# Do modern SSDs increase battery life or not?



## jaredudu (Aug 14, 2010)

I've seen some contradicting articles on this. Some even claimed that SSDs lessened battery life. What does TPU think?

I have a ThinkPad with a 5400rpm drive, and I was wondering if it would be worth checking out a SSD.


----------



## Hayder_Master (Aug 14, 2010)

sure it's, HDD's and DVD they are the most power use, SSD only take 2w do sure u will be save energy 

and i would be better if u have large memory size like 4G it will be more saver


----------



## de.das.dude (Aug 14, 2010)

definitely SSDs save power. no doubt about that. but.... SSDs are new.... give them a few more months to settle down.


----------



## DrPepper (Aug 14, 2010)

There is an article that Tomshardware done that I will link you to but doesn't work since their site is down. This will answer it for you.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-hdd-battery,1955.html


----------



## AsRock (Aug 14, 2010)

They save power for sure 1st off they don't have to run a moter



de.das.dude said:


> definitely SSDs save power. no doubt about that. but.... SSDs are new.... give them a few more months to settle down.



Type of SSD is new but SSD is not really new although it's new for household users.


----------



## jaredudu (Aug 14, 2010)

My first thoughts were, "of course its going to save power, it has no moving parts" but then I read the the article DrPepper linked to, and I became skeptical. That's why I created a thread here. I just wasn't sure if Tom's Hardware used older drives for the review.


----------



## DrPepper (Aug 14, 2010)

jaredudu said:


> My first thoughts were, "of course its going to save power, it has no moving parts" but then I read the the article DrPepper linked to, and I became skeptical. That's why I created a thread here. I just wasn't sure if Tom's Hardware used older drives for the review.



Older drives are more common but I believe even though their requirement is lower it is more constant.


----------



## dark2099 (Aug 14, 2010)

What I understood of the article from browsing it, is that since HDDs feature various power states where as SSDs just have Idle and Load pretty much, a SSD will probably be under load more often than not, and in certain of those load times, a conventional HDD might be using a lower power state that could save power.  After looking at the drives being used, I think that the theory should be retested with newer drives, and the method properly explained so it can be reproduced by end users.

EDIT:  Also looking through the review, the HDD they used is a 7200RPM drive which uses more power than a conventional 5400RPM found in laptops, and can't say I saw mention of that, so the data is slightly skewed by that.


----------



## W1zzard (Aug 14, 2010)

would be cool if someone could do some testing with their hardware


----------



## DrPepper (Aug 14, 2010)

W1zzard said:


> would be cool if someone could do some testing with their hardware



Well we need a laptop, a timer and a SSD and a HDD obviously. Anyone want to do it ?


----------



## AsRock (Aug 15, 2010)

jaredudu said:


> My first thoughts were, "of course its going to save power, it has no moving parts" but then I read the the article DrPepper linked to, and I became skeptical. That's why I created a thread here. I just wasn't sure if Tom's Hardware used older drives for the review.



Well i replaced 2 fairly new WD HDDs with 2 SSD's and i noticed about 4 watts less idle.  Not much but some at least lol.  Dont know about full load though


----------



## DanishDevil (Aug 15, 2010)

I'm going to have a new laptop coming in soon. If I have time (doubt it since I'm doing 45+hr weeks) I could test a 320GB 5400RPM vs a 60GB SSD. Any recommendations for battery testing software? I know some reviews use stuff, just too lazy to google it.


----------



## W1zzard (Aug 15, 2010)

charge fully, let the system sit at desktop, time when it goes down
run some movie in repeat, time when it goes down
run some mp3 in repeat, time when it goes down


----------



## RejZoR (Aug 15, 2010)

There is a difference, especially during non intensive tasks. Because traditional HDD has tos pin even if it's not reading anything or not much. For example if you're playing an MP3 on laptop, it doesn't really need loads of data to transfer, but it needs HDD to buffer tiny bits of music during playback. SSD on the other hand doesn't have to spin, and it has just a small charge to operate.
It's the idle time between buffering that does the most difference. You'll get few extra minutes out of that...


----------



## LAN_deRf_HA (Aug 15, 2010)

I remember back when that article came out and the follow up the general consensus was that they screwed up, then tried to save face by saying they were still right. For a modern comparison see if you can find reviews on laptops that offer both an ssd or hdd option.


----------



## Lazzer408 (Aug 15, 2010)

For what it's worth. I have a bunch of 2.5" SATA drives all rated between .5 to 1a on the 5v rail. Toshiba and Hitachi being the highest. WD and Seagate being the lowest. This equals 2.5 to 5w. What a laptop drive consumes is a drop in the bucket compaired to the combined load of the CPU, GPU, motherboard, and LCD+backlight. If the whole laptop draws 40w and a SSD saves you 3 watts then your really only gaining a few minutes run time per hour. A spare or high capacity battery would be a much more practical and affordable solution to longer run time.

