A MYSTERY: SD and Power drain?

[Nightwing]

I have a mystery... This Mystery may solve some others that are having battery problems.

Could some SD card be eating more power or draining the batteries when the reader is off?

Tonight Instead of having 1 or two bars must have had zero! Because it popped up the int screen! decided ok will pull the SD memory. Did had enough energy to get to the main menu with basically zero bars.

Had enough power to run but plug a card in and zero. Littery lock up the system. Also have been busy and not using the reader much but the indicator has really dropped over the last few weeks. With no more than 300 to 800 pages.

So this is the Poser: Could some SD card draw a lot of power? In effect draining the units. Maybe even constantly? If it around 900MA battery would make really no sense but I have seen stranger things with circuit in the past. The card I was using is a 256MB Panasonic circa 2004. May breake out some test gear and see if the memory is depowered when off. If not....

[HarryT]

If it's any help to you, I have all my Reader content on an SD card, haven't charged my Reader or connected it to a PC for at least three weeks, and my battery meter is still showing 3 bars. That's with a "no-name" cheap 2GB SD card.

[yvanleterrible]

I don't have a reader yet but could it be the music reader? It seems to be the only actual power drain on that particular device. Up to date many people complained of the music player staying on when not used, being unintuitively difficult to turn off. An iPod shuts itself off when the headphones are unplugged for more than a certain time, do Sony music players do the same? Why is there no similar feature on the reader?

An SD only takes power when accessed. Is there a feedback loop on your archiving system? Or is that particular card defective. Have you noticed it creating havock on an other device?

[Nightwing]

Use to use the 256 on my Dell pda with no problems.

Sleep current should be abut 5.7ma. Normal read/write should be around 47.7 to 56.7 ma.

Wondering if old card or some cards take more power.

Checked .. With no volumn symbol its off.

Frys have a 1gb patriort for 15. Will grab it and give that a whrill.

Thinking more the card is either old or defective pulling more current. Remember early on use a 1GB card then switch over to the 256MB. Thats when I think I started to notist the power drain but not sure.

ADDED: When I get the new card will format on the reader and dump the same contense over to it.

[mlbspike]

Put a 1 gb memory stick in mine. Had been amazed at the battery life prior to that. Noticed that seemed to be getting near 1500 pages per charge, afterwards. Left the reader (fully charged) on the shelf while I read some dead-tree books, unavailable for the reader. When I turned it on a week later, it was down to 0 bars. Charged it overnight, and decided to try the same thing again, as a test. 5 days, and its down to 2 bars ... and may well hit 0 again after the 7 day period. I've proven to myself there is a problem, so I think I'll pass on the entire 7 day test, pull the stick, recharge tonight, and start another test ... don't like not using my reader for long periods of time, but fortunately I have a fair backlog of books to catch up on ... and I'm in the midst of crunch at work, so ... as good a time as any. I'll post again later, on the results of this latest test. Love the reader, btw ... don't like the idea of shipping it off ... even for repair/replacement.

[Nightwing]

Hum.... Do we need a poll to see if...

1) A defect in some reader if you have SD and or Memory Sticks media in the unit.
2) A design defect if you have SD and or Memory Stick media in the unit.
3) Some SD or Memory stick media draw more power than others?

I did like you. Ran for a while without SD then used SD memory. I think I used some PDI or Transcend memory.

I guess if anyone is getting what they feel is low battery life and they use add on media. Is to pull it when not in use.

This time it was the Panny memory. Due to needing the GB size ones for the LX1 camera.

[slayda]

I have used a 512MB Memory Stick Pro that i already had. All of my purchased books go on the stick. I have not noticed any unusual power drain. Since my first charge, I have always had at least 3 bars and have only purposely charged it 2 or 3 times. Otherwise it does charge some whenever I load books with the connect software.

I wonder if the ones having problems are loading books directly to their memory cards without using the connect SW.

[Nightwing]

I think the last batch I did was through a card reader. But before that the first went a couple of weeks before dropping a bar from. And that was using the reader to put stuff on the card.

[scotty1024]

According to page 8 of this manual: http://mipsa.p.lodz.pl/download/Baza...rs-mmcv1.0.pdf only Sandisk MMC cards automatically go to sleep 5ms after the last command was issued to the card.

There is a command 15 that places the card into an "inactive" state which puts the card into a deep power save mode, but the Sony Reader would need to issue this command to the card.

So it would seem that some cards can be more power saving than others if the Sony doesn't command the cards into the inactive state.

[Nightwing]

Good find!

Actualy they are not the only one.

Dane-Elec SD cards do the same thing.

I guess if you are not reading then remove the card.

Wonder if its a bug not to put it to sleep.

Ive got a Transcend card along with when I get it a 1gb card from frys to run some test on.

[Nightwing]

TRANSCEND 1GB 80X LIST Low power consumption SLC NAND Flash Chips

Also looking at Patriot they say their miniSD is low power consumption.

[NatCh]

I don't know if it qualifies as a bug, but it's definitely an oversight, at the very least.

[Nightwing]

A bit unknown.

Looking now for a low power memory.

[RWood]

I use the 2GB SanDisk SD card and have never had a problem with battery drain. I just got back from a five day trip. I threw the USB adapter in the briefcase in case I needed a refresh charge along the way from the laptop. (Let's keep the number of transformers down when traveling.) Anyway, I finished two books (~16 hours total) and I still had 2 bars showing. I did not have any music loaded.

[HarryT]

Most reports of total power drain we've have here seem to be due to people inadvertently leaving the MP3 player playing. Might that perhaps be the cause here, I wonder?

To be honest, unless you need to load content via the memory card (eg if you're a non-PC user) there seems little point in using one. I've got dozens and dozens of books on my card and still only used about 50MB - they would easily fit into internal memory. Perhaps it might be best to stick with loading to internal memory rather than using a card?