Macbook Pro Battery life issue - Help needed!

[Ytsephill]

Hello,

I own a Mid-2009 15'' Macbook Pro.
Recently I "upgraded" my hard-drive to a Seagate Momentus XT 750GB.

As some of you may know (I only got to find out about it recently), some Seagate hybrid hard drives have a compatibility issue with Macbooks. They overheat the computer, and most notably cut down the battery life by more than half.

My battery life before switching the HDD was at about 7,5hours. After, it was 3 hours.

So as soon I figured out the problem was the HDD itself, I quickly removed it and put back a normal WD 5400rpm one.

I was expecting the battery life to go back to normal, but to my surprise it's still at about 3hours when full, while occasionally going up to 3,5 - 4 hours but then coming back down again.

Is the battery permanently damaged??

Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks

 

[AustinIllini]

Are you still using a mid 2009 battery? Three hours isn't terrible. I don't know, maybe you overheated it, but three hours for a 2009 battery isn't terrible.

 

[Ytsephill]

Are you still using a mid 2009 battery? Three hours isn't terrible. I don't know, maybe you overheated it, but three hours for a 2009 battery isn't terrible.

Not sure if the battery is from 2009 since I bought my Macbook 2nd hand, but still it only has 200 cycles and the fact that it lasted 7 hours before and now it doesn't is concerning..

 

[cjmillsnun]

Not sure if the battery is from 2009 since I bought my Macbook 2nd hand, but still it only has 200 cycles and the fact that it lasted 7 hours before and now it doesn't is concerning..

If the battery is original, that's 7 years old.

Ignore the cycles for a minute, the primary causes of degradation in LiPo batteries are in order, age and heat.

To have a look at your battery's health download coconut battery. It should also be able to give you the battery's age.

 

[Ytsephill]

If the battery is original, that's 7 years old.

Ignore the cycles for a minute, the primary causes of degradation in LiPo batteries are in order, age and heat.

To have a look at your battery's health download coconut battery. It should also be able to give you the battery's age.

Ok, I checked with coconut battery and it says it's from the beginning of 2010.
I understand that age is a factor, but it's no coincidence the drop in battery life after I replaced the HDD..
This all happened in a week. A week ago it lasted 7 hours, the I replaced the HDD with the Momentus, dropped to 3 hours, now I put the old one back and it's not back to it's original state.

 

[macenied]

Thus I do not have the issue it's hard to guess. Maybe your OS changed the power save settings like power off hard disk after ## minutes when you installed the Seagate drive. I would check this.