SSD's use more battery power than HDD?

Tom's Hardware article: The SSD Power Consumption Hoax

What got me considering this was actually not about runtime duration performance, but battery drain during cold shutdown..

One HP notebook I have (Envy M6) is getting a bit old and I was noticing that when completely shut down, it would lose about 50% power in about 10 days. I recently upgraded the HDD to an SSD (Samsung Evo 850). And now? I have the laptop shut down completely for 5 days and when I go to start it up, it's dead as a door nail. I don't know if this is coincident with some kind of battery erosion, but it seems very odd. Unfortunately it's not easy to swap for testing, because it doesn't have a separate door for the storage device -- have to take off the entire bottom.

Has anyone else here been noticing some battery duration issues after switching to an SSD?

Why would an SSD consume any power if the computer is completely shutdown?

Could the Task Scheduler turns on a computer at scheduled time to perform some tasks when the device is completely shutdown?

Hi folks
Surely anybody with the slightest knowledge of engineering or even basic physics would question the statement.

How can a heavy - especially the bigger 3.5 inch HDD's- (compared to a small SSD) device that takes power to rotate even if the bearings are relatively low friction while working and for every data access whether read or write has to move a complex access mechanism to access the data as well as needing power to maintain magnetic fields etc use LESS power than a small frictionless device that only needs power to read / write very low powered NAND gates (or similar semi conductor stuff).

Try running an HDD from a phone battery !!! see how long the battery would last -- whereas you have things like micro sd cards in a phone which consume minimal supply.

If hardware mags / blogs are pushing out that sort of rubbish -- there's utterly no hope for man ever getting bto the Moon again -- never mind Mars !!

I hope those guys don't work on repairing Aircraft -- would hate to fly in a plane serviced by that load of "Engineers".

Note though as far as batteries in computers are concerned not all functions are powered off when the computer is shut down --for example the CMOS clock is still running (although should be negligible drain). Some more modern devices might also have a "locator" chip in it like a phone so the computer can be traced if "it goes missing". Finally there's always residual leakage -- small but not ignorable. When powered off there's still less than an infinite resistance between the terminals so there's always a small trickle current. Finally the batteries themselves have a finite shelf life -- even out of a computer they will gradually become discharged. They also have a finite number of charge / discharge cycles and need to be replaced once in a while - even if only ever used connected to the mains.


Cheers
jimbo

CountMike said:

That was quite old article (2008), possible that those results were accurate but technology has changed a lot since then, stacked memory chips use much less power nowadays. Transistors got smaller and more efficient. SSDs developed by leaps and bounds and from limited number of writes (which necessitated it's economical usage) to practically life time endurance.

Hi there
back in those days some of the HDD's were monsters (mechanically wise !!) and electric motors / bearings not as good as now - so I would suspect that even MORE power was used by older HDD's -- old SSD's did use inferior and more current consuming NAND / other semi conducting materials but still only a fraction of what those old clunky spinners consumed. !!

Added to which most of those HDD's were 5400 RPM - usually the slower the disk rotates then more current it consumes --todays Disks are generally 7200 rpm at consumer level and often at 10,000 rpm for commercial servers etc.

When you start a car just look at current needed to start the engine which drops off once the motor is running.

Cheers
jimbo