Low power laptop HDDs.

[BoomAM]

Hi.
Im looking at getting a second HDD for my laptop (put it in the HDD bay adaptor thats available for Thinkpads).

Can anyone recommend some laptop HDDs. 60Gb & above, cheap as possible, and that use as little power as possible?

Thanks in advance all.

 

[Silver_&_Gold]

I did the same thing the other week on my IBM lappy.
But decided to get a better 2.5" HD for the system and move the slower one into the HD bay for pure Storage.

The one I opted for in the end was:

Seagate 80Gb Momentus 7200.1 ST980825A

Details 7200rpm
10.5ms access
8mb cache
-539mbit/sec raw
45.8mbyte/sec sustained
9.5mm high

5 Year Warranty

I paid £86 inc VAT

 

[BoomAM]

Tell me, the HDD bay, is it for SATA or IDE drives.

Im looking at the price on OCUK, and for the same price as the 80Gb you recommended, i could get a 100Gb/5400RPM drive?

Bottom one: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Samsung_Notebook.html

Although the one second from bottom, At £60 for 80Gb/5400RPM is tempting tbh.

 

[SiriusB]

If you want the lowest power consumption possible then you should go for a 5400RPM drive. However unless it's an older laptop I doubt the difference between 5400 and 7200RPM will make a big difference.

SiriusB

 

[BoomAM]

The age of the laptop is irrelevent in regards to power consumption. Its entirely down to the drive.

 

[Alex_L]

i'd be interested in this, as iirc you have a thinkpad z60m which is the same as me, and i need another hard drive.

looking around the lenovo site, the drive bay adaptor for the z60 takes sata drives, of which i've not found many 2.5 inch ones.

 

[SiriusB]

The age of the laptop is irrelevent in regards to power consumption. Its entirely down to the drive.

I meant in regards to the efficiency and capacity of the battery. My old laptop would die in no amount of time whereas my much newer current laptop can last around 4 hours.

The difference between 5400RPM and 7200RPM would probably make no real impact on battery life.

SiriusB

 

[BoomAM]

I meant in regards to the efficiency and capacity of the battery. My old laptop would die in no amount of time whereas my much newer current laptop can last around 4 hours.

What laptops have you been using?
Short of my old iBook, ive never seen a recent laptop do more than 2.5 hours. Even thats a push!
Ive heard of laptops with multiple high capacity batteries doing 4-6 hours, but no normal ones doing that amount of time whilst doing something meaningful on it. Most 'tests' that claim that amount of time is when the laptop has sound off, no devices connected, Wifi off, BT off, brightness to minimum and having the computer doing absolutely nothing, aka Idling.

i'd be interested in this, as iirc you have a thinkpad z60m which is the same as me, and i need another hard drive.

looking around the lenovo site, the drive bay adaptor for the z60 takes sata drives, of which i've not found many 2.5 inch ones.

How is it that everyone remembers i have a Z60M? lol. This is two threads now where people have 'IIRC'ed' me having one. lol.
Ive seen a few SATA 2.5" drives around, but not on OCUK.

 

[SiriusB]

I use a program called Notebook Hardware Control to maximise the battery life on my Toshiba. It dynamically clocks your CPU and voltages depending on what you are doing. So for basic browsing or idling it brings my 1.6GHz Centrino down to 600MHz.... if something more demanding starts running it brings up the clock speed to whats required.

Great piece of software and uses little resources. My Toshiba is rated at 3 hours, and realistically lasts 2 hours. However with NHC I can extend idle time to 4 hours and because it brings the voltage/clock speed down as soon as the CPU isn't needed - more time is saved.

Tis deffo worth a look

SiriusB

 

[BoomAM]

Theres no need for software like that. As it wont be actually doing anything!
Laptops throttle anyway. My laptop sits at 800mhz most of the time.
Im confident that my laptop going, when it throttles, will do 4 hours idle.
But whats the point if you cant do anything meaningful?

Plus, i wouldnt be able to use that software anyway. Im running Linux.