Epochmaker

Q: Does replacing HD with SSD improve battery life?

Macbook Pro 13" Mid 2010.  My MBP is seeming a little slow compared with with my Mac Pro 5.1 which is running an SSD as the main drive.  I have considered fitting an SSD in the optical bay or maybe fitting two SSD's...

 

How is this likely to affect battery life, it's the original battery, I rarely use the MBP other than plugged into power, the charge cycle count is ~240.  If left for a week switched on but not plugged in, the MBP does run the battery flat.

 

Will having two SSD's put more strain on my battery or reduce it's load? Considering a Crutial 250GB, or two.

MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.3), Mid 2010

Posted on Aug 3, 2016 1:47 AM

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Q: Does replacing HD with SSD improve battery life?

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  • by Terence Devlin,Helpful

    Terence Devlin Terence Devlin Aug 3, 2016 3:04 AM in response to Epochmaker
    Level 10 (139,532 points)
    iLife
    Aug 3, 2016 3:04 AM in response to Epochmaker

    An MBP will always be slower than an MacPro.

     

    SSDs will affect battery life for the better - less moving parts to be driven by the battery

  • by Esquared,Helpful

    Esquared Esquared Aug 3, 2016 3:04 AM in response to Epochmaker
    Level 6 (8,415 points)
    Mac OS X
    Aug 3, 2016 3:04 AM in response to Epochmaker

    It wil reduce energy consumption a bit. But most energy is used by the CPU, GPU and display. So don't expect any miracles (other than speed wise).

  • by Epochmaker,

    Epochmaker Epochmaker Aug 3, 2016 3:04 AM in response to Esquared
    Level 2 (162 points)
    Mac OS X
    Aug 3, 2016 3:04 AM in response to Esquared

    Thank you both kindly!

     

    I am relieved the MacPro will always be faster than the MBP...  I put a lot of effort into upgrading it to six core 3.0Ghz, wouldn't have wanted it to be made obsolete by upgrading the MBP to SSD. LOL

     

    I am on my original battery, as mentioned above, the charge cycle count is around 240, I don't really have much idea how long it will run on it's own power because I rarely do that but on the consideration of the condition of the battery at that age, should I be concerned about swelling or other risks like leakage? I had an earlier 17" MBP with removable battery which swelled up and almost destroyed the computer. Given this computer does not have an accessible battery compartment it's not so easy to lift it out to check.  The 17" MBP battery swelled up quite suddenly.

  • by mgx0,

    mgx0 mgx0 Aug 3, 2016 4:06 AM in response to Epochmaker
    Level 1 (31 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Aug 3, 2016 4:06 AM in response to Epochmaker

    it will improve the battery life, but don't expect it to be more than 5-10%. you can help to improve the SSD's and battery life doint some tips below

     

    the whole computer is so slow like it's slowest component. using an SSD you get huge improvement of disk operations which are mostly the "brakes". you will see an improvement during boot and file copying, but not when launching a "wired" application (app that was running a while ago and you re-run it).

     

    you can do this when you replace the drive:

    - Enable TRIM

    - Turn off local Time Machine snapshots (sudo tmutil disablelocal)

    - Turn off sudden motion sensor (sudo pmset -a sms 0)

    - Turn off hibernation (sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0)

    - Turn off hard drive sleep (System Preferences->Power settings->Put hard disk to sleep.)

    - Set noatime flag - scripted solution, see link below

     

     

    you can read more for example here: http://blog.philippklaus.de/2011/04/ssd-optimizations-on-mac-os-x/

  • by dwb,

    dwb dwb Aug 3, 2016 8:12 AM in response to Epochmaker
    Level 7 (24,162 points)
    Notebooks
    Aug 3, 2016 8:12 AM in response to Epochmaker

    The biggest battery drainers of a computer are the CPU, display backlight, mechanical hard drive and optical drive (when there’s a disc in it). A spinning hard drive is about the 3rd largest energy user so the impact of the drive will vary from person to person depending on how much RAM the computer has, how much memory the programs being run needs, and how much the user causes the drive to spin up by launching programs or saving/loading files.

     

    So yes, an SSD will improve battery life but by how much will depend on your computer use. If your computer currently needs to use virtual memory frequently the affect will be larger than if not. If you save files frequently or load/quit applications frequently you’ll also see a larger impact.

  • by mgx0,

    mgx0 mgx0 Aug 3, 2016 9:19 AM in response to dwb
    Level 1 (31 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Aug 3, 2016 9:19 AM in response to dwb

    are you sure with that? 2.5" HDD consumes approximately the same like SSD, while 3.5" HDD consumes around 3-times of what SSD consumes.

     

    CPU, optical drive (when spinning), graphics controller, display backlight are things that affect the battery life considerably.

