Picking up a new 7200rpm drive (any effect on battery life?)

[PrincipalValiant]

So this afternoon I've decided I'm going to purchase a 60gb travelstar 7200rpm drive, I'm getting it for about $188CDN. Does anyone have experience with faster drives decreasing battery power?

I'll post back later about performance when I have some time to install it and run some tests.

[jdhurst]

You should not notice any impact on battery life. My battery (getting old now) supported my 7200 rpm drive just fine. ... JD Hurst

[LtTPfan]

Your battery life will likely decrease somewhat depending on the drive you are replacing but should not be too noticeable, if at all. For instance, assume you are replacing a 20GB Travelstar 80GN 4200rpm drive:

Operation - power consumed--20GB 80GN / 60GB 7K60

Startup (max. peak)------------4.7W / 5.5W
Seek (average)------------------2.3W / 2.6W
Read (average)------------------2.0W / 2.5W
Write (average)------------------2.1W / 2.5W
Performance idle (average)---1.85W / 2.0W
Active idle (average)-----------0.85W / 1.3W
Low power idle (average)-----0.65W / 0.85W
Standby (average)-------------0.25W / 0.25W
Sleep (average)----------------0.1W / 0.1W

You'll notice that except for standby and sleep modes, the 7K60 consumes more power, roughly 15% depending on the operation, but keep in mind the hard drive power is only part of the equation, you have the LCD/backlight, CPU/fan, etc. I think you can sleep restfully.

[stangri]

I'd second that -- installed 2nd gen 80Gb hitachi 7200rpm instead of the 4200rpm which came with my T40 and I didn't notice any significant change in the battery life.