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July 2, 2008

hardware

Solid state drives eat battery life, don’t save it for later

Posted Jul. 2, ’08, 9:34 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Hardware

SanDisk SSDConventional wisdom says that solid state drives (I prefer to use the full version instead of the abbreviation SSD, since everybody knows SSD stands for Super Star Destroyer) have a number of advantages over their more common magnetic-platter-based brethren, including faster disc access times, more shock absorbency, and better battery life—but just how true are those assertions.

Our siblings at Macworld showed some advantages for disk access with the SSD version of the MacBook Air when they tested it, but they didn’t do robust testing of other claims, such as battery life. But the team at Tom’s Hardware did some extensive testing, comparing four SSDs to a conventional Hard Drive, with surprising results: the SSDs actually reduced battery time instead of extending it.

Of course, SSDs are still relatively young, as opposed to magnetic-platter hard drives which have been around for decades, so it’s not entirely surprising that they’re not as efficient yet. Indeed, the article suggests that many vendors have not yet implemented advanced power-management in their shipping models. Still, given the extra expense of most SSDs these days, if you’re looking for a drop in battery life consumption, it doesn’t seem like you’re going to get it from a solid state drive. At least, not yet.

[via Slashdot]


4 Comments

Justin Ames said:

It's important to note that the benchmarks they used simulate unrealistic disk use. SSD perform better both speed- and power-wise with random read/writes where they can turn off different cells. Most SSD users have found minor to small battery life increases with standard usage.

July 2, 2008 11:38 AM
Chuck P said:

LOVED the Star Wars reference! The article doesn't get into it much but i found this video that shows how you can replace the battery in the MBA when the time comes, regardless if the storage is flash or disk:

http://www.ipodjuice.com/macbook-air-battery-replacement-products.htm

thanks and may the force be with you.

-C

July 3, 2008 7:21 AM
ssdfan said:

SSDs have been around for decades as well. It's only in recent years, however, that memory prices have dropped enough to make SSDs viable as consumer electronics.

July 3, 2008 9:47 AM
ssdfan said:

Here's a link to that inclused the history of SSDs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_state_drive

July 3, 2008 9:49 AM

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