I did some searching about the effect of using a SSD in place of the optical bay and leaving the original HDD in place while using the SSD as the main disk and the original as a file storage drive. I never found any reliable information on it, so I thought I would post my experience here.
Simply put, my battery life has increased by about 1.5-2 times what it used to be depending on how intensive tasks I am doing. I'm getting close to 6-7 hours of use out of the laptop now between charges, and that is with something like only 85% battery health.
All I did was install the SSD and set the HDD to sleep after 2 mins while on battery through terminal. I hardly ever access the HDD when using the laptop on battery, so it just sits not using energy most of the time.
I was amazed at how much better it is. It's like having a brand new computer again even though it's 4 years old now.
It's amazing stuff, and I can't recommend how much I recommend getting a SSD in place of the original HDD as the main drive. I was honestly debating getting a new computer, but with the new upgrade I'm thinking I can keep this machine for at least another few years considering it has an 2.4 Ghz i7.
Simply put, my battery life has increased by about 1.5-2 times what it used to be depending on how intensive tasks I am doing. I'm getting close to 6-7 hours of use out of the laptop now between charges, and that is with something like only 85% battery health.
All I did was install the SSD and set the HDD to sleep after 2 mins while on battery through terminal. I hardly ever access the HDD when using the laptop on battery, so it just sits not using energy most of the time.
I was amazed at how much better it is. It's like having a brand new computer again even though it's 4 years old now.
It's amazing stuff, and I can't recommend how much I recommend getting a SSD in place of the original HDD as the main drive. I was honestly debating getting a new computer, but with the new upgrade I'm thinking I can keep this machine for at least another few years considering it has an 2.4 Ghz i7.