Seagate has introduced a lower power consumption version of its 3.5-inch Barracuda desktop drive.

This 2TB SATA green drive spins at 5900rpm, which according to Seagate gives it a performance edge over competing drives in its class which spin at 5400rpm. It draws three watts when idle and 5.6 watts when operating.

Yesterday's new Western Digital green drive, a 2TB SATA enterprise model, draws 6.8 watts when operating and 3.7 watts when in idle mode. WD's Caviar Green, spinning at 5400rpm, draws 5.72 watts in operating mode and three watts when idle.

Seagate says its Barracuda LP is slightly quieter than the Caviar Green, whispering at 2.1 Bels when operating compared to Barracuda's 2.0 Bels.

This Barracuda LP drive is available in 1TB, 1.5TB and 2TB versions, and targeted at use in low-power PCs, external drive and small office/home office (SOHO) network-attached storage (NAS) applications. Pricing was not available at our briefing.

In other news, Seagate announced it made a loss of $273m (-$0.56/share) in its fiscal 2009 Q3, the quarter which finished on April 3. In the year-ago quarter it earned a profit of $344m ($0.68/share). It hopes and expects to regain profitability in fiscal 2010. ®