Hard drives and power/cooling requirements - yikes!

By the end of this year, 2008, IDC is predicting that there will be:

- An install base of 49 Billion HDDs

- Consuming 22 BkWh for power and cooling

- At a total cost of $1.76B

- Producing 34.1 B pounds of CO2

OMG... 49 billion hard drives in the world and 22 billion kWh of electricity every year to power and cool them...

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Essendon

Global Warming....No wonder

Essendon

Also, Andrew, at the rate at which your posting on these forums, you will be the leading poster around the same time next year. 679 posts in about 47 days, you will be upto around 2800 by the end of this year.

In the same breath, think of your carbon footprint

astorrs

MobilOne wrote:

Also, Andrew, at the rate at which your posting on these forums, you will be the leading poster around the same time next year. 679 posts in about 47 days, you will be upto around 2800 by the end of this year.

In the same breath, think of your carbon footprint

I'm in a slow point with work right now so I have been spending a fair amount of time on here answering posts, sharing interesting tidbits that flow through my RSS feeds, asking questions, etc; but that's about to change on July 14th when my new project kicks into full gear and my post count will drop significantly.

I personally couldn't care less about the number of posts; I only hope that I can be helpful to others, and get a few of my questions answered along the way! If people think they're all filler I'll stop, but I'm doing my best to actually offer something with each one (well a few congrats along the way too).

You guys (and gals) are a bunch of fun, what can I say. I'm hooked.

scheistermeister

Post whore? I think not! You should see my post counts on the forums I really frequent... To me forums are one of the greatest things ever created.

As for the carbon, I could careless. It won't effect me in my lifetime to a HUGE extent. 7 of those 49 Billion HDDs are in 1 of my main home computers... And that's not the file server.

Essendon

Well, you certainly have been helpful on more than a few occasions. It's good that this website's got people like you as members, good for the TE community

Essendon

As for the carbon, I could careless. It won't effect me in my lifetime to a HUGE extent

Therein lies the root of the problem with so many people saying the same thing

P.S. I guess I'm having a lil whinge because I work for the state environmental/water authority

Pash

Wow thats an interesting stat.

I think if you think about the balanced picture though it is worth mentioning what IT gives back to the environment and what it helps us simulate for the future. Just a couple:-

- Supercomputers - Extremely powerful and important tools of the future, we need these monsters to even helps us begin to understand how our impact and other global phenomenons will effect the planet. In a rather ironic twist these supercomputers still take up a huge power consumption ratio (even though IBM has publically stated that its latest supercompute is the most energy effiecient in terms of processing power to power consumption ratio).

- The web and online shopping - The balance here is that people are ordering more online than ever, a single delivery van making these consignment deliveries will use up much less fuel than several vechiles making different trips to buy these products. The overhead of online stores is also much less, of course there still are pros and cons to online shopping but it still does create a unique balance. The web is the greatest single invention of our generation, a testimate to our future generation, how we share information, how we communicate with people all over the world. NASA and a whole bunch of other masssive Pharma companies/science companies use millions of peoples PC's to provide computing power to a variety of different projects, of course this is by choice but I bet there a few people on these boards who lend their PC idle time to helping with this.

I know its two simple points but IT can help give back just us much as it takes from the environment, we must learn that.

dynamik

I've had no sleep, so maybe I'm not doing the math right, but that makes it sound like each hard drive uses around half a kWh for power and cooling and only costs about 3.6 cents to operate. That doesn't seem right, but if it is, it really doesn't seem that significant when you break it down.

It would also help to have something to compare those statistics to. I just see a lot of billions and assume it's a lot. I don't have any way to actually gauge what those numbers mean.

How much CO2 does a car produce? Or me exhaling?

astorrs

dynamik wrote:

How much CO2 does a car produce? Or me exhaling?

The CO2 output s equivalent to a little under 3 million cars.

HeroPsycho

I gotta agree.

When you consider that cars turn a mere 25% of the potential energy of gasoline into mechanical energy, you really begin to appreciate the efficiency of computers and what not.

Plus, we already have initiatives and technologies to drastically reduce the power draw of data centers such as more power efficient hardware and virtualization, and even personal computers are now beginning to be impacted by greener initiatives.

It seems far easier to revolutionize computers for energy efficiency than it is for cars, mainly because computers are replaced far more often and cheaper than cars are.

This isn't to say it's all roses for computers. What's a bigger problem for computers and electronics in general is eWaste.

scheistermeister

HeroPsycho wrote:

This isn't to say it's all roses for computers. What's a bigger problem for computers and electronics in general is eWaste.

Tell me about it, anyone have a good use for some old 386s? I have a ton of them in basement with tons of old extras that were badass back in the day. 8MB VESA VGA cards were the roxxors back then!

dynamik

scheistermeister wrote:

Tell me about it, anyone have a good use for some old 386s?

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/diy-awesomeness/matt-toveys-homemade-28+tflop-cpu-desk-292694.php

scheistermeister

I am guessing that is just for looks right? Awesome none the less. I'd feel bad messing up all my old boxes, I mean technically they still work. That is why I have been able to make myself throw them away.

HeroPsycho

That desk should be aptly titled "The Desk That Made My Wife Divorce Me!"

royal

This thread reminds me of:

1.21 gigawatts? 1.21 gigawatts? Great Scott!

Aldur

hahahaha,Royal, that back to the future reference gave me a good laugh.