Battery life decrease with new(old) HDD

[barnold08]

I have a mid 2009 MBP running Lion, I also recently just put a 320gb HD in that I had laying around from late 2009. My question is does anyone have problems with battery decrease with Lion or could it be my slightly larger HD?

 

[squeakr]

Some people have reported battery life being decreased when they installed Lion on older systems, so it is possible, I wouldn't think the drive would be the issue. Have you checked Activity Monitor to verify that there aren't some errant process running in the background eating battery life? What type of decreases are your seeing anyway??

 

[barnold08]

Well when i had my stock apple 250gb in, and unplugged after full charge it would estimate 7:xx time remaining, now i'm getting around 4-5 ? so thats why i say it may be my hard drive.. this is all running lion as well.

 

[squeakr]

Estimates are just that... an estimate based upon the current usage. If sitting idle it will report one figure, but then perform a processor heavy process and the estimate drops exponentially. Stop the process and the estimate goes back to something else. The only true measure is to use it as you normally would and time the usage. If you used to surf for 5 hours going to 6 sites and performing actions, go to the same 6 sites and perform the same actions and see of you get the same usage time.


depending on the drive to, a 7200rpm drive will use more power than a 5400rpm drive, shouldn't be that drastic though.

Apples estimates are nothing more then estimates, that is why I have mine display percentage left, so I am not falsely lead to believe I have a certain amount of time left (yes this percentage can fluctuate just as bad as time estimates as I stated above, but is more precise as it is based upon charge remaining). Reminds me of when SL came out and everyone thought that it was so much smaller and freed up so much memory because Apple changed the base that they figured storage on from base 10 to base 2.

 

[barnold08]

yeah that's what i was thinking that the only reason for decrease due to the HD would be from a higher Rpm, which it isn't. I guess it's just me being over analytical and assuming that it's decreasing my battery life. I will do some more comparisons, but overall when i take it to class just to take notes on MSword with new HD it seems like it consumes a little more battery but i'll have to actually measure time/battery and then go from there.