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    Is anyone running two hdds?

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by maxsquared, Jan 26, 2008.

  1. maxsquared

    maxsquared Notebook Consultant

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    I am thinking adding an extra SSD as my primary drive and put my current hdd as my secondary drive on ultrabay for my T61, is anyone doing this now? Does it work? Will it drain the battery quicker?
     
    maxsquared, Jan 26, 2008
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  2. adinu

    adinu I pwn teh n00bs.

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    For laptops with a hot swappable bay like the thinkpad you can do so. Obviously another component running in your machine will drain the battery faster, especially a hard drive. But an SSD should be very light on the battery so it shouldn't be much of a hit in battery time.
     
    adinu, Jan 26, 2008
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  3. maxsquared

    maxsquared Notebook Consultant

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    So basically, if I am not accessing the document on my secondary drive will it still run constantly?
     
    maxsquared, Jan 26, 2008
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  4. Les

    Les Not associated with NotebookReview in any way

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    Since you are considering SSDs, please feel free to glance through some of the below articles and comparisons. I would suggest the Intro article as a start but I hope all are written such that they are enjoyable reading.
     
    Les, Jan 26, 2008
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  5. adinu

    adinu I pwn teh n00bs.

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    Yes, the hard drive still spins (in terms of an actual hard drive) no matter what you do to it. Obviously accessing the drive for files is a lot more taxing on power, just having it idle still requires a small amount of power which will hinder your battery life more.

    But like I said, with an SSD that power hit is a lot smaller, but still there non the less.
     
    adinu, Jan 27, 2008
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  6. stallen

    stallen Thinkpad Woody

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    I have actually done some testing on this. I use an ultrabay adapter SATA HDD. On a 9-cell battery, I found that I lost somewhere around 5 minutes of battery time with the SATA HDD. Granted, I'm using a 5400 .3 HDD in the ultrabay adapter so it is suppose to use minimal battery consumption.

    However, there is a power improvement using the ultrabay adapter over the optical drive depending upon use. I did this test: I ran a DVD movie constantly on the optical drive until I completely drained the battery. Then I ran the same movie from an image on the ultrabay HDD. I got somewhere around 15-20 minutes of extra battery life playing the movie on the ultrabay drive.

    So the conclusion in terms of battery life... while in idle, the optical drive has a very slight (~5 minutes) advantage over the ultrabay sata drive. While in constant use, the ultrabay has a substantial (~15-20 minutes) advantage over the optical drive.

    Since a SDD uses less power than a standard HDD, I would imagine going from a primary HDD and optical drive to a primary SSD and ultrabay HDD would result in no noticeable loss of battery life.
     
    stallen, Jan 27, 2008
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