Do bigger hard drives require more power?

[Gaard]

For example: Does a 250gig require more power to run than a 60gig?

 

[corkyg]

You can do a comparison by reading the drive spec labels. I just looked at a 80 GB Hitachi, IDE, and it uses 5 vdc @ 490 millamps, and 12 vdc @ 600 millamps. A Hitachi 80 GB SATA is 5 vdc @500 millamps, and 12 vdc @ 700 millamps. A Seagate 120 GB IDE runs 5 vdc @ 720 millamps, and 12vdc @ 350 millamps.

Based on that, it would appear that there is a slight power increase demanded by larger drives. It's not a big difference, but, yes.

 

[ForumMaster]

i supose a slight increase, but nothing noticable. some drives have more heads and that would require more power.

 

[Lord Evermore]

What defines whether it needs more power is how many heads it has, and more importantly how many platters. Data density has gone up tremendously in the past few years, so a 60GB hard drive of a few years ago may have had 3 platters, but a 200GB drive of today may have only one platter. Along with that, the electronics are more likely to be a little more efficient about power usage, although that might be offset by the larger amounts of cache being used these days. But it's not really easy to compare the electronics from one generation to another, too many variables, and that has nothing to do with the size of the drive.

Of course those two things are only able to define a bare minimum amount of power needed. Depending on what sort of specifications the manufacturer was going for, it could use more or less power. If you make the drive spin up to full speed in less time, it needs far more power at spin-up than another drive with the exact same configuration but slower spinup. Also things like the access times will affect it, since that's a matter of how quickly the read heads are moved around (along with the rotational latency of the platters which will be the same for all drives of the same RPM rating).

 

[Gaard]

Thanks guys. If I'm understanding you guys correctly, the answer to the question is "Maybe. But if so, not a lot."

 

[corkyg]

Originally posted by: Gaard
Thanks guys. If I'm understanding you guys correctly, the answer to the question is "Maybe. But if so, not a lot."

Exactly! A simple rationale is that the more mass you have to move, the more energy it takes to move it. But we're talking miiliamps at the 5 and 12 VDC levels.

 

[dBTelos]

Not that it matters what so ever. The only time a harddrive uses a notable amount of power is when it is spinning up, at which point it may use 10W on average. It will take more power for a Raptor or 15k drive to spin up then a 7200RPM drive. Once a drive has successfully spun up, it hardly uses any power what so ever. To answer the OP's question, no.

 

[corkyg]

Your answer is both yes and no. And that's sorta what has been said. When spinning up - yes. When running - no.

The skinny: Power