But how do the processes of saving to a hard drive and saving to the cloud differ? It allows you to access them from any machine, anytime, anywhere in the world. It keeps a secure copy of them that will survive any conceivable misfortune to befall your computer. You may find it useful to save documents in the cloud. Some providers power their data centers with 100 percent renewable energy. And, if you have a choice of cloud service providers, do some sustainability research.
But you can keep these numbers in mind as you decide whether to save data locally or to the cloud.
electric mix.Ĭloud data storage provides convenience, not to mention the peace of mind of a secure backup. Saving and storing 100 gigabytes of data in the cloud per year would result in a carbon footprint of about 0.2 tons of CO2, based on the usual U.S.
(A gigabyte is enough data to save a few hundred high-resolution photos or an hour of video.)Ĭompared with your personal hard disk, which requires about 0.000005 kWh per gigabyte to save your data, this is a huge amount of energy. An assessment at a conference of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy reached a lower number: 3.1 kWh per gigabyte. At the center, your data is stored multiple times on hard disks, and the constant activity of all those disks creates a lot of heat, which necessitates energy-intensive air conditioners to protect the equipment from overheating.Ī Carnegie Mellon University study concluded that the energy cost of data transfer and storage is about 7 kWh per gigabyte. It takes energy to get the data to the data center - miles of fiber optic cables, studded with other fixtures of internet infrastructure that all require power along the way. How much energy is used in saving to the cloud? That’s a complicated question. There are millions of data centers around the world, some taking up nearly 200 acres of land apiece. Cloud data is stored not in actual clouds but in buildings - massive structures filled with thousands of hard drive-bearing racks using a mind-boggling amount of energy. Saving a document to the cloud takes it out of your hands, so you don’t have to worry about losing it and can access it anywhere. As your finger hovers over the mouse button and you make your choice, it’s important to realize how different the two processes truly are. Q: What is the environmental impact of storing data on a hard drive? Is it better or worse to use cloud storage? - Mark Williams, Cambridge, EnglandĪ: In the newest versions of most word-processing software, saving a document for the first time presents you with two options: saving to your computer or to a cloud storage service.
SAGE (Sound Advice for a Green Earth) is a project by advanced students in Earth Systems and other programs to answer sustainability questions.
0 kommentar(er)
