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Optibay HDD that doesnt affect battery life

M

matrix808

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 7, 2010
150
1
I was wondering what is the best option HDD to use in my optibay to not see a significant decrease in battery life.

Currently im running the WD 750 GB 7200 RPM scropio black in my optibay. For the most part im fairly happy with it but ive lost about an hour half of battery life when its installed. I'm not too worried about having a SMS built in since i mainly use my laptop on a desk.
 
does the WD blue really consume less power? was on OWC site and when looking at the specs it seems the blue uses more power than the black
 
I'm going with the seagate momentus 750gb for the optibay drive and next paychek I'm picking up an SSD for the boot drive. I figure either the Vertex 3 or Intel 510. If I get the Intel I wont be able to resist naming the volume "Datsun".
I am hoping that using the SSD for my boot will save me enough power that having a 2nd HDD wont be a battery killer (or not as bad).
Either way n worries on my part. My previous laptop had 2-3 hour battery life!
 
matrix808 said:
I was wondering what is the best option HDD to use in my optibay to not see a significant decrease in battery life.

Currently im running the WD 750 GB 7200 RPM scropio black in my optibay. For the most part im fairly happy with it but ive lost about an hour half of battery life when its installed. I'm not too worried about having a SMS built in since i mainly use my laptop on a desk.
Click to expand...
As a previous poster pointed out. Hitachi have the lowest power requirements of any HD. It's one of the reasons Apple uses them almost exclusively.
 
Is there a significant decrease in battery life with a 7200 rpm drive installed over a 5400 rpm?
 
What is the main factor that affects battery usage? the scorpio black seems to have the lowest power consumption rated at (.83 watts), or should i be more concerned about the "seek" power?
 
matrix808 said:
Is there a significant decrease in battery life with a 7200 rpm drive installed over a 5400 rpm?
Click to expand...

Not really, but then again, there's not much point having 7200 RPM in the optibay, as anything that needs to be accessed quickly will be on the SSD. I'd go Scorpio blue 750GB (if you need a lot of storage)
 
Idle power is the only thing that really matters. As always when it is active the CPU power consumption jumps by so much that the HDD/SDD becomes insignificant anyway. But at idle it matters.
The Vertex 3 and Intel 510 are both worse in idle power than most decent 2.5" hdds btw. Therefore your won't save anything with a SSD that might help with overall consumption if there is a HDD running too.
You can rely on the HDD auto spindown which doesn't seem to work for some in the optibays or you go the manual route and use some script to mount/unmount the drive whenever you need it or not. Unmounted the drive should spin down and suck only very minimal power.
With the HDD off you will be at about the same or a little worse than with only one hdd.
 
dusk007 said:
Idle power is the only thing that really matters. As always when it is active the CPU power consumption jumps by so much that the HDD/SDD becomes insignificant anyway. But at idle it matters.
The Vertex 3 and Intel 510 are both worse in idle power than most decent 2.5" hdds btw. Therefore your won't save anything with a SSD that might help with overall consumption if there is a HDD running too.
You can rely on the HDD auto spindown which doesn't seem to work for some in the optibays or you go the manual route and use some script to mount/unmount the drive whenever you need it or not. Unmounted the drive should spin down and suck only very minimal power.
With the HDD off you will be at about the same or a little worse than with only one hdd.
Click to expand...

I'm in this boat and it sucks! I bought a 120gb Vertex 3 SSD and threw the OEM HDD in the optibay. My battery life sucks, I wonder how much spinning down my HDD will help w/ battery life/consumption.
 
I've got a 120GB Intel 510 Series to install into my 15" MBP 2.2 GHz which should arrive shortly.

I'm currently asking myself which drive to get for the optibay. I'm having 2 favourites at the moment:

1. 750GB WD Scorpio Black (good performer)
2. 750GB Hitachi 5K750 (battery saver)

What difference in battery life will I see between these two? Is the difference in performance important when using it in the optibay? I'll use it mainly for picture/music/video/documents storage.....
 
ApplePu said:
I've got a 120GB Intel 510 Series to install into my 15" MBP 2.2 GHz which should arrive shortly.

I'm currently asking myself which drive to get for the optibay. I'm having 2 favourites at the moment:

1. 750GB WD Scorpio Black (good performer)
2. 750GB Hitachi 5K750 (battery saver)

What difference in battery life will I see between these two? Is the difference in performance important when using it in the optibay? I'll use it mainly for picture/music/video/documents storage.....
Click to expand...

all i know is under use i seem to have lost about an hour to hour half in battery life with the WD Scorpio Black installed. I havent installed any other HDD yet so I cant verify that the WD is the culprit or the fact that i now have to hard drives in my computer
 
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