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Vertex 3 ssd is shortening battery life

A

animboy

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 29, 2011
9
0
I have a standard 2.2ghz 2011 15inch macbook pro that i upgraded with a vertex 3 ssd. since then my battery life has been a sad 2.5-3 hours instead of the full 7 hours. after endless google searches it seems that this documented issue with the vertex 3 drive and that ocz is pretty uninterested in fixing the issue. I like the speed but the battery life issue is ridiculous. so I have 3 questions:

1. How many other people are having this issue is this across the board or sporadic?

2.has anyone found a fix?

3.if not, has anyone had similar problems with OWC drives they seem to have much better mac support and are just as fast as the vertex 3 perhaps i can jump ship on this ocz drive.

any guidance is appreciated and welcome thanks in advance
 
The newest firmware, 2.06, is supposed to fix specifically the drive's power-usage related issues.
 
i am on firmware 2.02. i have read that the Firmware update on the 2011 macbook was impossible. I know the internet isn't always accurate but it would be nice to confirm that before i partition, install windows, update and delete. have you done this with a 2011 macbook? and which method is correct. i have seen talk of boot discs, running in virtual PC, real pc's, secondary drives, virgins blood and all sorts of strange methods and ingredients. Is there one true method?
 
hmmm I just saw your computer descriptions and it seems you both seem to have successfully done it. this is very exciting :)
 
animboy said:
hmmm I just saw your computer descriptions and it seems you both seem to have successfully done it. this is very exciting :)
Click to expand...

It's possible, but I haven't done it yet. I've tried a few times but can't get it to work. I may have to just install Windows on the SSD, flash it, then restore with Time Machine.
 
Ya, the power draw from the Vertex 3 with the old firmware would maybe reduce your battery life by 20-30 mins tops. If you have having it cut in half there's another problem entirely that most likely has nothing to do with your choice of SSD.
 
hmm ok well then i guess i will be doin some tests this evening to see whats goin on. a bit disturbing though...
 
animboy said:
hmm ok well then i guess i will be doin some tests this evening to see whats goin on. a bit disturbing though...
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ya, I understand... But, the increased power draw is less than 1 watt. Your laptop's battery is almost 80 watts so you can do the math to see there's no way you'll be loosing half that power in your SSD. Or, if you are it should be very hot!
 
just to check.. what exactly is very hot.... because i just look at this thing is running at 263° F and that seems pretty hot to me.
 
I updated mine yesterday to 2.06. Took my drive out and connected it to a windows 7 pc. Job done in about 20 minutes. Not been able to test battery life yet.
 
ok it seems the temp readings on i stat don't work with vertex's... that and my computer hasn't caught on fire... will continue to trouble shoot
 
animboy said:
ok it seems the temp readings on i stat don't work with vertex's... that and my computer hasn't caught on fire... will continue to trouble shoot
Click to expand...
Ya, 263f is about 51 degrees above boiling. It your hard drive was that hot you'd have a lot more problems. :)

Check your activity monitor for anything using a lot of resources. Also, check iStat for your CPU and GPU temps. Also, fan speeds being above 2-3,000 is a sign you've got something thats working your system harder than an idle.

You might also use Coconut Battery to check the health of your battery.
 
p1ngputts said:
Will it be possible to eventually just update the software from the macbook pro?
Click to expand...
Maybe. That depends on OCZ spending the time to develop a proper firmware flashing tool. Also, there is an EFI issue where Apple has it blocked so its much harder than it would be on a PC. Thats why the PC tools don't work so well, even if you boot into Windows.

You have to remove it from the system so that the EFI doesn't block the access.
 
So good news here. It seems that the power hog was the graphics card. I installed coconut battery and gfxCardStatus and found that it would switch the the big gfxcard every time I opened chrome. Now that i have switched to integrated card my battery life is up to 5 hours. I will do the vertex firmware update later on to win back my 20-30 min but for now I feel like i have proper battery usage again. thanks a lot folks, ya'll have been super helpful :)
 
animboy said:
So good news here. It seems that the power hog was the graphics card. I installed coconut battery and gfxCardStatus and found that it would switch the the big gfxcard every time I opened chrome. Now that i have switched to integrated card my battery life is up to 5 hours. I will do the vertex firmware update later on to win back my 20-30 min but for now I feel like i have proper battery usage again. thanks a lot folks, ya'll have been super helpful :)
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No problem. I'm glad it was so easy to fix. Did you setup the dynamic switching for the video card? I have and I'm surprised how well it works. Plus, now I don't have to think about it.
 
yeah that software gfxCardStatus lets me switch the cards manually. The integrated gfx card is not a bad at all and I only have to switch if i am doing heavy After effects work or 3d. its a bit like having a manual transmission.
 
SpitUK said:
Defo added a good 30-60 mins to my battery life since flashing to 2.06. Very glad I did it.
Click to expand...


which method did you use? can i make a windows partition, toss the drive into an enclosure plugged to a PC and let the tool do its work or is it a more complicated procedure.
 
I'm guessing it's not possible to download the firmware update to a cd and then put it into the mbp?
 
animboy said:
which method did you use? can i make a windows partition, toss the drive into an enclosure plugged to a PC and let the tool do its work or is it a more complicated procedure.
Click to expand...

I finally got it working by using internal SATA connectors inside a desktop with Windows 7. At first it didn't work, b/c the desktop MUST use AHCI (a bios setting) and not IDE. When using a USB case, the drive wasn't recognized by the OCZ Toolbox.

I think you need at least one NTFS partition as well.
 
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