RPM drive. THG has some nice Idle and Load power consumption results: here (http://www23.tomshardware.com/storage25.html?modelx=33&model1=425&model2=414&chart=157) With the smaller/lighter laptops using the 3-6cell sized batteries it should be some significant gains in battery life with a 5400RPM drive over a 7200RPM model.

[PP Mguire]

Well most smaller energy efficient laptops are shipping with 5400rpm drives anyways. But they are still quite fast.