Yesterday, Seagate claimed to have started shipping the “fastest eco-friendly” hard drive available, the Barracuda Green, formerly Barracuda LP. The drive turns at 5,900RPM versus the 5,200RPM or 5,400RPM of most other disks (not bad), has unspecified reduced power consumption, and it is made with a low use of halogen and is up to 70 percent recyclable. These features hardly make the drive “eco-friendly.” Perhaps, “slightly less bad” and “somewhat more efficient” would be more appropriate claims. Eco-friendly would mean 100 percent recyclable and no toxic content. I realize that current technology and production processes make this impossible at this time, but why wrap the product in green when it truly isn’t?
Anyways, this drive is available with 1TB, 1.5TB, and 2TB with the options of stand-alone upgrade drive or pre-installed in new computers. No price mentioned yet.