Understand this about technology marketing. They will sell you any benifit they can think of even if it's extremely minimal. "LONGER RUN TIME!!" Even if it's only 5min.


----------



## Sir_Foggy (Aug 20, 2010)

"What a laptop drive consumes is a drop in the bucket compared to the combined load of the CPU, GPU, motherboard..."

That's EXACTLY why battery life is actually lower with an SSD!

SSD's keep the entire system cranking more consistently due to far lower latency compared to an HDD

The HDD uses more juice as an individual component-But all those idle cycles the system goes through while waiting for the HDD actually adds up to longer battery life as the hardware is being kept from running at such a busy working state.

At least that's my theory


----------



## Lazzer408 (Aug 20, 2010)

Sir_Foggy said:


> "What a laptop drive consumes is a drop in the bucket compared to the combined load of the CPU, GPU, motherboard..."
> 
> That's EXACTLY why battery life is actually lower with an SSD!
> 
> ...



I don't think there's any _significant_ gains in run time. YES there is SOME gain with a SSD but lets look at some facts. If the transfer rate of a 2.5" drive is 40mb/s and the SSD is 120mb/s sec, and a few hundred meg of files need to be accessed, it's only a few seconds longer that a disk drive would be in use and the rest of the system has to wait for it. Waiting doesn't put much of a load on the system anyways. It's what it does with the data after it's read that puts a load on things. Yes, seconds do add up, but it's not like the laptop will get another 30min of run time with just a drive swap to a SSD.
Cost vs. benefit can be argued for any device or upgrade but the SSD manufactures are pushing any benefits they can find, no matter how small, to make a product sound better.

There would be higher gains in battery performance by shutting off some drive intensive services like indexing/windows search, and scheduled tasks like anti-virus scans and defrag.


----------



## DanishDevil (Aug 20, 2010)

If anybody wants to lend me a laptop HDD, I'll test it against an OCZ Solid 2 60GB.


----------



## Fourstaff (Aug 20, 2010)

I think SSD will increase battery life, but since that the power draw compared to the LCD screen and  the processor will take up most of the juice, you will not be able to see much difference. if SSDs take in 2w, its very low when you compare it with the 45w mobile processors, let alone LCD screen and other "overheads".


----------



## Sir_Foggy (Aug 20, 2010)

Yeah it's when the system is waiting that it's drawing less power overall.

It saves power when waiting for the HDD to do it's thing

Having an SSD means less wait time and more time actually doing work so it kills the battery quicker.

When doing something that needs to be done faster the shorter battery life won't matter because the task will finish sooner with an SSD anyway.

But if you're just using casually to chat and browse the web then it'll suck compared to running with an HDD.


----------



## DrPepper (Aug 21, 2010)

Sir_Foggy said:


> Yeah it's when the system is waiting that it's drawing less power overall.
> 
> It saves power when waiting for the HDD to do it's thing
> 
> ...



Well if the computer is waiting on the HDD it means it will be at load longer than the SSD however the SSD has a higher idle draw than HDD's.


----------



## Sir_Foggy (Aug 21, 2010)

Yeah I don't know which draws more-The HDD while under load and the system waiting or The system not waiting as much with an SSD that uses only 2 W in short bursts

It's still amazing how little power an HDD uses with it spinning at a constant rate of thousands of RPM's!,Lol

I'll be kind of sad when SSD's totally replace these wonderful examples of fine mechanical engineering


----------



## Lazzer408 (Aug 21, 2010)

Sir_Foggy said:


> Yeah I don't know which draws more-The HDD while under load and the system waiting or The system not waiting as much with an SSD that uses only 2 W in short bursts
> 
> It's still amazing how little power an HDD uses with it spinning at a constant rate of thousands of RPM's!,Lol
> 
> I'll be kind of sad when SSD's totally replace these wonderful examples of fine mechanical engineering



RAMAC was cooler looking.


----------



## DrPepper (Aug 22, 2010)

Sir_Foggy said:


> I'll be kind of sad when SSD's totally replace these wonderful examples of fine mechanical engineering



With even more incredible engineering. It's like an engine with no moving parts powered soley by electricity.


----------



## Lazzer408 (Aug 22, 2010)

DrPepper said:


> With even more incredible engineering. It's like an engine with no moving parts powered soley by electricity.



It needs at least one moving part to be an engine.  In that case it's an electric motor and it already exists, even in harddrives, consuming laptop batteries everywhere.


----------

