With all this chatter about power saving hard drives, when the drive does it’s power saving stuff, especially spinning down when not being used, does the main PSU/adaptor take less power thus the electricity meter clocks up the units a lot slower or does the PSU for the MBL draw the same amount of power regardless of what the winchester disc is doing within the My Book Live?
If the PSU takes the same amount of power regardless of the status of the disc in the MyBookLive then what’s the poinf of all the power saving mechanisms apart from the spin-down which I can see extending the life of the drive.
Power consumption is 9-10 W in full use, 4-5W when inactive (green led but no file activity) and 2-3 W in HDD standby (blue led). These were measured on 240V with a rather cheap $8 digital power consumption meter, but it seems in line with what others reported.
… does the main PSU/adaptor take less power thus the electricity meter clocks up the units a lot slower or does the PSU for the MBL draw the same amount of power regardless of what the winchester disc is doing within the My Book Live?
If the PSU takes the same amount of power regardless of the status of the disc in the MyBookLive then what’s the poinf of all the power saving mechanisms apart from the spin-down which I can see extending the life of the drive.
As the other users have measured, the power varies. Other than the small leakages, any transformer only draws whatever power is necessary at the load side.
The ratings on the power adaptors are only the maximum they can output – it doesn’t output that amount constantly. If you plug the power adaptor into the wall, but not into anything (i.e. no demand from it), the power used by it will be zero for all intents and purposes. (Yes, there’s some small leakage current that can’t be helped, but can be measured… which is why the environmentally-minded tell people to unplug wall adaptors for any device that is not being used.)
