Conclusions

It has clearly showed that the Western Digital hard disc whilst consuming less Wattage and KWH’s of energy; maintained performance levels which were equal too in a majority of all instances, that of the Seagate Hard Disc with the bigger Buffer Cache. The power consumed by each Hard Disc over each tests/renders/benchmarks and just how much Wattage and KHW is clearly shown and it demonstrates just how efficiently the Western Digital Hard Disc is over its competitor from Seagate.

Notwithstanding; we must not forget the supplied equipment from both AMD and Akasa.   Their equipment has without doubt played a serious role in these tests.  They have clearly shown that an entry level workstation of this magnitude has to be critically considered by all when taking the plunge for the next set of upgrades before the fiscal year ends for many corporate and studio end users.  

Corsair have also played a huge role in this paper as they most kindly saw the importance of correct memory population in Dual Channel systems of this magnitude.   Quad memory population of the mainboard becomes even more important with modules that are properly speed rated correctly.  

MSI UK, they have been magnificent in their support in getting into place the correct mainboard for the task we have undertaken.  There are many mainboards out there to choose from but to have a mainboard that is so multi functional and adaptable at many levels within the workplace is hard to find.

Last but not least, Diskeeper Corporation and its highly acclaimed Diskeeper® 2008 Pro Premier Edition product.   The results unearthed within this article have now raised many questions to its unique functionality with the Western Digital Drive.   With what has been uncovered; it shows clearly Diskeepers claims of its InvisiTasking technology working in the background utilising redundant Windows API’s and not interfering with the workings of the whole system I/O.   Therefore much more severe investigation is required here to see how much more overall savings can be made with the installation of Diskeeper and its InvisiTasking technology at the beginning after Windows has been fully installed.

With the evidence shown; while scientifically accurate, is meant to be uncomplicated so that the less–technically inclined user can quickly grasp the fundamental value.  It clearly defines which hard disc is the outright frontrunner in both cost performance and lacking in Wattage & KHW consumption - without any degeneration in results.   To reiterate once more to our earlier statement of the bigger buffer cache from Seagate.  We had concerns that the bigger cache may play some outcome in the final tests.   This was only noted in 1 of all the above tests and throughout the Western Digital Disc held its own, therefore bigger is not always better in these instances. 

One point to carefully note is within the HD Tach Benchmark.   Whilst the Western Digitals average read was slightly lower – but within their stated guidance, the actual burst speed was much higher than that of the Seagate Hard Disc; and the actual CPU utilisation was down.   These are interesting pieces of engineering skills to bring forward such a resounding set of results.

To ensure that we had seen no anomalies from the results above we completely reran the tests/renders/benchmarks for both Hard Discs over 2 days and concluded that the above sums were accurate and the results obtained where conclusive without any doubt.

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11, SATA 3 GB/s, 1TB Hard Disc.  Total time up to check sum all tests/renders/benchmarks was 10 Hours and 36 minutes to which 1.55 KWH’s of power consumption was recorded.

Western Digital Caviar® GP 1TB Hard Disc, SATA 3 GB/s.   Total time up to check sum all tests/renders/benchmarks was 9 Hours and 42 minutes to which 1.43 KWH’s of power consumption was recorded.

A brief summary of the results from the tests show;

What many readers will have noted with great interest is to how well the Western Digital Hard Disc performed on proper professional applications/benchmarks and not the synthetic benchmarks. 

The recently released Western Digital has brought to the fore with the Raid Enterprise Edition of the Green Hard Disc.   We await our test discs to see how they fair in a full Raid scenario against the Seagate discs.  Which uses less energy and which disc will be faster?    We can but patient as you must too, though we are sure this is going to be a very interesting report.

This outcome today is going to be most controversial as it gets and most definitively proves Western Digitals claims that the greener hard disc produced, delivers upon their claims.  

To reiterate from our opening statement of making things greener and lowering of Carbon Emissions!   Many of you will now be sitting up seriously thinking how much can be saved in both efficiency and actual power over the year with what we have shown.

www.3dprofessor.org award for Western Digital Caviar® GP 1TB Hard Disc

5 out of 5 - Editors Choice for  High End Mass Storage Green Power Hard Disc