Word came out yesterday that Hitachi is bringing out out a new line of hard drives. These new eco-friendly drives will overtake previous non-energy-saving drives, with models schedule to hit stores within a few months.

According to Maximum PC, the energy saving features include:

• Switching regulators have replaced linear regulators for more effective voltage conversion inside the drive.

• The Travelstar system-on-chip design has a new, power-efficient profile.

• In the drive’s new “unload idle” mode, the drive heads are actually unloaded to the ramp and the drive’s servo shuts down (although the platters still chug along at 7,200 RPM), which saves a bit of juice.

• In the drive’s “low RPM idle” mode, the platters themselves spin down to 4,500 RPM.

Via Gizmodo.