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2011 Macbook Pro SSD + Optibay = low battery life?

D

djpuma

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 13, 2010
139
33
Just as the title states. Does having an SSD and another hard drive in the super drive location equate to a much lower battery life.

I'm getting roughly 3 to 4 hours on battery if I just sit there and barely browse the net.
The graphics card is always stuck on discrete so I used gfxcardstatus and forced it to the other one (on board) and showed roughly 4.25 hours of battery life (when fully charged)

My 2010 had the same thing but instead of an ssd it was a regular platter style hard drive (had another in super drive location)

and I swore I got more battery life than this.

laptop specs are in my sig.

I just want to know if this is average
and yes the battery is fine, I've reset smc, pram, conditioned battery and it has about 75 cycles on it.

Thanks

it seems like after about 30 or 40 minutes of battery usage it shows about 1.5 hours of battery left.

I've never just timed it and ran it down for hours yet to be certain, this is just off of the time that OSX shows me.
 
do you have the same amount of ram? more ram = lower battery life. screen brightness, and any other programs you have running in the background (esp. vmware or parallels) are also contributing factors.
 
djpuma said:
I've reset smc, pram, conditioned battery and it has about 75 cycles on it.
Click to expand...
PRAM/NVRAM has nothing to do with battery/power/charging issues. Resetting it will not help. Only resetting the SMC addresses such issues. Also, if by "conditioned battery" you're referring to calibration, newer Mac unibody models with built-in batteries come pre-calibrated and do not require regular calibration.

Read the BATTERY LIFE FROM A CHARGE section of the following link. This should answer most, if not all, of your battery questions:
 
onions said:
do you have the same amount of ram? more ram = lower battery life. screen brightness, and any other programs you have running in the background (esp. vmware or parallels) are also contributing factors.
Click to expand...

RAM doesn't make a significant difference in battery life. Remember, a RAM chip only uses ~1.5 volts.
 
i did forget to mention that since I've put the SSD in I've changed browser downloads, dropbox, etc to go to the 2nd hard drive

i didn't want to trash up my ssd with downloads and dropbox crap (unless that is ok)

That is the only thing different from my previous setup.

Previously I could eject the 2nd drive if I wanted to, now it will never let me so I'm assuming the open programs are keeping it running.
 
I think part of the problem might be the SSD.

Some SSDs suck more power than regular HDDs.
 
djpuma said:
i did forget to mention that since I've put the SSD in I've changed browser downloads, dropbox, etc to go to the 2nd hard drive

i didn't want to trash up my ssd with downloads and dropbox crap (unless that is ok)

That is the only thing different from my previous setup.

Previously I could eject the 2nd drive if I wanted to, now it will never let me so I'm assuming the open programs are keeping it running.
Click to expand...

ya if that 2nd hard drive is always running that will effect battery
 
GuitarG20 said:
RAM doesn't make a significant difference in battery life. Remember, a RAM chip only uses ~1.5 volts.
Click to expand...
What does the voltage got to do with that. A CPU needs only 0.77V in idle and 1.2V under load it still consumes a lot of W.
8 vs 4GB RAM usually mean 2 additional W under load and only very little idle.

A second HDD or SSD is kind of the same.
an HDD spun down 150 mW
HDD idle 5-800mW some upto 1.3W like the Momentus XT.
HDD under load 3+W.

If it is just sitting there the decrease in battery life isn't very big. If it is spun down almost non existent.
 
so in energy saver, when you select to put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible... does it still work with a 2nd ssd? i too am interested b/c i just bought another 120gb ssd to take place of the optical bay in my 2011 2.2 MBP
 
bdodds1985 said:
so in energy saver, when you select to put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible... does it still work with a 2nd ssd? i too am interested b/c i just bought another 120gb ssd to take place of the optical bay in my 2011 2.2 MBP
Click to expand...

ssds don't support sleep mode(put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible).... because there is no spinning
 
en0x said:
ssds don't support sleep mode(put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible).... because there is no spinning
Click to expand...

of course, makes sense. so basically if my 2nd ssd only had music, pictures and video, it wouldnt do anything until i opened one of the following items? am i correct? thats very nice if so..
 
Well my current setup is an ssd in the optibay and my stock hard drive exactly where it is. I'm not having any problems with battery life. Which brand of ssd are you using? It may need a firmware update or it may be a defective drive.
 
2010 models have longer battery life than the 2011 models, I have my HDD in my OptiBay and doesn't take up too much power. I just make sure nothing on the HDD is being used when not needed i only use it for storage Movie, music etc. And even when i do use it, it only lose about 15 mins of battery time.
 
Using an ocz agility 3 and a momentus xt 500gb in the optibay setup the same way as yours i was losing hours of battery life :( I changed it so only data is on the 500gb drive and then i dismount it because otherwise it never goes to sleep and never stops spinning.
 
Would like to know more about this, as i am thinking in putting 2nd drive on optibay.

Any battery life decrease using this setup?
 
Tankmaze said:
Would like to know more about this, as i am thinking in putting 2nd drive on optibay.

Any battery life decrease using this setup?
Click to expand...
Yes, it can decrease battery life, as a constantly spinning drive will draw more power than an optical drive which is unused most of the time.
 
GGJstudios said:
Yes, it can decrease battery life, as a constantly spinning drive will draw more power than an optical drive which is unused most of the time.
Click to expand...

Cheers for confirming this ggj, i've also read from other threads & forums that it will decrease battery life, but it could depend on the hdd & ssd. The recommended hdd seems to be samsung or hitachi for the low power consumption.
 
Tankmaze said:
Cheers for confirming this ggj, i've also read from other threads & forums that it will decrease battery life, but it could depend on the hdd & ssd. The recommended hdd seems to be samsung or hitachi for the low power consumption.
Click to expand...
As the drive will be in use much more than an optical drive would (for most users), it will consume more power whether it's a HDD or SSD. To the extent that you can, run on AC power and conserve your battery charge for those times when AC power isn't available.
 
djpuma said:
i did forget to mention that since I've put the SSD in I've changed browser downloads, dropbox, etc to go to the 2nd hard drive

i didn't want to trash up my ssd with downloads and dropbox crap (unless that is ok)

That is the only thing different from my previous setup.

Previously I could eject the 2nd drive if I wanted to, now it will never let me so I'm assuming the open programs are keeping it running.
Click to expand...

So basically instead of running off one drive now, your machine is constantly having to power 2 drives for you to get anything done.

This is why your battery life is junk.


You can perhaps mitigate this somewhat by storing all your "Active" data on the SSD and just using the hard drive for archival or infrequently accessed data. This will enable it to power down more often, saving you battery.
 
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