Netbook: 5400.6 to x25-v / battery life

Have an HP Mini110 with a 160GB 5400.6 currently in it. I can get an x25-v 40GB for $90 locally, I'm not looking at other options. Battery life-wise, would it be worth it? Hard to find head to head numbers on the net.

 

I don't have a 'controlled' experiment but a casual comparison of using my D830 with x25M 80G comparing with a Fujitsu 7200 rpm and noticed about a 20% gain in battery life for my usual working session(from full to low battery beep). And the drive area is cooler(which I assume is correlated with power consumption).

 

Battery life improved on my Sony W series after I installed the Kingston SSD. On low screen brightness I get about 6+ hours of typing (wireless off) using Word and PowerPoint. (that's using Sony Battery Care software with a 80% charge)
Saw a nice boost performance wise and battery wise - less heat, less noise and one less moving part.

 

Don't do it for the battery life. The Seagate 5400.6 is one of the more power efficient 5400rpm drives. You may see a slight gain but don't count on it.

I once replaced the Seagate 5400.6 in a HP DM1 with an Intel G2 80GB and lost (!) some battery life. Then when I replaced it with a 40GB I gained some battery life.

 

Alright, that decided it for me.

 

In the perspective of consistent use? Or idle use? Or a mix of both? Sorry there are a ton of posts about SSD's everywhere on this forum lol. And I find it odd that an SSD gives less battery life than a conventional HDD.

 

Intensive internet usage, measured with Battery Bar.

Not every SSD is power efficient.


http://www.anandtech.com/show/3656/corsairs-force-ssd-reviewed-sf1200-is-very-good/2

 

I suppose so. I benchmarked my Vostro 1500 from 100% charged to shutdown (76 WHr 9 cell battery) with my Hitachi 5.4k 160 GB SATA drive and with heavy internet usage and battery life was like 3 hours. With my OCZ Agility 2 SSD with the same usage I managed to get slightly over 4 hours. That's without dimming the screen and wifi enabled in both tests. Haven't tried with a 7200 rpm drive yet

 

Put in a Kingston SNV425 SSD and you'll get even less battery life. Htwingnut experienced this first hand:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...169-most-power-efficient-ssd.html#post6758432

 

SSD may not be super power-efficient directly but think about the time you waste waiting for the regular hard drive to load stuff... during that time ALL laptop components are powered. Especially if you're working in power savings mode.

 

Right, and Phil also pointed out this nice review, which includes power consumption.

Benchmark Results: Power Consumption : Roundup: The Best SSDs For Enthusiasts

Note that most 5400RPM HDD's consume about 0.7-0.9W when idle. The Intel 80GB I now have in my netbook consumes 0.06W, and extended my battery life beyond five hours now, seems even better than the 40GB Intel I used before the Kingston. The Kingston SNV425 is a good bargain drive for a desktop, but I wouldn't recommend it for a laptop if battery life is important to you.

 

Oh I'm not doubting his testing methods/conclusions. There are so many other variables, controller, the flash NAND chips, chipsets, drivers that is it difficult just saying that my SSD is giving me less battery life. Now those benchmarks gives us somewhat of a definite answer, though they did not say what test system they used for testing.

 

Another thing to note is that the 5400.6 has 1.4W idle power consumption:

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/laptops/laptop-hard-drives/#tTabContentSpecifications

I believe they measured it by setting a baseline with a known power, and take the difference from that. If you have the equipment not too difficult to do.

 

Most SSD's are not more power efficient than traditional hard drives. Most SSD's consume round 0.75W - 1.0W idle, and around 2.5W under load. Those numbers are just about identical to a mechanical hard drive.

The only case where SSD's show battery life improvement are if you're using a SandForce-based drive, which operates under load at around 1.0W.

The Intel X-25V is absolutely worth it... it's just that you buy it for the performance, not battery life.

 

I hate to say you're wrong, but I experienced this first hand. Unfortunately I don't have my 40GB X25V anymore, but my X25-M 80GB also gives me vastly improved battery life. The Tom's Hardware article validates that as well.

Here's another one from Toms Hardware, so using the same methodology (we would hope) for laptop hard drives:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/laptop-notebook-hard-drive,2548-8.html

 

Power consumption stated by manufacturers tends to be inaccurate.

 

True, but relatively speaking they seem to be fairly accurate when comparing with other models. Like this power consumption comparison:

Benchmark Results: Power Consumption And Efficiency : Reviewed: 2.5" Notebook Hard Drives From Toshiba And Hitachi

They fall in line with published power consumption on a relative basis (i.e. one is higher than another).

