Battery life- microdrives...

[plambham]

i know this question has been answered numurous times :bang:... i have read it long ago in the past. I've tried search and looking through the forums so now i'm just going to ask.

How does microdrives effect an axims battery life?? i have an x51v.

I'm sorry i did try to find this in another thread, but the 'search wouldn't let me

It will increase the power drain on your battery due to the microdrive having moving parts. Don't own one myself, but others on the forums don't seem to mind the drain in exchange for the increase in storage capacity.

If it's idle, you're okay - the CF slot drains power anyways, but unless the drive's in use (aka: motors are moving), you won't see a significant increase in drain, to judge by the experiences of most of the people who've had one installed. Any drain you do incur during drive-reading or writing can be minimized by having programs using a 'microdrive' mode in which they cache data in a RAM buffer, to avoid having to read from the drive as often.

Also, keep often-accessed or often-modified data on SD card or BIS - the microdrive, ideally, is a read-only drive as far as you're concerned, at least when using it in a PDA application, due to the power drain and the generally slower write times compared to SD or solid-state CF. That SHOULD help you keep your battery usage relatively low, which in turn will keep you watching movies or listening to music longer.