Saving energy is on everyone's mind lately, and Adaptec today tackles power management for drives on a RAID controller with technology that promises to reduce the power storage systems consume by "up to 70 percent without sacrificing performance."

Really?

You see, the company has baked Intelligent Power Management into its Series 5 and Series 2 Unified Serial RAID controllers. The functionality is designed to help datacenters conserve some power, especially in cases where their apps aren't hitting the drives 24/7.

Accessed through Adaptec Storage Manager software, Intelligent Power Management supports both SATA and SAS drives and is ideal for applications with large blocks of idle time, such as disk-to-disk backup, e-mail archiving and file and print servers. It allows drives to be operated in three power states: 1) Normal operation: full power, full RPM (revolutions per minute); 2) Standby: low-power mode that spins disks at lower RPM during idle periods; and 3) Power-off: disks not spinning. In addition, blackout periods can be set in which power management features are disabled, such as during peak IT activity periods.

The scheduling angle is interesting, but another idea they're pushing is reduced wear and tear. Either way, it's going to take a little management on the part of storage administrators to achieve those savings. So far, the technology is compatible with 122 drives, including the Seagate Barracuda ES SATA, Hitachi Ultrastar SAS drives and an array of Western Digital SATA models.

View the press release here.