Fantom Drives announced a new green initiative to reduce power consumption and the use of toxic materials both in operations and manufacturing facilities as well as in product lines. As a first step, Fantom Drives today unveiled its G-Force GreenDrive line of external USB and eSATA disk drives which feature the latest advances in power saving technology. The G-Force GreenDrive provides the ability to minimize one’s carbon footprint without sacrificing performance. The company also announced adoption of ROHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive) which mandates the use of compliant materials and processes.
 
Fantom Drives’ GreenDrive line utilizes variable speed disk mechanisms that increase rotational velocity of the disk in response to host demand, resulting in virtually no performance degradation. Furthermore, the reduction in power requirements results in lower platter temperatures which extends the life of these drives. The result is an overall energy consumption reduction of up to 40% and more reliable drive technology. Manufacturing processes are eco-friendly as well with the elimination of lead in any component, making GreenDrives totally compliant with the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (ROHS) as well as the California Electronic Waste Recycling Act.
 
According to consumer storage technology analyst, Tom Coughlin, Founding Analyst of the Coughlin Group, “External storage is taking on increasing importance in consumer applications as a way to protect and share content. We project that by 2013 there will be 150 million hard disk drives used in small external storage devices. With current drives having a typical power consumption rating of 13.5 watts, this will equate to over 2 billion watts used for the purpose of operating small external storage devices.”
 
GreenDrives’ average energy savings of 40% over comparable technologies could therefore result in substantial energy savings. If the forecasted 150 million external storage hard drives, utilizing roughly 2 billion watts per year leveraged GreenDrive technology, the resulting savings would be millions of kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year thereby reducing an enormous amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. This illustrates that small steps lead to big results.
 
Pricing and Availability
GreenDrives will be available in 500 GB and 1 TB models with pricing starting at $125. GreenDrives will be available in June of this year.