HDD + SSD: Effect on Battery Life/Power Consumption?

abc617

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Jan 2, 2010
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So I know its possible for some computers to take out the optical CD/DVD drive and replace it with a SSD drive. I was wondering what effects it has on a laptop's battery life.

I know that when active, an optical drive would use more power than both an SSD and a HDD. Not sure about how often they go idle. But I've read many mixed articles about how much power a SSD actually consumes (some say it consumes more than a regular HDD, some less than a HDD).

So in a laptop, SSD + HDD: positive or negative impact on power consumption?



And a secondary side question: what about hybrid HDD/SSD drives? Better or worse than SSD + HDD?
 

abc617

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Actually I read at it's either the CPU or the screen brightness that consume more of a laptops battery power. But I am really interested in learning is if adding 2 storage drives consumes more power than having a regular HDD and an optical disk drive.

But if a SSD really only consumes 1 watt, then depending on whether the disk drive is active then it might consume less power than a HDD+disk drive right?
 

overclockingrocks

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Oct 9, 2006
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To weigh in on this seeing as I have this exact setup in my laptop. I have noticed no appreciable loss of runtime when having the optical drive and my SSD installed vs swapping the optical drive for an HDD and having the HDD+SSD combo that you are inquiring about. honestly I barely use an optical drive as it is so having mine in an external caddy and plugging it in when needed was a small inconvienience for the combined speed of an SSD along with the traditional storage capacity of an HDD in one machine.