I have noticed that while window shopping for hard drives online that WD and Seagate hard drive power consumption is very different. For instance when you see a WD large multi-platter drive, it might say 12v .47a 5v .49a then I look at a Seagate drive and it will say 12v .97a 5v .94a. Why does Seagate always from what I see use close to double the wattage? Yes I understand that different drive models have different specs but these are from similar models both being enterprise SAS with helium seal and 7200 rpm.
Now I think someone must be fibbing because these power usage specs should be for the absolute most that these drives will use not average usage or some nonsense like that. This should be the absolute max rating during spin up and heavy writing for both 5v and 12v. I fail to see how Seagate could be typically that much heavier in power usage and remain competitive in the market as any company will factor in power usage
as part of the cost of operate thousands of disks.
Just seems odd to me. Anyone want to guess why this might be?
seagate 16tb helium - about 5w
wd 16tb helium - 5,6w
Seagate more energy efficient in real world.
Real numbers example - https://www.hardwareluxx.ru/index.php/artikel/hardware/storage/53184-test-i-obzor-wd-red-pro-20-tb-wd201kfgx-bolshaya-emkost-blagodarya-pamyati-nand.html?start=2
20tb WB - 29w at start up, it consume more than 2A current from 12v line, and 0,5A at label
I think the other specs end up exciting the IT crowd and managers more (warranty periods, suppliers, performance, etc). Also if you tell them the Seagate is $10 cheaper, they’ll buy it anyway even at double the power consumption - way easier to convince their clients they got the best prices on hardware up front and just bill them for the operating expenses on the other side.
It’s us Chia folk that have a simpler formula: get best bang for the buck - that’s what gets us looking at things like power consumption or $/TB that most corporations don’t fret over.
Just for fun I pulled the wattage specs on my 3 8TB drives I have running:
WD Blue 8TB 6.2 watts Read/Write WD80EAZZ
WD Shucked 8TB 8.8 watts Operating WD80EDBZ (asumming it’s an Ultrastar HC320)
Seagate Ironwolf 8TB 10.1 Watts Average Operating ST8000VN004
My sample size is small, but it is in line with your claims 
.