Will upgrading from HDD to SSD on a laptop improve battery life?

[vyogan]

Thinking of upgrading my laptop's HDD to a Samsung Evo 850 or Crucial MX550 as they are two of the most reasonably priced in terms of performance.

 

The main reason for upgrade is obviously to improve performance, boot up speed, etc., but I wonder if it actually helps to improve battery life since I can always feel my HDD spinning (taking more battery life?).

 

Would really appreciate if anyone with experience can share. Thanks!

[Guest Kloaked]

It'll save power, yes. It's not a crap ton, but it's a good bit.

[Nup]

I would think so, although I don't know how significantly. 

 

It's probably worth it from just a performance standpoint anyhow. 

[Boink]

SSDs use less power than hard drives, so yes, but not a very significant amount. You'll probably get about 10% more battery life.

[boboman342]

Speaking from experience, you will only see a 15-30 minute gain with certain low power drawing ssds. Although if your laptop only lasts for 4 hours, improving battery life by 20 minutes is about a 10% increase in battery life. I used the Adata sp600 because of the extremely low idle/load power draw.

[STRMfrmXMN]

I've done it myself on a laptop with a terrible battery. I can say it improves the battery life next to nil.

[boboman342]

I've done it myself on a laptop with a terrible battery. I can say it improves the battery life next to nil.

What ssd did you use? Some older/cheaper ssd's use more or less the same power as most laptop hdds.

[STRMfrmXMN]

What ssd did you use? Some older/cheaper ssd's use more or less the same power as most laptop hdds.

Used the 5400 RPM (actually pretty decent HDD) that came with my laptop and a Sandisk Ultra Plus as comparison tools. Battery life improvement was within a margin of error.

[Enderman]

yes it does

except i think intel SSDs use more power than most other SSDs

[vyogan]

Speaking from experience, you will only see a 15-30 minute gain with certain low power drawing ssds. Although if your laptop only lasts for 4 hours, improving battery life by 20 minutes is about a 10% increase in battery life. I used the Adata sp600 because of the extremely low idle/load power draw.

 

My laptop's a rather old model: Dell Latitude E6330. Only lasts up to 3 hours max.

[vyogan]

Just discovered on Anandtech's SSD benchmarks that the EVO 850 has one of the lowest power draw. Is there any particular concern over the longevity or performance of the EVO 850? I don't remember what was the problem with the 840......

[boboman342]

Used the 5400 RPM (actually pretty decent HDD) that came with my laptop and a Sandisk Ultra Plus as comparison tools. Battery life improvement was within a margin of error.

Trying to find ssd, let alone notebook drives power consumption is a thing of difficulty. You mostly have to go off what is advertised, if it is at all!

Some sites like; 

http://techreport.com/review/25610/ocz-vector-150-solid-state-drive-reviewed/2 

http://techreport.com/review/24561/seagate-laptop-thin-sshd-500gb-hybrid-drive-reviewed/11

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/ssd-vs-hdd-power-usage.645232/

especially notebookcheck do have some info.

 

An 840evo uses around 1w under load, my sp600 in my laptop uses 0.8w under load. most 5400rpm laptop hdd's use around 4w+.

[boboman342]

Just discovered on Anandtech's SSD benchmarks that the EVO 850 has one of the lowest power draw. Is there any particular concern over the longevity or performance of the EVO 850? I don't remember what was the problem with the 840......

Just find the lowest power counsuming drive you can, and buy it. Not since eons ago was the reliability of ssd's questioned. Even older drives by today's standards could withstand petabytes of reads/writes. http://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead

[scottyseng]

Thinking of upgrading my laptop's HDD to a Samsung Evo 850 or Crucial MX550 as they are two of the most reasonably priced in terms of performance.

 

The main reason for upgrade is obviously to improve performance, boot up speed, etc., but I wonder if it actually helps to improve battery life since I can always feel my HDD spinning (taking more battery life?).

 

Would really appreciate if anyone with experience can share. Thanks!

 

For my laptop, I get about 15-30 min more battery life. A major factor is how much you put the laptop to sleep or off. As a traveling college student, I turned my laptop off between classes, so the hard drive took a while to spool up, eating battery.

 

I went from the stock 500GB 5400 RPM drive (Started to get really slow) to a Crucial M400 240GB (At the time, it was the best bang for the buck)

 

Another way to boost battery life is to take the laptop apart and sand/polish the factory heatsink and replace the thermal paste with something aftermarket. I dropped the temps on my laptop by 20-25C and the fan runs way quieter too. I'm sure that also had a role in boosting my battery life since the fan no longer runs at all high speed like it used to.

