SSD Installed and Less Battery time?

[Lothair]

That battery is worth it's weight in gold if the charge goes up! SELL SELL SELL! lol

It sounds like a software issue, unless you're supposed to be getting those numbers? I'd time it against a clock and see if it matches up.

[TheGreatSatan]

I was getting almost 6 hours when I had a 5400 rpm drive installed and then suddenly after I put in my SSD, my charge time dropped to 3 hours!!

[Oneslowz28]

Depending on how much the SSD is in use, I could see it draining a battery. Do you just have the OS on the SSD or is it your main drive?

[TheGreatSatan]

It's my only drive. So, everything is on it.

I already know that it drains faster than a normal hard drive. SSD's pull the same amount of power all the time. Normal hard drives spin up then down and use less power. I just wonder what a laptop battery is designed to handle. Are they built for peaks and lows in power consumption? Or a constant draw at the same rate?

[Oneslowz28]

Well all batteries are designed for a constant current draw rate. This is how manufacturers rate their mAh. The reason no battery gives you the charge time and lifespan they are rated for is fluctuations in the current draw. Its a little more complicated than that but that's the jist of it.

[mDust]

It's my only drive. So, everything is on it.

I already know that it drains faster than a normal hard drive. SSD's pull the same amount of power all the time. Normal hard drives spin up then down and use less power. I just wonder what a laptop battery is designed to handle. Are they built for peaks and lows in power consumption? Or a constant draw at the same rate?

SSDs do not pull the same amount of power all the time. They have an active and an idle power draw measurement on every SSD that is sold. Generally it's about 3-4 watts seek and <1 watt idle. However, that isn't much different than a lot of notebook drives. The difference is that SSDs don't have to spin up a disk...they just spit the data out and then instantly idle again. So the HDDs spend longer using slightly more power which is why the SSDs are suppose to be more power efficient.
Your laptop battery is designed to output a certain amount of amps at certain voltages for a certain number of hours...this is measured in milli-watt-hours. The three measures (amps, volts, and time) are all dependent on each other. As output watts (amps x volts) increase, the battery life (time) decreases as it's inversely proportional. If you want longer battery life, the milliwatts have to decrease. If you have HWMonitor installed, you can watch your battery drain in real-time by the numbers. It's fun.

[Konrad]

Disable *all* search indexing on the system drive. You lose the benefits of "fast" searches, you gain 10-20% more usable drive capacity. You also gain maybe 50% more battery life because the drive isn't constantly clicking and indexing itself in the background, you also don't have to defrag as often ... I don't know how much of a difference it makes with an SSD.

[mDust]

Disable *all* search indexing on the system drive. You lose the benefits of "fast" searches, you gain 10-20% more usable drive capacity. You also gain maybe 50% more battery life because the drive isn't constantly clicking and indexing itself in the background, you also don't have to defrag as often ... I don't know how much of a difference it makes with an SSD.

That's a good idea except for defragging an SSD. SSDs don't ever need to be defragged and shouldn't be, as it destroys them.

[Konrad]

lol, I should've worded it better. I routinely disable indexing on my laptops with wonderful results. Battery life does increase by a large margin because far less power gets constantly drained by "idle" moving parts.

But I've never used a mobile machine with SSD; I'm not sure if my "tweak" makes any noteworthy differences on performance, longevity, or battery life with SSD components. I agree, defrag isn't necessary on SSD volumes (unless maybe you're preparing for emergency data recovery) and it seems like it would be detrimental in the long term. I'm still leery of the "limited" life of SSD technologies. (Yes, I know SSDs have huge performance gains and are already used in critical enterprise applications ... I'll probably resist until SSD prices and lifespans reach parity with HDD technologies.)

[TheGreatSatan]

I already had that off, but I did just shut off XPS Services because I never print from my lappy. I also disabled Windows Media Center and DVD Maker because I don't use those either. Then I killed all Windows Games. Does anyone know what XPS Viewer is?