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What to put in optipay HDD or SDD?

M

matrix808

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 7, 2010
150
1
So right now I currently have apples 128 gb SSD in my HD bay and a scorpio black in my optibay. I like to use my computer on the go a lot so battery performance is an important factor. However after putting in the Scorpio black I've lost about 1.5-2 hours of battery life.

I could probably get by with about 250-300 gb of built in storage. Right now I'm considering either getting another 120 GB SSD or a 256 gb SSD and just replacing my apple SSD and putting the optical drive back in. The last option i was considering was getting a hitachi 5200 RPM drive hoping it would consume less power than the scorpio black.

Any thoughts as to which would be the better route for me?
 
I had a very similar configuration, 250 OCX SSD in drive bay, 320 GB SCorpio Black in optibay. Power became an issue, so I just added a second 250GB SSD in my optibay and got my battery time back.
 
mac8867 said:
I had a very similar configuration, 250 OCX SSD in drive bay, 320 GB SCorpio Black in optibay. Power became an issue, so I just added a second 250GB SSD in my optibay and got my battery time back.
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really? what was the 2nd SSD you added? I've read a few posts of people saying the power consumption of an SSD and HDD are almost similar (although i find it hard to believe sometimes) so after reading that I thought even a 2nd SSD wouldnt give me my battery life back
 
I added another OCZ... yeah, I have seen those posts before as well, about the SSD consuming so much power. Not true. D-Latch gates do not consume powere when they are not active. So basically, when you aren't IO'ing data, your ssd consumes no power.
 
HDD is a 2nd drive for archive and some stuff, if I mobile I can use only SSD and do not touch HDD. Should be fine! ;)
 
matrix808 said:
its a very cool setup if youre not mobile a lot, if you are a 2nd HDD just kills battery life.
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SSD + HDD doesnt seem likely to 'kill' battery life as 7hour battery life is doable with stock configuration of HDD + Optical Drive. The secondary drive in HDD will spin down into a sleep state when idle anyway.

I find this claim hard to believe.
 
wikus said:
SSD + HDD doesnt seem likely to 'kill' battery life as 7hour battery life is doable with stock configuration of HDD + Optical Drive. The secondary drive in HDD will spin down into a sleep state when idle anyway.

I find this claim hard to believe.
Click to expand...

I have no idea whats causing it, but i only get a max of about 4.5 hours of normal work use not running any videos or anything. I think it could be the scorpio black so was thinking of switching to a low powered hitachi HDD first.
 
matrix808 said:
I have no idea whats causing it, but i only get a max of about 4.5 hours of normal work use not running any videos or anything. I think it could be the scorpio black so was thinking of switching to a low powered hitachi HDD first.
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Stick to the Western Digital, theyre far more reliable drives.

Also, 7 hours is doable but only under minimal usage, real world usage is actually significantly less. The more you do on the mac, the less its going to last you on batteries. Keep things running to a minimum especially background tasks.
 
wikus said:
Stick to the Western Digital, theyre far more reliable drives.

Also, 7 hours is doable but only under minimal usage, real world usage is actually significantly less. The more you do on the mac, the less its going to last you on batteries. Keep things running to a minimum especially background tasks.
Click to expand...

I dont even get 7 hours. After unplugging my 2011 MPB from a full charge, medium brightness settings, no backlit keyboard, it estimates me at around 4.5 to 5 hours hours, before installing the scorpio black i USED to be around 6.5 to 7 hours.
 
I'd like to refer you to a superb post I read in a similar thread here:

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/12599206/

posted by squeakr. For convenience, I am re-posting his reply here, and boldfacing the portions relevant to this discussion. This post should pretty much answer your question:

Where your logic fails is that you need the two ports to run 6GB connections if you want to utilize a SATA 3 drive (SSD) and a Traditional HDD that doesn't have a built in SMS. To use the system SMS in this situation to protect the HDD drive, the drive needs to be mounted in the HDD slot, the only one utilizing SATA3 currently. This causes your super fast new SSD to be throttled down and not worth the extra cost of the 6GB. Even though the HDD will not use the 6GB it will be in the only slot that can utilize it, so we lose the added benefit of 6GB and the extra storage space. If we could designate which slot gets the 6GB or which slot gets the SMS it wouldn't be as big of a deal.
Click to expand...

For those who have a later-build 2011 MBP with a 6/6 SATA setup (i.e., both the HDD slot and the Optibay slot have 6Gb/s links), then this discussion is mostly moot, and you can install a SATA III SSD in either slot and realize its full performance. If you have an original Apple HDD with relies on the system SMS (sudden motion sensor), you'd be advised to leave it installed in the HDD slot; if you purchased an aftermarket HDD with an on-board/built-in SMS, you can choose to install it in the Optibay slot, and its built-in SMS will protect it from sudden accelerations (i.e., drops, vibrations, bumps).

In short - if you have a 2011 MBP with a 6/6 SATA III setup and an aftermarket HDD with its own built-in SMS, this discussion is entirely moot, and you'll get the same results in any configuration. If you have any other configuration - see above discussion.

cheers,
Mark
 
Last edited:
^

There was actually a video that was posted here a few months ago of the SMS working in the optical bay with a stock Apple hard drive.

But honestly, a lot of my friends rough handle their laptops without SMS and it's fine. I don't think hard drives, especially notebook hard drives, are that fragile. I would just put my boot drive in the HDD bay because the optical bay isn't powered consistently.
 
Not to take your thread or anything, but...
What do you guys think about having like a 64GB SSD then having 1.5TB 7200RPM External for pictures, video, etc.
 
matrix808 said:
I dont even get 7 hours. After unplugging my 2011 MPB from a full charge, medium brightness settings, no backlit keyboard, it estimates me at around 4.5 to 5 hours hours, before installing the scorpio black i USED to be around 6.5 to 7 hours.
Click to expand...

Are you running the ATI GPU or the integrated one? If you don't know, install gfxcardstatus and force it to use the integrated.
 
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