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Decreased battery life with new SSD/SSD optimization
I have an Inspiron 15 (N5030) laptop and had the factory hard drive (240 GB HDD) fail about a year ago, so I bought a 240 GB SSD to replace it hoping for faster processing, slower boot times, and less battery consumption. My computer is much faster now but my battery consumption actually increased. When before I had maybe 7-9 hours life, I now have 3-4 hours. I also went into setup on boot and noticed that the computer still thinks I have an HDD. Is that bad? But when I do Dell System Detect and Windows > right click Computer > Properties, it shows the new SDD. is there anything I can do to improve battery usage? Otherwise the computer is working great.
I did notice that the battery light flashes orange sometimes when plugged in and charging to full, so maybe my battery woes are just do to the battery.
A penny for your thoughts, anyone? I appreciate the help. I know relatively little about computers.
Hardware: Pentium Dual-Core T4500 @ 2.3o GHz, 3.0 GB RAM (DDR3 I believe), Sandisk Extreme 240 GB SSD,
Running: 64-bit Windows 7
osprey4
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November 17th, 2013 15:00
Hi Devomed,
The flashing orange indicates your battery is starting to fail and needs to be replaced soon.
devomed
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November 19th, 2013 17:00
Thanks, I will do that. I did notice a decreased battery life though before the battery light started flashing. Is there any optimization changes that need to be made with an SSD to increase efficiency or ensure that the computer functions normally? Thanks.
osprey4
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November 20th, 2013 04:00
No, you should not need to do anything special since the SSD by nature uses less power.
osprey4
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December 25th, 2013 16:00
Merry Christmas!
Yes, the SSD is plug-and-play. Let me ask you a question. When you installed the SSD, did you install the operating system or did you clone your existing drive?
devomed
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December 25th, 2013 16:00
Got a new battery for Christmas. Battery life is still decreased as compared to prior to switching to SSD instead of HDD. Any configurations that I should make or should have made when I switched? Is the switch to SSD just a plug-and-play situation? Thanks.
devomed
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December 25th, 2013 16:00
I'm not sure it's been so long. I believe I backed-up to an external, replaced the SSD, installed Windows and then restored from the Windows backup.
osprey4
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December 26th, 2013 02:00
Do you have the power settings on default for battery and plugged in?
devomed
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December 26th, 2013 15:00
Yea, it's at default for battery. I have it set to NEVER turn off or sleep when plugged-in. That's the only custom change to power options. Anything else to try? Thanks.
beingdzired
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December 29th, 2019 00:00
I too used 240GB SSD of D GREEN and before it, my battery life was 6-8 hours which is now reduced to 1 hour merely, the performance definitely increased but highly disappointed with the battery life. Also my laptop is heavier now.
I have Dell Inspiron 15 3542 with 4GB Ram and 1TB HDD with an additional 240GB SSD.