Hard drives can be green too.

While Verbatim’s Store ‘n’ Go drives sports caribbean blue or hot pink on the outside, inside lies green software that powers it down when idle and connected. The drive has a 10-minute suspend time by default, but that can be altered by launching the proprietary Green Button software. Yes, this saves energy consumption, but by avoiding excess spinning of the disk, the drive experiences less wear, prolonging its life.

The Store ‘n’ Go drives come preloaded with software users can install on their computers. Green Button adjusts the settings for the drive and creates a shortcut to power the drive down immediately. Saving energy and prolonging a hard drive’s lifespan are both good ideas, but Green Button could provide a more seamless experience. Since this is a portable external hard drive, one of its primary uses is to transport large files to other computers, which thanks to speedy USB 3.0 is not a painful process. But without installing the software on a new computer, Green Button’s utility drops substantially. A better complement to the drive’s suspend time settings would be a physical button (compared with the current “button,” a desktop icon) that can trigger sleep mode immediately .

Still, Verbatim’s Green Button software is smart. Not only does it is green, but it subtly encourages users to treat the Store ‘n’ Go with a little more care. A great way to build customer loyalty is by building a product that lasts.