SSD in laptop

Dorsetmike · February 07, 2017, 01:34:47 PM

How much increase in battery life can one expect fitting an SSD in place of a conventional HDD.

Any makes to avoid? So far contemplating a Westrn digital 250Gb from Ebuyer, £75.

RailGooner · February 07, 2017, 02:23:23 PM

I wouldn't expect you'll discern any difference in battery performance. In most cases, much of the advantages claimed for SSDs are marketing hyperbole. I'd advocate a hybrid drive.

Richard Simpson · February 07, 2017, 03:21:04 PM

I have 14 laptops (I hire them out) all have their hard disks changed to SSD. They perform 2-4 times faster than with hard disks. I have trialled hybrid drives and find that they give only a minor performance difference. So my recommendation is to go for an SSD.

Richard

njee20 · February 07, 2017, 03:50:06 PM

Random first post!

I don't think anyone would question the speed benefits of going for an SSD, but the OP asked specifically about battery life, where I'd expect no discernible difference.

Richard Simpson · February 07, 2017, 05:07:53 PM

Yes I have to agree battery life would probably not be too different. There doesn't seem to be much technical interest in that aspect, speed is most peoples requirement. In theory SSD should be less power hungry.

I agree also it was random first post but I know an awful lot more about computers than I do about N Gauge!!

CHEERS

davidinyork · February 07, 2017, 05:33:24 PM

Just backing up what others have posted, I've not noticed much of a difference in battery life with SSDs either: speed is the main reason for buying them. I have put them in a number of the work laptops (or bought laptops with them already fitted), and have just bought a dozen new desktops with them, which I will be monitoring the performance of.

rhysapthomas · February 07, 2017, 07:16:03 PM

Just to agree with everybody fir SSD for speed improvements not reduced power consumption, there will be some but not as much as you might expect

Maurits71 · February 07, 2017, 07:30:19 PM

Heho, question for all you ssd people, according to norton utilities defragmenting a ssd drive will reduce lifespan ?, is this true ? And if so how to keep in ssd in shape

davidinyork · February 07, 2017, 08:02:01 PM

Quote from: Maurits71 on February 07, 2017, 07:30:19 PM
Heho, question for all you ssd people, according to norton utilities defragmenting a ssd drive will reduce lifespan ?, is this true ? And if so how to keep in ssd in shape

SSDs are designed to even out the writes over the drive, which means that they don't necessarily write sequentially. All this is handled by the SSD's own controller, so it may look sequential to the computer but actually isn't - so all that defragmenting would do is move from one non-sequential arrangement to another. The reason why defragmenting is done on mechanical drives is because the drives has to physically move the head and spin the disc to the correct location, so if data is scattered about, as happens when the drive becomes fragmented, this slows it down as the head has to move about a lot. SSDs are reading flash memory chips, so this doesn't apply - nothing moves.

The only requirement of SSDs is that the empty blocks are set to zero before being re-written (unlike a mechanical drive where it just removes the entries in the file allocation tables, and leaves the actual data until it gets over-written). The process of setting the empty blocks to zero is called trimming, and is done in the background by modern drives - although you can run various utilities to do it too.

Recent releases of Windows (certainly Windows 10, and I think 8 too) are aware of SSDs and if you run the defrag utility it will offer the option to trim the drive, which it can do, but won't try to defragment it.

SSDs have a finite number of read/write cycles, so theoretically defragmenting could reduce the lifespan by repeatedly reading and writing to them, although I've never actually come across this happening. The main thing to bear in mind is that defragmenting will achieve absolutely nothing as you will just end up with a different non-sequential data arrangement to the one you started with, so there's no point in doing it.

keithfre · February 07, 2017, 08:18:07 PM

Quote from: Maurits71 on February 07, 2017, 07:30:19 PM
Heho, question for all you ssd people, according to norton utilities defragmenting a ssd drive will reduce lifespan ?, is this true ? And if so how to keep in ssd in shape

According to
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2047513/fragging-wonderful-the-truth-about-defragging-your-ssd.html
all you need to do is ensure that TRIM is enabled under Windows 7 and later. If you're running XP, as I do, you just have to 'leave well alone'.

My SSD is so fast compared with the previous hard disk (and the hybrid drive in my other computer) that I've never noticed a speed problem.

If you want to risk it, Defraggler claims to support SSD.

If the drive is badly fragmented, I guess the safest way would be to copy it to an external drive, format it and then copy it back again. I'd only do that with a data drive, though, not a system drive.

davidinyork · February 07, 2017, 08:29:35 PM

Quote from: keithfre on February 07, 2017, 08:18:07 PM
If you want to risk it, Defraggler claims to support SSD.

If the drive is badly fragmented, I guess the safest way would be to copy it to an external drive, format it and then copy it back again. I'd only do that with a data drive, though, not a system drive.

But it won't make any positive difference even if you do! SSDs by their design tend to fragment the data, but because of the way they work this isn't a problem (it's actually an advantage as it avoids wearing out specific parts of the drive). Even if the computer things it's defragmented, it won't be. Them being fragmented won't impact on the speed because they use flash memory, not a spinning disc and a head on a motorised arm.

Rabs · February 07, 2017, 09:34:51 PM

Agree. There's no point defragging an SSD. Flash memory (what's in an ssd) is random access so it doesn't care if the bits of data you are asking for are adjacent on the chip or not. It makes no difference to the response time. Best case defragging is a waste of time, worst case you are using up the (finite) life of the ssd. That said, lifespan of ssds has been improving quite quickly over the last few years. If it's in a laptop you're probably pretty safe because the battery, screen or keyboard are likely to die before the ssd does.

Snowwolflair · February 07, 2017, 10:28:59 PM

The new generation of SSD's are also self healing so as the Flash memory degrades it gets dropped out of use before it fails. this seriously extends their life.

Ian Bowden · February 07, 2017, 10:57:22 PM

I agree fully that defrag is not necessary and with some drives harmful. As far as battery life is concerned I have noticed an increase in battery life, I do have a double size battery and when fully charged runs about 5 hours against just under 4 before on a Toshiba laptop.
I had a hybrid drive which didn't appear to speed the system up, all it does is keep the most used data or programmes in a fast access flash section of the drive. The more data the less chance it will be in the fast access area.
I use a crucial 1 tb SSD with 8 gb PC memory and it runs very fast.

Paddy · February 08, 2017, 02:30:06 PM

Personally, I cannot praise SSDs too highly. I fitted a Samsung 850 PRO 256GB SSD to my five year old ThinkPad X121 (2nd generation Intel i3) and the difference is amazing. Basically I got another year out of the machine and only recently upgraded it a new i7 ThinkPad at Christmas. The old ThinkPad has 8GB RAM and runs Windows 10 quite happily - it boots in about 10 seconds.

As for battery life - I would say I get an extra an hour with the SSD so probaly a 20-25% improvement.

Hope this helps.

Paddy