ST750LX003-1AC154 seagate momentus reduce my battery life

Hello Chris, welcome to & thanks for using the Apple Community boards.

There have been a lot of reports of battery drain after performing a Mountain Lion install. There are two suspects to this cause:

1. A "runaway" background process - this is when an application or process of an application continues to use CPU power & therefore battery power after it's supposed to terminate.
2. At this time Apple is reportedly looking into what is causing this issue. There have been users that have reported that with no runaway processes there is still a significant reduction in battery life.

To look into this I'd say take a peek at your CPU processes using Activity Monitor. Here's some info on that here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH5146

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH5147

The next is to turn off the Power Nap feature under System Preferences. Here's a support article for adjusting Power Nap settings:

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11465

Let us know well this helps out, if at all Chris.

while installing the Seagate Momentus XT will drain some of your battery life because it spins at 7200RPM...

but the issue you're having is not normal.

see what else is running in the background via activity monitor - all processes - %CPU...

anything over 10% under the %CPU section is high and will drain your battery...

good luck..

if you look at the bottom of your screen shot - it's shows you're using 26% - that will cause your battery to drain faster....

change my processes to all processes to get a better glimpse on what's going on....There is 16% that is not accounted for right now....it only shows 10% being used by storeagent which is iTunes.

Have a look at mine:

Another thing to check for Chris is a firmware update from Seagate. I recall at my last employer we had to do that a few times for older MacBook Pros. I don't know if you're going to "need" it but it may help:

http://www.seagate.com/support/internal-hard-drives/laptop-hard-drives/momentus- xt-hybrid/

While a 7200RPM drive will have a small drain on performance we're talking about minutes not hours, I wouldn't think the hybrid HDD is the culprit unless it's running at high speeds all the time (unless also, of course, a firmware update addresses the issue).

Also consider having a look here for ways to maximize your battery life:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1446

I just installed the same drive in my Mid2010 MBP. The old and new drives were both 7200RPM. I simply cloned my stock drive to the Momentus, installed and and booted up.

The battery life is horendous! After unplugging it I went from 100% to 95% in about 6 minutes. I can actually watch the % tick down. I DEFINIATELY got much better battery life with the stock drive. VERY VERY Disappointed in this drive and may return it.

I just installed the hdd below

All information given below are interessting but that doesnt help at all. Even if you check/update all configuration for Power Management, check if some processes are showing CPU consumption, you still have an amazing change in your battery lifetime.

OK, performace are really better than the original 5200 RPM hdd but this is impossible to stay in this situation. I have something like 3h max. it was 6h20 before....

I checked seagate website no firmware update... it is just unbelievable.

It cost money and time to switch such device. the result is not acceptable for regular apple users the MBP is not professionally operational since then.

Any help is of course welcome

BTW

Nom du modèle: MacBook Pro

Identifiant du modèle: MacBookPro8,1

Nom du processeur: Intel Core i5

Vitesse du processeur: 2,3 GHz

Nombre de processeurs: 1

Nombre total de cœurs: 2

Cache de niveau 2 (par cœur): 256 Ko

Cache de niveau 3: 3 Mo

Mémoire: 4 Go

Version de la ROM de démarrage: MBP81.0047.B27

Version SMC (système): 1.68f98

Logiciel Mac OS X Lion 10.7.4 (11E53)

New Mountain Lion update, 10.8.1, reports to improve some of the battery life issues in 10.8 - download it & see if it improves your issue any.

Wow Chris that really is terrible. Sorry you're having so much trouble with that HDD, at my former job I installed that drive in dozens of Macs & PCs and never saw the battery or heat issues you're having.

I did some digging around on Seagate's discussion boards. There seems to be a firmware that fixes the battery & heat issues, vSD28. Specifically it addresses the fact that the hybrid HDD/SSD never spins down. Which makes sense if the HDD platters are always running then the battery will drain faster & excess heat will be created.

Here's the download page.

http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/215451en

Firmware update procedure (this is once you boot to the CD):

http://support.seagate.com/firmware/firmware_update_procedure.html

This is the instruction set from Seagate for running the update:

http://support.seagate.com/firmware/firmware_update_procedure_mac.html

If you need to know how to burn an image (.ISO) file to a disk look here - it's the same for all versions of OS X since 10.5:

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH7025

In my searching I've found that some people had to run the update 3 times before it actually updated the hybrid's firmware.

Another user stated that if you downgrade the EFI on your MacBook Pro to v1.6 it'll fix the issue as well (doing a firmware downgrade is a little more difficult however). There does seem to be a number of people on various forums on Google that reported success as well.

Lastly one user on Seagate's forums reported that he had to replace the drive because it was defective. His issues were the same as yours & had the retailer swap the drive, now his problems are solved. So you can always seek an exchange as well directly through Seagate.

Hey Chris. Wondering of you heard fro Seagate yet. I sent their support team an email this AM and waiting for a response. I can't believe there isn't more talk of this issue.

thanks

Dave

I think that the drive is not spinning down at all. I here it constantly if I listen near the right of the touch pad. That sound never stops.