Either way 0.7W to 1.0W idle from a hard drive to 0.06W from the most power efficient SSD's even with room for significant error is a large gap. But it is interesting that there isn't as much disparity with a laptop hard drive at idle as there is for SSD's. Something to definitely consider when buying an SSD especially for netbook where battery life is probably one of the top priorities (not to mention heat, weight, vibration, durability, etc).

 

And there's also the possibility that one SSD of type X has worse than another SSD of the same kind.

Like in the review in my signature I got really bad power consumption out of a OCZ Agility 2. It was so strange I did a clean install again to test it, but found out it was exactly the same. At other websites no one got bad power consumption.

And when two websites measure the same SSD or HDD they often reach very different conclusions. Example: according to Tomshardware the Momentus XT consumes more than what Techreport measured.

 

Hmm, wonder what the reason for that could be? Seems it would be fairly consistent across the board. I read at one point at xbitlabs I think it was a way to test hdd's and ssd's power consumption independent of other hardware and OS.

In any case, my drives: Intel 80GB, Intel 40GB, Kingston 64GB, OCZ Vertex 2 60GB all seem to match what Toms Hardware is reporting. I tried them all in my netbook and received similar results, again relative to their power consumption listed and resultant battery life. I should have documented it all, seems it would have been of some use to others. But if it's specific from PC to PC, then maybe it isn't all that useful.

 

Going by what Tomshardware published it seems very unlikely that an Intel G2 could consume > 3 watt. Yet Anandtech's measurements confirm it.

Tomshardware says the power consumption on Sandforce drives is quite high. On Anandtech it's among the lowest.

And all these websites rely on snapshot measurements only. While the only way to get an accurate indication of battery life over time would be to at least drain one battery fully.

The only website I know that really measures battery life is Laptopmag, but they hardly make new reviews.

http://www.laptopmag.com/review/storage/intel-x25-m.aspx?page=7#axzz15oowkpin

The Scorpio Blue model they used isn't a very power efficient 5400rpm drive.

 

Hrm that's really weird. At my work we had the Agility 2 60 GB for 120 with 20 MIR so they flew out the door, so many people put them into laptops/desktops. I've heard nothing but good things about Agility 2/Sandforce. Although I mostly use my laptop plugged into the wall, I noticed a significant increase in battery life over my dying Hitachi 160 GB 5400 rpm drive, even before it started to fail.

As for different sites having different results, that's to be expected as they all have different testing methodologies.

 

Generally speaking Sandforce drives are pretty good for battery life. Better than Intel.

Best for battery life are Samsung and Toshiba.

Assuming they have well calibrated voltage meters, all idle measurements should be the same. But they're not.

Personally I think there there can be differences between each sample: one Agility 2 does not have the exact same power consumption as the next one.

 

I don't think SSD's will make a whole lot of difference in a typical notebook because something that consumes 25-30W+ compared with a subcompact notebook or netbook that uses 8-9W can make a significant difference in whether the storage drive using about 1W or less has an impact.

I can't imagine that gateway with an old Core 2 Duo at 5.6lbs with 1280x800 screen can be all that power efficient. It seems the battery is 7200mAH @ 11.1V ~ 80,000 mWh lasting 3:13 is about 25W, so gaining 10 minutes of life in this laptop is like gaining 30 minutes in a netbook.

 

What the tables shows though is that the Intel SSD and Scorpio Blue consume the same during continuous usage.

And as I mentioned before the 250GB WD Blue they used isn't very power efficient.

 

Right, but for a majority of people, 90% of the time the storage drive is in "idle" unless all you do is stream or process video. Since an SSD can process the data faster its also consuming power for a lesser period of time.

I'm just saying that continuous use isn't a good indication of real-world performance for a majority of users.

 

The reason I posted the Laptopmag review was to give an example of how battery life should be measured.

Still interesting though that the 5400rpm drive gives the same battery life as 2 SSDs in that review.

Conclusion: if you buy an SSD for battery life make sure to pick a power efficient one. And if you're coming from a 5400rpm drive it will depend on which one and your usage if you can make significant gains.

 

True.

So far I've been impressed with the Intels. I don't like that I have to SE the drives every so often to prevent hangs, etc. But while it runs, it runs great. And in my netbook, battery life is stellar and won't have a whole heck of a lot of writes with it like on a desktop or productivity notebook.

Thanks for all your SSD knowledge though Phil. It's been invaluable. It's too bad the OEM's can share all the knowledge that people spend thousands of dollars on to find out the hard way.