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Here's one way to get more battery life out of a PowerBook-

M

madmaxmedia

macrumors 68030
Original poster
A new low-power HD-

http://news.com.com/2061-10792_3-5776352.html?part=rss&tag=5776352&subj=news

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has come out with a new 2.5-inch diameter drive, the Travelstar 4K120 that consumes less power than ordinary drives. As a result, notebooks can get about 20 minutes more life out of a battery charge, said Becky Smith, vice president of marketing.

The drive cuts power consumption by, among other tricks, slowing down during lull times, similar to what notebook chips from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices do. Samsungearlier this year showed off a drive that cuts power consumption by having the data first load to flash memory. Hard drives, which have a motor that spins the platters, are one of the large consumers of powers in PCs.
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20 minutes (if that's what you really get) isn't worth buying a new HD for, but if you needed a capacity upgrade anyway...I'll take whatever I can get to increase battery life on the 15" PB.
 
nice capacity

doubt i could ever put in a 4200rpm drive in my pb

would be a downgrade no matter the size
 
Yeah, maybe they'll at least come out with a 5400 version...

I have a 4200RPM now anyway, not sure whether I'd pick battery life or speed if I upgraded. If I could get an extra hour the choice would be easy. 😉 20 minutes isn't that much, depending on the price of the drive.
 
Counterfit said:
But that would basically negate the gains made in battery life... 😕
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People here have generally said faster HD's do not really impact battery life, the reasoning being the HD spins faster but for a shorter period of time to access a given amount of data.

I don't know what real-world differences there are in overall power consumption of different speed drives.
 
Another blurb I saw said this hard drive is also extremely quiet. But yeah, if I were to upgrade my HD, I think I would want 5400 (à la the Seagate 120 and upcoming 160) or 7200....
 
Screw battery life. Give me a 120gb 10K raptor for my powerbook.


I feel the need for SPEED... ALWAYS!
 
tomhardware.com does tests and they show higher RPMs in notebook drives don't affect power consumption. I'm waiting for the 160GB notebooks drives! 100 isn't worth upgrading and I don't know if 120 will be when they come out. I could deal with a 5400 or 7200 160 gig drive on my laptop 🙂
 
I'd like a 200GB drive that spins at 7200RPM, but can spin down to 1200RPM during lull times like web surfing or email, or what have you. Then we could have a turbo speed of 15K RPM when the laptop is plugged into a wall.
 
Lacero said:
I'd like a 200GB drive that spins at 7200RPM, but can spin down to 1200RPM during lull times like web surfing or email, or what have you. Then we could have a turbo speed of 15K RPM when the laptop is plugged into a wall.
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Does anything like that exist now? I wonder what the technical challenges are in that? I don't know about 1200 RPM, but definitely, the idea of a drive that had slower, reduced power consumption modes would be nice. It seems to me that right now they only run full speed or spin down to zero. Is that true, or do they already do this?
 
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