Re: Expanding IDE drive set

Richard Kimber wrote:
z-man wrote:

As I said in another post of this thread, my requirement is to let my
system automatically execute the backup, based on a schedule: how can I
avoid to keep always power-on my external backup unit if I want to
execute the backups unattended every night?

I have a Seagate Barracuda 300GB external USB 2 drive. This automatically
spins down after a few minutes inactivity. I do automated backups to it at
night. The power is, I admit, on all the time. But it runs off a small 12v
power supply, and I can't believe it uses a significant amount of power.

Seagate's datasheets show their drives consuming approximately 10 Watts at idle. Multiply that by 24 hours a day and 30 days in a month, and you get roughly 7.2 kWh of power used per month. Around here, electricity costs about 6 cents per kWh, so that drive would use about $0.43 worth of electricity in a month by my calculations.
.

Quantcast