Managing two internal hard drives in a Macbook Pro

[freddobonanza]

Upon reaching the storage limit of my internal 7200RPM 750GB SSHD, I replaced the optical drive with a 5400RPM 1TB SSHD.
The Macbook Pro in question is the top end early 2011 15" model running Yosemite.
The 750GB drive is where the user folder, applications, etc are stored.
The 1TB is where I store my music, photos and movies along with some other miscellaneous things.

I have noticed a significant decrease in battery performance since installing the second drive. I was expecting some decrease but not to the extent that I have experienced.
Itunes, Lightroom and FCPX all seem to work well with the second SSHD.

What are your experiences with two internal hard drives in your Macbook Pro?
How do you manage two internal hard drives?
Aside from replacing the SSHDs with SSDs, what are your thoughts and experiences with running RAID arrays?
Any performance tips that you can share for getting the most out of my setup (circumstantial and installing SSDs are out of the question for now)?

MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.1), Early 2011

 

[simonsi]

I have an SSD and HDD, my battery life is better as the HDD is just a media drive and is in the original drive bay, hence it can spin down when not in use.

If you have 2 HDDs spinning as part of the SSHD drives (as they must I guess for it to function), then yes I'd expect worse battery life.

I'm not sure how much of the current draw on a stock machine is due to the HDD but a fair proportion when the CPU is lightly loaded I'd expect, consequently if you double that component you could see a significantly shorter battery life.

 

[jdphoto]

Like Simonsi, I only have experience with the replacing the spinning with an SSD and putting the HD in the optical slot. Running a RAID across the disks is definitely possible, though I think it would further worsen your battery life as both disks will be in use practically all the time. As of now, you 750 GB is used frequently but the the 1TB only when you need the media that is on it.