Drawing on its expertise as a leading supplier to major consumer electronics and surveillance manufacturers worldwide, Western Digital Corp. has designed its new GreenPower (GP) version of its WD AV hard drives with technologies that provide cooler and quieter operation and lower power consumption. WD's GreenPower family of hard drives for desktop, enterprise and audio video applications reduces power consumption by as much as 40 percent over standard drives in their respective classes. The new WD AV-GP family of drives offers capacities of 500 gigabytes (GB), 750 GB and one terabyte (TB), and is perfect for audio video applications such as DVRs (digital video recorders), as well as surveillance video recording.Audio and video recording applications, including DVRs, IP gateways and mainstream surveillance systems, often demand 24x7 operation from hard drives, have different requirements than personal computers, such as higher reliability, universal compatibility, low-power consumption and the ability to simultaneously record multiple audio and/or high-definition video streams. Consumer applications such as DVRs with stringent environment and usage profiles require hard drives to consume less power, generate less heat, and operate quietly.

AV Intelligent Drive Technology
WD AV-GP hard drives deliver exceptional power conservation, run
ultra-cool and quiet, while providing solid performance. The following technologies enable the WD AV-GP platform:

• IntelliPower - A fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate, and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance. Additionally, GreenPower drives consume less current during start up allowing more drives to spin up simultaneously resulting in faster system readiness.
• IntelliSeek - Calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise and vibration.
• IntelliPark - Delivers lower power consumption by automatically unloading recording heads during idle to reduce aerodynamic drag and by disabling read/write channel electronics.

Cool and Quiet

In addition to the sound-reducing properties of IntelliPower, IntelliSeek and IntelliPark, WD utilizes multi-stage formed stainless steel top covers and precision-designed base castings that minimize sound levels for consumer sound-sensitive applications. The result is WD AV-GP drives emit less than one
sone, which is virtually below the threshold of human hearing.

More information about WD AV-GP drives may be found on the company's Web site.