Data Doubler Battery Life?

randombar

Hi Lads,

Looking at this product here.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/DDMBS6X120/

Thinking I'll install lion on this and use the existing hd as a backup of some kind?

Just wondering if the old hd will eat up the battery if I'm not writing to it that often??

Thanks
Gary

J-blk

I just got one of these two weeks ago! The 1TB HDD kit though as I've had an 80GB Intel SSD for over a year now as my primary drive - loved the speed, but space was at a premium. So I removed my optical drive and added a data doubler with the 1TB Samsung HDD before upgrading to Lion.

I definitely noticed a hit on battery life but bear in mind that I have been using just the SSD for over a year now. Since you were using an HDD all this time, you would probably notice battery gains. What you can do is change your settings to spin down the hard drive after a minute (rather than the default 20) and then it won't affect anything when not in use really. I did this as the noise was getting to me as well, since the SSD is silent.

You need to do this in a terminal:

sudo pmset -a disksleep 1

Found from here:

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10346924-263.html

BTW, in my scenario, the SSD is fitted in the hard drive bay and the HDD is in the data doubler. Can't see why having them the other way around would make a difference though.

randombar

Nice one for that, I'm going to try and keep all my "daily" files on the SSD and old files on the HDD so hopefully it'll stay asleep for the majority of the time.

Ya why was I thinking I would have to leave the HDD in the same location Getting a new battery as well as the kit so hopefully I'll see a dramatic improvement from the half an hour I'm getting at the moment >:(

J-blk

Half an hour? Ouch! I'm still seeing around 3 hours or more from a 2008 13" Unibody (was higher though with just the SSD). The data doubler is a great idea, really good way to breathe new life into an older Mac.

BTW, third party SSDs don't get TRIM support even in Lion - you can add it though with this (works perfectly for me in Lion with the Intel SSD even though it's designed for Snow Leopard):

http://www.groths.org/?p=308

randombar

Ya the battery is rightly @!#$@# it's a new enough MBP 5,1 so should be much better!!

Heard that about the trim all right, really surprised it didn't come with Lion, thought that OS was being designed with SSD in mind!

J-blk

GaryCocs wrote: »

Heard that about the trim all right, really surprised it didn't come with Lion, thought that OS was being designed with SSD in mind!

Only if you get your Mac with an Apple-fitted SSD . Still easy to enable with that patcher tool. Best of luck with the upgrade, well worth it.

silvine

i bought this http://www.newmodeus.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=306

I used it to replace my optical drive in my iMac. It accepted a 60GB SSD which I bought off Memoryc.ie

It was relatively easy to do and there's a useful guide here: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=842548.

I did a fresh install of Lion on it and now my machine feels brand new.