See the full press release.

Western Digital recently introduced a line of “GreenPower” hard drives that “deliver power savings as the primary attribute.” A typical hard drives takes up 13.5 watts of power in your PC. The Caviar GP drives cut that down to a nice 3.3 watts (with the 500GB model) for PCs that need reliability and reduced energy consumption. Today, we’re taking a look at the Caviar GP 500GB hard drive.

The “GreenPower” line comes in 500GB, 750GB, and 1TB capacities. All the drives run from 5400RPM to 7200RPM, which is what Western Digital calls IntelliPower which delivers a “fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate, and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance.”

In short, the GreenPower drives automatically adjusts RPM to save energy when performance isn’t needed for the task at hand. We tested the Caviar GP 500GB hard drive inside of a Core 2 Duo-based PC. The GP 500GB isn’t the top performer in our testing, but it certainly should do the job for those looking for lower power consumption and a quiet drive. Combine the reduced power consumption with Western Digital’s 3-year warranty, and you’ve got yourself a great hard drive.

In our benchmarks, the Western Digital Caviar GP was a decent performer. Using HDTach we received a burst speed of 188.8 MB/s and an average read speed of 61.1 MB/s. The Windows Experience Index gave it a rating of 5.9, which is the highest score a hard drive can get after running the tests on Windows Vista. We’re not sure if it is reporting an accurate representation of performance at this time. The HDTach speeds should give you a general idea of the performance. It isn’t a Raptor, but it should be fine for most computing tasks.

The Western Digital “GreenPower” line of hard drives is available today from many online retailers like Newegg.com and Western Digital. The 500GB model retails for $149.99.

Pros

• Average performance.
• Very quiet.
• Reduces power consumption in PCs.
• 3-year warranty.

Cons

• Not the fastest drive in it’s class.

Final Verdict
4.5 out of 5 stars.

Traditionally, desktop drives (3.5-inch) have always been the ones to have larger capacities over notebook drives (2.5-inch) due to the physical size. That changed just a few months ago with the introduction of the Western Digital 250GB Scorpio.

Running at 5400RPM, it isn’t the fastest (compared to a 7200RPM), but certainly the largest we’ve seen to date. The 250GB Scorpio is a SATA 1.5Gbps interface drive and has an 8MB cache. Western Digital offers a 3-year warranty on this drive (and on all Scorpio drives).

We tested the Scorpio inside of a MacBook notebook computer from Apple with a 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, and used XBench for testing. We compared it with the stock Toshiba MK1234GSX 120GB running at 5400RPM with a 8MB cache.

Overall, the Western Digital Scorpio was much faster than the stock Toshiba drive, and we can highly recommend the Western Digital Scorpio 250GB drive to those looking for capacity and speed. The 250GB model is available at Amazon for a little over $180.

Pros

• One of the largest notebook drives available today.
• Fast performance.
• Quiet and cool.
• 3-year warranty.

Cons

• None

Final Verdict
5 out of 5 stars

Maxtor has recently introduced their latest line of backup solutions for both the home and office user which includes three different products from the simplest, to the most full featured. Today, we’re taking a look at the OneTouch 4 Mini, a travel friendly backup solution.

The design of the OneTouch 4 Mini is very simple and small. On the top is a brushed aluminum finish, on the sides a black plastic, and on the bottom, a rubber finish to keep it from flying off your desk. Maxtor offers this model in 80GB, 120GB, and 160GB capacities all running at 5400 RPM and with 8MB of cache. We received the 160GB unit for review and were eager to test it out. Included in the box is the drive, a USB 2.0 Y-cable, a quick start guide, and a Maxtor SafetyDrill Recovery CD, which we’ll get to later.

Since Maxtor is owned by Seagate, the OneTouch 4 Mini is very similar to the Seagate FreeAgent Go we reviewed in May. Instead of including software to run applications off of the drive, the Mini includes the OneTouch Manager backup software that can be triggered through the button on the front of the unit.

The OneTouch Manager software allows you to sync files and folders between computers the minute you plug the drive in. It works seamlessly from our testing during the past few weeks. However we ran into a problem when mixing a XP and a Vista machine, which seems to be a software issue. This is probably due to the different file structure of the two operating systems.

Also included in the software is Maxtor SafetyDrillâ„¢ which creates a backup of your whole system and in the event of a failure, you can restore your data in minutes. We think this will come in handy to a lot of consumers in the near future. An encryption option is also available to keep things private and secured with a password.

As I mentioned earlier, the Seagate FreeAgent Go is similar to the OneTouch 4 Mini so speeds were the same. It took ~4 seconds to copy a 50MB file to and from the drive. A FireWire option would have been nice for faster transfers but USB 2.0 does the job just fine. The Y-cable was a bit of a hassle though; if your computer doesn’t provide enough power, the drive will take up 2 USB ports and in some cases, that’s all you might have available.

The Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini is available today from retailers and online starting at $99.99 USD.

Pros

• Fast file transfers.
• Lightweight and portable.
• Easy to use software.
• Cannot sync between XP and Vista

Cons

• No FireWire option available.
• Needs 2 USB ports if enough power is not supplied.

Final Verdict
4.5 out of 5 stars.

In May I took a look at a portable backup solution for users on the go, the Seagate FreeAgent Go, but let’s say you have a desktop at home and need a bit more storage to back up all of your digital content. Check out the bigger brother of the Go, the FreeAgent Pro.

