Laptop Hard drive and Battery Life - Lenovo y480

[LesterC]

Does hard drive capacity affect battery life?

I just purchased a Lenovo y480 laptop and was caught between 2 options with all other specs being the same.

One had a 500GB @ 7200 RPM and one had a 1TB @ 5400 RPM.

I ended up buying the 500GB @ 7200RPM because I wanted to have slightly faster performance on my apps. I may install a SSD sometime in the future.

Anyways, what I ended up noticing was that the 500GB@7200RPM came with a 48WH battery while the 1TB@5400RPM came with a 62WH battery. With everything else being the same, will I get less battery life with my 48WH battery vs. the 62WH?

I called Lenovo and the rep said that I will get the same battery life, and the 7200 RPM will provide me with faster performance so stick with it. (the 500GB is also slightly cheaper). He wasn’t very convincing so what do you guys think?

Cheers!

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Well, spindle speed alone isn't the only factor in driver performance. So I'd double-check some benchmark sites (PCMark has a score database, sorted by drive.)

But that being said, 7200 rpm drives will, on the average, use ever so slightly more juice. Individual drives will vary and there will be some overlap.

A 62wh battery should provide a good bit more runtime than a 48wh one, even with a less power friendly drive. (We're only talking about a 1-2w difference between any two laptop drives. Many SSDs use more power than the average laptop HD.)

For the sake of comparison:

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2.5-hard-drive-charts-2008/Maximum-Power-Consumption,684.html

I'd get the 1TB model for two reasons:

1) More bigger battery.

2) y480 is a reasonably high end laptop, will probably be your primary machine? Want it to last a while? I see an SSD upgrade and an Optibay in your future. The 1TB will be more than fast enough for use as a storage drive in a SSD/HDD cooperative scenario.

 

[corkyg]

You should be able to get either battery with either HDD. If you want battery life, opt for the 9 cell.

 

[LesterC]

laptop is a prepackaged deal - it's on sale.

So apparently I can't choose...

 

[corkyg]

You can upgrade the battery later. It's good to have a spare anyway.