[OneRingRuler]

If you really want to keep the laptop and the battery life is realy only 3 hours, save a lot of money, and buy a new extended life battery. You won't mind the slight extra bulk when you're getting 6-7 hours of life from a single charge.

[Captain_WD]

Thinking of upgrading my laptop's HDD to a Samsung Evo 850 or Crucial MX550 as they are two of the most reasonably priced in terms of performance.

 

The main reason for upgrade is obviously to improve performance, boot up speed, etc., but I wonder if it actually helps to improve battery life since I can always feel my HDD spinning (taking more battery life?).

 

Would really appreciate if anyone with experience can share. Thanks!

 

Hey there vyogan,

 

SSDs generally consume less energy compared to 2.5" HDDs and should be more power-efficient (mainly because they don't have any moving physical parts). But the power consumption of a regular 2.5" drive (be that SSD or a HDD) shouldn't influence the laptop's battery life greatly (you may seem some small improvement but nothing too drastic).

SSDs are great due to their almost instant access times, greater transfer speeds and the fact that they are not affected by vibrations (which is important when it comes to portable PCs).

 

Captain_WD.

[vyogan]

For my laptop, I get about 15-30 min more battery life. A major factor is how much you put the laptop to sleep or off. As a traveling college student, I turned my laptop off between classes, so the hard drive took a while to spool up, eating battery.

 

I went from the stock 500GB 5400 RPM drive (Started to get really slow) to a Crucial M400 240GB (At the time, it was the best bang for the buck)

 

Another way to boost battery life is to take the laptop apart and sand/polish the factory heatsink and replace the thermal paste with something aftermarket. I dropped the temps on my laptop by 20-25C and the fan runs way quieter too. I'm sure that also had a role in boosting my battery life since the fan no longer runs at all high speed like it used to.

 

 

If you really want to keep the laptop and the battery life is realy only 3 hours, save a lot of money, and buy a new extended life battery. You won't mind the slight extra bulk when you're getting 6-7 hours of life from a single charge.

 

 

 

Hey there vyogan,

 

SSDs generally consume less energy compared to 2.5" HDDs and should be more power-efficient (mainly because they don't have any moving physical parts). But the power consumption of a regular 2.5" drive (be that SSD or a HDD) shouldn't influence the laptop's battery life greatly (you may seem some small improvement but nothing too drastic).

SSDs are great due to their almost instant access times, greater transfer speeds and the fact that they are not affected by vibrations (which is important when it comes to portable PCs).

 

Captain_WD.

 

 

 

Trying to find ssd, let alone notebook drives power consumption is a thing of difficulty. You mostly have to go off what is advertised, if it is at all!

Some sites like; 

http://techreport.com/review/25610/ocz-vector-150-solid-state-drive-reviewed/2 

http://techreport.com/review/24561/seagate-laptop-thin-sshd-500gb-hybrid-drive-reviewed/11

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/ssd-vs-hdd-power-usage.645232/

especially notebookcheck do have some info.

 

An 840evo uses around 1w under load, my sp600 in my laptop uses 0.8w under load. most 5400rpm laptop hdd's use around 4w+.

 

Thank you guys for all for the replies and the input! As I expected, I'm not really hoping that it'll significantly improve the battery life but it's just a curiosity of mine, wondering if anyone has seen any detectable improvement. I'll still upgrade the drive to SSD mainly for the performance. 

 

It also makes me wonder how Apple was able to make their macbook pro's last so long. Much larger battery?

[scottyseng]

Thank you guys for all for the replies and the input! As I expected, I'm not really hoping that it'll significantly improve the battery life but it's just a curiosity of mine, wondering if anyone has seen any detectable improvement. I'll still upgrade the drive to SSD mainly for the performance. 

 

It also makes me wonder how Apple was able to make their macbook pro's last so long. Much larger battery?

 

The Mac OS generally is not as resource heavy as windows. The other factor is that Mac only has a small product line, so they can optimize Mac OS to work as efficiently as it can on the hardware they sell. Windows on the other hand, has to support everything.

 

The other bonus of the SSD upgrade is that you can now shake your laptop without any worries.

[Benji_w]

Thank you guys for all for the replies and the input! As I expected, I'm not really hoping that it'll significantly improve the battery life but it's just a curiosity of mine, wondering if anyone has seen any detectable improvement. I'll still upgrade the drive to SSD mainly for the performance. 

 

It also makes me wonder how Apple was able to make their macbook pro's last so long. Much larger battery?

 

Lol, I wish my mac lasted long, it's useless! I'm lucky to get 4hrs out of it's battery from full charge to 1% then again when I use tech I actually use it rather than pose with it in a studio or starbucks...