SSD Potential Power Savings Writ Large

E-week has an interesting article about an iSuppli report suggesting that if all data centers moved 10% of their hard disks to SSDs (solid-state disks), it would save more power worldwide than the total 2006 power consumption of the African country of Gambia. This equates to more than 166,000 Megawatt hours.

However, since the analysis assumed an SSD averaged 7W, SSDs that use less than 2W could save more than 3x that amount. Adding in HVAC and power infrastructure savings, the savings could be even higher.

--kb