Available in capacities of 320GB, 500GB, and a whopping 750GB – the FreeAgent Pro is best for the media junkie who has tons of digital music or full-length movies. The FreeAgent Pro comes with the AutoBackup software from Memeo that backs up all your content automatically. All you have to do is set up AutoBackup once and the drive goes to work. Today we’ll be reviewing the 750GB version with FireWire 400, USB 2.0, and eSATA interfaces.

In terms of performance, we tested out the drive using both FireWire 400 and USB 2.0. FireWire 400 had about a 30% performance boost over USB 2.0, but both interfaces offer enough speed to safely transfer your data over. Unfortunately, we were unable to test the eSATA interface at the time of this writing, but it should be somewhat faster than FW400 and USB 2. In simple terms, this drive has superb performance for all types of users. Speeds were very similar to the older 750GB Pushbutton Drive we reviewed from Seagate, since it utilizes the same drive.

One thing we did notice is that the drive’s aluminum casing became extremely hot after using the drive for an extended period of time. Since the drive is fanless it keeps noise down and extracts heat from the drive out through the casing. Not a negative, it’s just keeping the drive cool.

The 750GB Seagate FreeAgent Pro external hard drive is available for around $249 depending on where you purchase it. Other models are available for a lower cost without FireWire 400 or at a lower capacity.

Pros

• Fast performance.
• Triple interfaces.
• Comes with the excellent Memeo AutoBackup software.

Cons

• Gets hot over time.

Final Verdict
5 out of 5 stars.

Seagate has always been a major leader in the storage industry, and particularly in my book due to their excellent warranty on hard drives. Depending on when you purchased your particular Seagate product, they offer 1 to 5 years of support coverage. Today, we take a look at a backup solution for on the go: the new Seagate FreeAgent Go.

The Seagate FreeAgent Go is part of the new FreeAgent line of external storage products that come with automatic backup and Ceedo software built-in. The FreeAgent Go in particular is a USB-powered device, so you don’t have to plug in a power brick (or as others call it, a wallwart). The Go is available in 3 different capacities as well, 80GB, 120GB, and the 160GB we’ll be reviewing today. Unfortunately for us Mac users, the Ceedo software is Windows-only. A quick format in Disk Utility puts the drive back in use on your Mac.

The FreeAgent Go has some of the nicest packaging I’ve seen in a product: simple, easy to understand, and nicely designed. Inside the box, you’ll find the hard drive, a USB cable, and setup guide. You may be thinking that it’s just a standard USB cable like the one for your digital camera, but it’s a Y-cable. If your computer doesn’t provide enough power, simply plug in the other end, labeled ‘Power Only’.

I plugged the Go into two Macs, a PowerBook G4 and a MacBook – oddly enough the former required the extra cable and not the latter. I think this was because I used a powered USB hub with the MacBook instead. When the Go is in need of more power, it is very easy to tell. During testing, the device made a slight ticking noise that sounded almost like a drive failure. USB cable to the rescue!

It took around 3-5 seconds to transfer a 50MB file to and from the device to both notebooks using USB 2.0.

I didn’t get a chance to try the Ceedo software, but what it allows you to do is similar to the U3 technology used on SanDisk thumb drives. You can run your applications straight off of the drive with all of your data kept with you, wherever you may be.

Overall, the FreeAgent Go is an excellent companion to your notebook computer when on the go. I personally have a weekly image of my laptop’s hard drive on the Go so that if something fails, I can quickly return to a working state without much lost data. Be sure to check out the rest of the FreeAgent line at Seagate’s website.

Pros

• Portable.
• Easy to use (hey, it’s a hard drive!)
• Ceedo software for Windows allows you to run apps off the drive.

Cons

• Ceedo is Windows-only, for now at least.

Final Verdict
5 out of 5 stars.

I’ve been using this huge storage device for the past few weeks, and it’s amazing. Now, you ask, why would anyone need 750 gigabytes of hard drive space? Well, as the year rolls on, digital cameras and camcorders are selling fast. With seven, eight, and even ten megapixel cameras being released, the size of pictures have become bigger and bigger as the quality is increased. With the Seagate 750GB hard drive, you can store a whopping 240,000 digital photos.

The number of digital video is even more stunning, 750 hours of DV. Like music a lot? You’ll be able to store 12,495 hours of digital music on this hard drive. I know this sounds like a bunch of marketing schwag, but it’s true. Ok, enough talk about how much you can store, let’s dig into the good stuff.

The Seagate 750GB Pushbutton Backup drive uses either USB or FireWire technology to plug into your computer for super-fast transfers. How fast, you say? It took 3 minutes, and 3 seconds to transfer a 2.5GB ISO file from the hard drive over FireWire to my PowerBook G4. It may have taken that long due to the speed of my laptop’s hard drive, but your mileage may vary. Over USB 2.0, it took a whopping 13-15 minutes. The speed may not be the best for transferring files and since the drive is marketed as a backup hard drive, you might want to backup your drive overnight instead of during your normal everyday tasks.

For audio and video producers, this hard drive is a solution to those many problems of speed. I used Final Cut Pro on Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger” with this hard drive, and the speed was greatly increased for rendering video.

Overall, this hard drive worked flawlessly for the 4-6 weeks I have been using it for and although it was slow for file transfers, it is still a great peripheral to add onto your growing digital media collection.

Pros

• Tons of storage space.
• USB and FireWire connections.
• Great backup utility.

Cons

• Slow transfer speeds in some conditions.

Final Verdict and Availability

4 out of 5 stars – Very good.

You can find the Seagate 750GB External Pushbutton Backup hard drive at most brick and mortar stores and online, where you can find the best prices using our partner Shopzilla.