Power draw from microdrives

[vh_202]

Hi im trying to make decision between getting a microdrive or solid state memory for my x51v.
i have a few questions about microdrives. do they draw large amounts of power only when being accessed or is there always some current drawn even when idle?
Is there much of a difference between SD and CF solid state cards Price/transfer rate/ power draw etc?

If i say had a combo of a 2gb SD card and a 4gb Microdrive and i rarely used the microdrive would this have a large drain of power on my x51v?

cheers for the help
Vh

EDIT : oh yeah also between differnt sized Microdrives such as 4,6 or 8gb is there a difference in power draw say from an increase in platters etc?

[0gopogo]

Modern MicroDrives use power while they spin and especially while files are being written to them or deleted from them. Most audio and video players allow to pre-read and cache large chunks of data which allows the drives to spin down and not consume extra power. So music and video playback from MicroDrives is practical.

OTOH, frequent access, whether reading or writing/deleting, will drain the battery much faster. Therefore files and applications requiring frequent access are best stored on SD card, as you suspected. The 6GB and 8GB MicroDrives from Hitachi and Seagate will be fine when used in such a combo. I'd stay away from the 2GB, 2.2GB, 5GB MicroDrives. Also, the 2GB and 4GB Hitachi MicroDrives use more power than the more recent 3GB and 6GB models. To get a more complete picture search the forum.

As for the price, the cheapest 8GB CF card (Transcend) costs over twice as much as the Seagate 8GB MicroDrive. The price difference between CF and SD cards has shrunken dramatically. Nowadays a SD card can often be had cheaper than a SD card. 120x to 150x rated SD cards go for < $100 to >= $150. You may also have seen this post about SanDisk 4GB CF and 2GB SD cards for $129.99 and $69.99 at Amazon.com, after rebates. These are great prices.

Regarding transfer rates: if I may simplify, SD beats CF beats MD. The MD has really poor write rates in a card reader. It takes over twice as long to copy music from the PC to my 6GB Hitachi MD than it takes my Transcend 80x CF card. (And that Transcend card is rather slow.) Read performance is, however, surprisingly good, in fact very good for large files. Given that the best use of a MD in a PDA is to read large files (into a cache), performance in the Axim is not an issue.

[rx74me]

I say quite worrying about power draw.
I bought the 6 gig hitachi for 165 after rebate from newegg before Christmas. No matter what media you buy, it will drop in price.
I bought the cf microdrive because it will also work in my digital camera. I already have it full with music and video :P

[vh_202]

Modern MicroDrives use power while they spin and especially while files are being written to them or deleted from them. Most audio and video players allow to pre-read and cache large chunks of data which allows the drives to spin down and not consume extra power. So music and video playback from MicroDrives is practical.

You may also have seen this post about SanDisk 4GB CF and 2GB SD cards for $129.99 and $69.99 at Amazon.com, after rebates. These are great prices.

SO just to confirm. if there is nothing trying to access the MD then it will spin down and virtually consume no power? ie having it in there all the time doing nothing
I understand that there is going to be an increase in power usage due to it anyway but if the length of time my poor 1100mah battery lasts the better as i understand the x50v/x51v dont seem to last very long.

in regards to the amazon prices i had checked them out but im from australia so i dont think the rebates apply to me and neither does the free shipping oh well.

on the other hand if i end up using it for some gaming the quicker SD may be worth having.
Has anyone tried Quake 3 mobile/CE on their x51v?

[J_V]

I've had the 8Gb Seagate microdrive for a couple weeks now. If I'm not using it I haven't noticed an appreciable difference in battery life. Even when I am playing music off of it, the battery seems to hold up pretty well. Bluetooth and WiFi are much bigger pigs than the Microdrive imho. When it's not in use the power drain should only be to keep the 2Mb cache refreshed.

The other benefit of a microdrive over a flash card is that the number of writes before failure is going to be significantly higher with a microdrive.

[vh_202]

hmm ok so if i end up buying a medium sized SD card as an intermediary before i save up cash for something bigger is say a 50x SD card good enough to stream video. say divx encoded at around 1mbit?

[axzilla]

any newer card is faster reading than your axim is capable of and when you play a video or mp3 off the card you are reading it not writing to it if you want faster write speeds then get a faster card but there is a limit to how fast the axim can write also the only benefit you would get with a faster card is when you load files or data with a fast card reader

[axjax]

The other benefit of a microdrive over a flash card is that the number of writes before failure is going to be significantly higher with a microdrive.

Would you care to elaborate on the projected ratio of writes to failure for both the memory card as well as the microdrives?

I'm giving some thought to a SD-GPS with built-in memory (SD-502) and before I do _that_ and have the memory end of it fail in say, 2 years... I'd want to know if the useful life is more like 10 years before failure. In this particular instance you'd store your everyday maps in the SD memory section and the GPS would be "accessing" those files.

I've been using memory cards of one type or another in various cameras and pdas for several years and have never had one fail. But I realize that the microdrive, with it's moving parts, current draw, and other stuff... might fail a lot sooner than a solid state device.

[axzilla]

your pda will be long dead before you hit the write cycle limit for a flash card

[axzilla]

your pda will be long dead before you hit the write cycle limit for a flash card

[J_V]

Would you care to elaborate on the projected ratio of writes to failure for both the memory card as well as the microdrives?

I'm giving some thought to a SD-GPS with built-in memory (SD-502) and before I do _that_ and have the memory end of it fail in say, 2 years... I'd want to know if the useful life is more like 10 years before failure. In this particular instance you'd store your everyday maps in the SD memory section and the GPS would be "accessing" those files.

I've been using memory cards of one type or another in various cameras and pdas for several years and have never had one fail. But I realize that the microdrive, with it's moving parts, current draw, and other stuff... might fail a lot sooner than a solid state device.

Flash memory varies anywhere from 10,000 writes to 1,000,000 writes before failure, assuming no latent manufacturing defects. Practically speaking even the worst stuff should last 3+ years under heavy usage. If you aren't replacing data multiple times a day (RSS feeds, memory swapping, cache for heavily used programs) it should last until finding a device to use it in will be difficult.

[0gopogo]

SO just to confirm. if there is nothing trying to access the MD then it will spin down and virtually consume no power? ie having it in there all the time doing nothing
I understand that there is going to be an increase in power usage due to it anyway but if the length of time my poor 1100mah battery lasts the better as i understand the x50v/x51v dont seem to last very long.

in regards to the amazon prices i had checked them out but im from australia so i dont think the rebates apply to me and neither does the free shipping oh well.

on the other hand if i end up using it for some gaming the quicker SD may be worth having.
Has anyone tried Quake 3 mobile/CE on their x51v?

Yes. Regarding running games from the MD: demanding games access the drive often! In my experience the Hitachi 6GB reads really fast so performance would be no problem at all with this MD, but your batteries won't last as long when playing such games from this drive. The 8GB Seagate has 2MB cache which might help a good deal.

[Haesslich]

I wouldn't use the MD for game-playing or anything which requires constant disk access. Basically, anything that reads or writes often to media should be avoided, for power usage reasons as well as the fact that it's a disk drive... which means that fragmentation could eventually be a problem.

Use the SD for gaming, or anything that requires repeated access, as others have suggested.