Methods for reducing the power consumption of distributed storage systems are described. An embodiment describes a storage system which is adapted to reduce its power consumption at times of low load by reducing the number of active versions of the stored data. The data to be stored in the storage system is divided into chunks and in an example, each chunk is replicated on a number of different servers. At times of low load, the system enters a mode of operation in which the number of active replicas is reduced and servers that do not store any active replicas are put into a low power state. When in this mode, writes are written to a versioned store and the data is subsequently copied to servers storing replicas once all the servers have returned to normal power state.