It's no secret that being more eco-friendly is quite important in this day and age. Whether it's at work or at home, reducing your carbon footprint is essential in the fight to protect our planet. With this in mind, have you ever considered the impact your data storage might be having on the environment?

It's easy to take for granted just how much data we use, and sometimes you might not even realise that it's being stored. Everything from emails and social media posts, to cloud storage and backup documents, as well as many more aspects of your home and work life can be included in your data storage.

When you add into the mix the billions of other homes and businesses across the globe in the same situation, the carbon costs to store this data certainly begin to mount up. Luckily though, there are greener solutions available to limit the negative impact on the environment. So, to find out just what these are and what they involve, read on.

The Impact of Old and Current Data Storage Solutions

Before the days of servers and cloud technology, paper storage was the primary means of keeping your data. Needless to say, having rooms and warehouses stacked to the rafters with boxes of paper certainly wasn't very eco-conscious, nor was it a practical use of space.

We do have advances in technology to thank for helping to resolve such problems, but unfortunately we now face new issues. These stem from the widespread use of devices and technologies and the subsequent need for online and digital data storage - all of which requiring large amounts of power.

According to a report from Greenpeace, the immense data centres setup to manage the global demand for data storage, are consuming massive amounts of electricity. None more so than those in America, which is home to '40% of the world's data centres'. The report suggests how Apple's 'iDataCentre' alone uses 'as much as 100MW of power' which is the same as '250,000 EU homes'.

Furthermore according to the New York Times upwards of '1.8 trillion gigabytes of digital information' can be created in a year and this is increasing each year.

New Technologies and Greener Solutions

Hope is on the horizon though in the form of more energy efficient data storage solutions. A great deal of time and effort has been put into making existing technologies more eco-friendly as well as looking at new and innovative means. Here are a few examples:

  • Cloud storage can be made more efficient using clever algorithms that can predict how best to manage data at different data centres. You can find out more here
  • You can cut energy costs with software that maximises the use of one server to run several smaller servers at once. This is known as 'server virtualization'
  • There are storage drives available which have been streamlined to run more efficiently by simply reducing the size of their hard disks, so the drive doesn't have to work as hard to copy data
  • Many individuals have started using 'tape-based' storage as a more energy efficient way of recording data. This is because once you have copied what you need onto them; power is no longer needed to keep it stored, unlike a normal server
  • Basic steps to cutting down energy use like properly auditing which data to save is another easy way to help lower consumption

The Bottom Line

What's best about these approaches is they're straightforward in their application; it's just a matter of implementing them. Businesses in particular should consider moving towards these more up-to-date solutions given that the EU is to set tougher targets in the reduction of carbon emissions. A recent report by The Guardian revealed that the EU has proposed 'cutting its carbon emissions by 30% of the 1990 levels by 2030'.

The sensible option for all then is to work towards ensuring these numbers are met, so why not start now and help make your home or business data storage solutions greener?

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