Will Adding an ssd and migrating the OS to it, lower my power usage?

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Ramon284

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So right now I have a laptop with a 7200rpm HDD. I'm buying and installing an SSD tomorrow, and will move the OS and most of my files to that SSD. The HDD will remain (active) in my laptop though.

I was wondering, will my power usage be higher because of having an extra part in my laptop, or will it be lower because my hdd will be less active, whereas the more active ssd is less power consuming in general?
 
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NerdyComputerGuy
Evening,

Ehhh, you've have maybe a little more wattage but considering you are using a laptop all this means is that you battery life will run out faster by not by like 5 minutes or something.

Regards,
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Solandri

Solandri

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It really depends on what you do and what SSD you get.

Laptop HDDs will typically use 1 Watt while idle (spinning but no read/write activity), 0.005 Watts while asleep (spun down), and 5 Watts when spinning up.

SSDs use varies, with the better drives using about 0.02 Watts idle, 1-2 Watts while reading and writing. Some SSDs use up to 1 Watt idle though.

So if your current laptop usage makes your laptop spin down its HDD a lot, and you get a SSD which consumes a fair amount of power, your power use will likely go up.

But if your current laptop usage leaves the HDD spinning most of the time and/or you get a SSD which consumes little power, your power usage could go down. (The formerly active HDD is now spun down, with its activity replaced by the SSD which has lower idle power consumption.)

The Samsung 850 EVO and Pro and Crucial BX100 are the SSDs currently with the lowest idle power. If you're interested in maximizing your laptop's battery life, those are the drives to get. The Samsungs are around 20-50 mW, the BX100 around 30-80 mW. (This BTW is why I've passed on the many deals on the Crucial M500 SSD for like $180 for a 1 TB drive. The M500 is a decent desktop drive, but its idle power draw is over 1 Watt. A really bad choice for a laptop SSD.)


The difference can be substantially bigger. Most laptops are sporting about 40 Watt-hour batteries. If you figure they typically last 5 hours on battery, then you're talking about an average power draw of 8 Watts.

If you're able to reduce the HDD's spinning power draw by putting it to sleep (save 0.995 Watts) and replace it with a SSD with low wattage (0.02 Watts), that's a net reduction of 0.975 Watts. Your laptop which used consume 8 Watts now consumes 7.025 Watts, and your battery life will increase from 5 hours to 5h 41m.

OTOH if you replaced it with a M500 and your power consumption is now 9 Watts, your battery life would decrease from 5 hours to 4h 27m.
 
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photonboy

photonboy

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Yes and No.

You will increase power usage slightly when you first start because both drives are working. Then, if you have Power Settings setup to put the HDD in standby (i.e. 20 minutes) your total power will be slightly less than when you had just the hard drive.

The hard drive shouldn't spin up unless you try to access it or using Recycle Bin (which spins it up) etc.

Battery life?
I'm not sure it will make much difference overall though.
 
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Ramon284

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Thanks for the answers, I'm buying an 850 evo so it's good to know that was the right decision.

One follow-up question though, will my hdd be asleep automaticaly if it has no data on it? My ssd will be 500gb ( cheap deal ) and my hdd only has 240gb of data on it at the moment so I want to do a full migration. Afterwards I want to keep the hdd in my laptop incase I need it.

I understand these questions aren't super relevant, but sometimes I have to go 5-6 hours without charging. I have an 7800Mah battery (11,1v) right now so it usually goes that long, but I was still kind of worried.
 
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NerdyComputerGuy

NerdyComputerGuy

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You can set in the power settings for your preferred power plan (advanced settings) on when the hard disk drive will automatically shut it's self off when not in use. So for example you don't need to use the drive, it will shut down after 20 minutes and when you try to access it again later it will re-activate.

Just don't have this on if you are putting game files or software files on the HDD as this would just cause problems.

Regards,

 
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photonboy

photonboy

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There are no "problems" as suggested above to having a drive drop into standby.

It simply means a DELAY when the mechanical drive has to spin up the discs to get going. If nothing on the drive is accessed for say, 20 minutes (the value I suggest) then the drive spins down to reduce power and noise.

If there was a Game, data, or even if just accessing the Recycle Bin (which will then check ALL drives) your drive will spin up, do whatever was asked of that then the TIMER will start counting down again.

(It may take eight seconds or whatever to spin up initially so if a game took say 40 seconds to load with the drive already spinning it would in this case take 48 seconds... whatever... the tradeoff is worth it.. however I do have my "DOWNLOADS" folder on my SSD then copy data I want to my HDD rather than use the HDD because I want to avoid unnecessary spin-ups and spin-downs.)

*Long story short, find the Power Options section and change to 20 minutes.

**Samsung Magician has several PROFILE called "OS optimization" and some will modify the Power Options section so may possibly enable or disable your setting for the hard drive. So keep that in mind and if doubt go back into the Windows Power Options section and check.

I use "Maximum Reliability" myself.

Don't forget to apply Over Provisioning to the SSD (simple from Samsung Magician). It uses up some space... Google for WHY it's used if in doubt.
 
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