     

    when it comes to desktop machine (3.5") the power consumption is not really a problem

  • by dwb,

    dwb dwb Aug 3, 2016 9:33 AM in response to mgx0
    Level 7 (24,162 points)
    Notebooks
    Aug 3, 2016 9:33 AM in response to mgx0

    The smaller drives consume less than desktop drives but considerably more than an SSD. A simple test is all it takes and it is one I have performed: take a computer with a HD and a fully charged battery. Set it a task that repeatedly accesses the HD and time how long the battery lasts. Replace the HD with an SSD and test again. The battery lasts longer with the SSD. Of course users don't access the drive constantly in normal usage but obviously the more the hard drive is accessed the faster the battery drains.

  • by mgx0,

    mgx0 mgx0 Aug 3, 2016 9:51 AM in response to dwb
    Level 1 (31 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Aug 3, 2016 9:51 AM in response to dwb

    Yah okay, you are right. which also means, the more memory you have, the less the disk consumes :-) my point was, that users shouldn't expect a big difference of battery drain. SSD is really a must have imho

  • by dwb,

    dwb dwb Aug 3, 2016 10:19 AM in response to mgx0
    Level 7 (24,162 points)
    Notebooks
    Aug 3, 2016 10:19 AM in response to mgx0

    There are so many variables that it is hard to quantify the impact but I think most people would experience a noticeable improvement.

  • by Epochmaker,

    Epochmaker Epochmaker Aug 3, 2016 11:21 AM in response to dwb
    Level 2 (162 points)
    Mac OS X
    Aug 3, 2016 11:21 AM in response to dwb

    Thanks for that info, very interesting.

     

    I think I may have couched my question slightly wrongly.  By battery life I am less concerned about how long a charge lasts as how long the battery is likely to last before it needs replacing. I rarely use the MBP from it's internal battery alone, usually a few minutes only.  Even when I am away I have an inverter in my car which provides mains power sufficient to run the charger while I use the MBP.  The reason I use my MBP is to offload images from my CF cards and to communicate and access the internet when I am away from home.  I am finding the offloading speed from the FW800 CF card reader is becoming intolerable due to the lack of speed in my HD and increased size of image files with newer cameras.

     

    Given it's about six years old I feel the battery is probably getting close to the end of it's life despite the reported ~240 charge cycles being less than a quarter of the life expectancy of the battery before replacement.

     

    I thought that fitting SSD's might take some pressure off the battery and improve the usability for offloading my CF card images which can amount to 40 or 50 Gb per trip. On my return I upload the images to my Mac Pro for processing.

     

    Fitting SSD's AND a battery may take me into a cost zone which makes viability questionable for such a relatively old computer.  I may be better getting either new, or a much more recent used computer with perhaps a faster processor too.

  • by leroydouglas,

    leroydouglas leroydouglas Aug 3, 2016 11:31 AM in response to Epochmaker
    Level 7 (23,520 points)
    Notebooks
    Aug 3, 2016 11:31 AM in response to Epochmaker

    Epochmaker wrote:

     

    By battery life I am less concerned about how long a charge lasts as how long the battery is likely to last before it needs replacing.

     

    About Mac notebook batteries - Apple Support

  • by mgx0,

    mgx0 mgx0 Aug 3, 2016 11:44 AM in response to Epochmaker
    Level 1 (31 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Aug 3, 2016 11:44 AM in response to Epochmaker

    Battery gets old whenever you are using it or not. You can leave a fully charged battery on the table for few years and it's capacity will drop anyway (not necessarily so much like when keeping it in the laptop, which means leaving it to self-discharge to 95% and recharge to 100% and over again, but still), it's unstoppable chemical process. Battery count is not what is most important. Important is battery health and that's what matters most.

     

    I work with RC models and I have "some" experience with Li-Ion/Pol cells and I can tell you it's better to use the battery than not using it. Pure theoretically, if you want to keep the battery as most fresh as possible, you can charge the battery to 50%, take it out of the laptop and keep it in the fridge. This is most efficient way to slow down battery aging.

     

    Laptops have batteries because they are portable devices and batteries are intended to be used. Keeping the battery in the laptop fully charged does not save the battery at all, it's even worse than using it (using the laptop on battery).

     

    As mentioned, if you keep the battery charged and never use the laptop on battery (discharge it), you may notice it's charge slowly drops from 100% to cca 95% even when the laptop is powered by adapter. that's the charger taking care of the battery by stopping charging full battery.

     

    as a bottomline and already a bit off-topic I (yeah I know my reputation here is not high, I just joined) recommend to use your laptop as a portable device - use the battery, don't go down to 0% charge (and if you have to, don't leave the battery discharged for days - it will say BYE and travel to **** wifh a puffy face), don't keep it constantly on AC. just use it as designed.

     

    back to the topic - you are saying you don't use the laptop on battery, therefore there will be absolutely no effect when you swap HDD for SSD. battery is not used at all while on AC