Does Microsd card drain your ereader battery power?

[ereaders]

Hello:

For those who uses ereader with Microsd card expansion:
Do you find your ereader is draining battery power due to the Microsd card?

[Apache]

Mine doesn't.
Apache

[DebbyS]

My Jetbook Lite would find it necessary to index the SC card I had in it, and that would take a lot of time. I finally just put a few books (epubs) into the small onboard memory and stoped using the card except for storage. All that time indexing may have been somewhat of a battery drain, but to me mostly it was a waste of time.

[Ken Maltby]

Not sure that I've seen that myself with my own jetBook Lites. I have over 7,000 files
on the SD Card and haven't noticed any indication of file indexing except when the card
is first inserted. A large document can take awhile to load or reflow when switching from
portrait to landscape, and each page turn will cause the indicator light to blink a few
times. I have recently come across a particular epub that was causing an annoying delay
on page turns, it was quite noticeable compared to a normal page turn. When I do run
across the odd ebook that acts up, it can usually be easily corrected by just running it
through calibre, using the "JetBook 5-inch" output profile.

Luck;
Ken

[afv011]

I have an SD card on my nook glow and I do not see any impact on battery life. Unless you have a faulty SD card, it is unlikely you'll see any effects, the SD card stays dormant most of the time.

[GeoffR]

I had a faulty 4GB micro SD card that caused the battery on my reader to drain very quickly, even when there were no books on the card. But with a new 16GB card if it does use any extra power compared to no card then it is not noticable.

[HarryT]

An SD card will certainly use SOME power - it needs power to operate, after all. But the power usage should be minimal compared with the power used by the rest of the device.

[JD Gumby]

Originally Posted by HarryT

An SD card will certainly use SOME power - it needs power to operate, after all. But the power usage should be minimal compared with the power used by the rest of the device.

...unless you're using a Kobo device, then the use of a microSD card will cause quite a bit of drain thanks to it now creating temporary thumbnails on the fly for books on the card instead of creating the thumbnails once (either at indexing or the first time a book comes up when browsing your library) and storing them on the device.

[Teknikal]

I've switched to using only the Micro SD on my T1, no noticeable impact on the battery at all.

[VaultBoy]

I've never noticed a difference in battery life. But, I can't imagine that it's anything substantial on my stuff.

[VicLavigne]

On my very first ereader (Sony PRS-505) the addition of a card seemed to slow performance down. But I don't think it drained the battery. I've owned two nooks and a newer Sony now and none of them suffered from performance or battery drain that I could tell.

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by JD Gumby

...unless you're using a Kobo device, then the use of a microSD card will cause quite a bit of drain thanks to it now creating temporary thumbnails on the fly for books on the card instead of creating the thumbnails once (either at indexing or the first time a book comes up when browsing your library) and storing them on the device.

Hmm... it looks like you own a couple of the Kobo devices, so you can certainly
provide information on their workings and your experience with them but where
did you get the idea that all other devices function as you describe? You didn't
mean to say that the "Micro-SD" cards themselves are causing the creation of
thumbnails, I hope.

"Harry T"; I assume that you were talking about the SD card using power
whenever it is accessed, not to perform its function of maintaining the
storage of data. They are able to retain their data for quite some time even
on the shelf, not connected to any power source.

The SD and MicroSD cards have no need for power from your device until it
is called on to present or store data. Now if your device has WiFi turned on
it will require power to listen, so it can draw power when you are not in the
process of using it yourself. The same with G3/4 and GPS functions, ect..

Luck;
Ken

[Kumabjorn]

Originally Posted by Teknikal

I've switched to using only the Micro SD on my T1, no noticeable impact on the battery at all.

This.
I don't notice any difference.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

"Harry T"; I assume that you were talking about the SD card using power
whenever it is accessed, not to perform its function of maintaining the
storage of data. They are able to retain their data for quite some time even
on the shelf, not connected to any power source.

No, that's not what I was referring to. I meant that whenever an SD card is inserted into your reader, it will draw a (very) small account of power from the device, even when not actually being accessed; this is called the "standby current". It's a tiny amount, but it's not zero. A typical standby current would be about 0.2mA, compared to perhaps 80-100mA when the card is being accessed.

[calvin-c]

Originally Posted by HarryT

No, that's not what I was referring to. I meant that whenever an SD card is inserted into your reader, it will draw a (very) small account of power from the device, even when not actually being accessed; this is called the "standby current". It's a tiny amount, but it's not zero. A typical standby current would be about 0.2mA, compared to perhaps 80-100mA when the card is being accessed.

That's up to the device. The card doesn't require any power when it's not being used-but some devices might send power to it anyway. Others don't. Like I said, it's up to the device.