Hard drive maker Western Digital is planning to roll out energy efficient 3.5" desktop drives under the GreenPower name (GP). The drives are engineered to conform to the Energy Star 4.0 standard and consume 4-5 fewer watts than typical drives. Though that may not sound a lot, it adds up to $10 a year in energy savings. Multiply that by the number of hard drives in a typical office setting, and that can add up to real savings.

And the obligatory taking X number of cars the technology takes off the road? Well, just one in this case, and only for 14 days out of a year.

At the moment, Caviar GP models are available in capacities of 320 GB to 1 TB (SATA, 7200 RPM, 16 MB buffer, more specs here).

Enterprise-class versions are due to arrive sometime in Q3 2007, which may make a more dramatic difference in data center power consumption.