The Smith Posted July 29, 2008 Posted July 29, 2008 Hi everyone, I need to find a way to extend the poor battery life of my MSI Wind. In it, there is a WD Scorpio 5400rpm 80Gb. I got XP installed on it. Even if this HDD is known for low-power comsumption, it still takes some. So I got a few ideas: 1st: If I disable the pagefile, would it make the HDD run less often, and hence wasting less power ? 2nd: This computer will be used to take notes at college. So if I boot from a SD card that contains: 1.OS: nLite/Linux, 2.Office: Microsoft/Open, 3.My notes files, I would have all what I need to take notes during class. Thus I could disable the HDD. Will doing this take less power than the HDD ? If yes, should I use a linux distro or Windows again ? 4th: Don't tell me to install a SSD. I don't want to spend that much money on a storage device. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterStoba Posted July 29, 2008 Posted July 29, 2008 EEE PCs come with SSDs, best thing about them I'd do the SD route if possible, and linux i'd assume would be better as it's less demanding overall. You could always mod a second battery in or sew on some solar panels Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
hardnrg Posted July 29, 2008 Posted July 29, 2008 Sounds to me like 6-cell EeePC with SSD would be a good solution Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Smith Posted July 30, 2008 Posted July 30, 2008 I'd do the SD route if possible, and linux i'd assume would be better as it's less demanding overall. Ok but in Linux, I guess there is a device manager like in Windows, in order to disable the HDD ??? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
hardnrg Posted July 30, 2008 Posted July 30, 2008 it's probably as easy as opening up Terminal and typing something like: sudo /etc/init.d/hardware/hda1/power/power.profile -scXFy 1 15 Lolux Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fanatic Posted July 30, 2008 Posted July 30, 2008 I say sit by an outlet and plug it in....lol Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Smith Posted July 30, 2008 Posted July 30, 2008 (edited) it's probably as easy as opening up Terminal and typing something like: sudo /etc/init.d/hardware/hda1/power/power.profile -scXFy 1 15 Lolux Yeah I'm not very friendly in Linux yet... But isn't there some distros that are entirely graphical, like Windows ? Also I just saw in the BIOS that "Memory card" is not in the boot choices... I got: HDD, USB HDD, USB CD/DVD, USB Floppy, Network device. Maybe the card reader is plugged in USB inside ? So maybe it could work... I'll try. I'll put Memtest86+ on my SDcard and I'll see if i can boot from there. Just saw that it appears when the card is in... Edited July 30, 2008 by The Smith Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
p8baller07 Posted July 30, 2008 Posted July 30, 2008 They say the SSD hard drives draw more power than standard hard drives contrary to what you might think. This is because like your processor, or any electrical component it always draws a certain ammount of watts underload...Regardless of what the load is. You could be loading the device only 30% and it would draw just as much power as it would 100% - However mechanical hard drives don't work this way. Source Source Also as far as Linux Distro's go I recommend Ubuntu - you likely wont have to install any drivers and it manages battery life very well on my laptop. As far as disabling hard drives....I have no idea- but you could probably do it from the Bios. You're realling going to have to play with Ubuntu on a daily basis to get a feel for it, yes its entire graphical - but you WILL be using the CLI at some point. Its just a matter of time. I also recommend installing VMware Server on your Ubuntu box and running an XP VM incase you need windows and don't want to restart or dual boot. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Smith Posted July 30, 2008 Posted July 30, 2008 (edited) They say the SSD hard drives draw more power than standard hard drives contrary to what you might think. This is because like your processor, or any electrical component it always draws a certain ammount of watts underload...Regardless of what the load is. You could be loading the device only 30% and it would draw just as much power as it would 100% - However mechanical hard drives don't work this way. Source Source Also as far as Linux Distro's go I recommend Ubuntu - you likely wont have to install any drivers and it manages battery life very well on my laptop. As far as disabling hard drives....I have no idea- but you could probably do it from the Bios. You're realling going to have to play with Ubuntu on a daily basis to get a feel for it, yes its entire graphical - but you WILL be using the CLI at some point. Its just a matter of time. I also recommend installing VMware Server on your Ubuntu box and running an XP VM incase you need windows and don't want to restart or dual boot. Yeah I already read the article on Tom's Hardware. But what about the SDcard ? This one I'm pretty sure will use less power than the HDD. And I'm thinking something now: do I really need to disable the HDD in order to save power ? Because since I won't be running the OS and whatever program from it, it won't spin, doesn't it ? ...Well it comes to say: Does mechanical HDDs use power when idling ? As for Ubuntu I already tried it on another laptop in dual boot. I'll go for it. Edit: I confirm that I can't disable the HDD from the BIOS. Another thing I would have liked too is that we could have changed the CPU voltage... I would have underclocked it even more than 800Mhz and given it less than 1V it gets now. I made some research and I know we can alter the FSB with setFSB, but not the voltage... Edited July 30, 2008 by The Smith Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
exeter_acres Posted July 30, 2008 Posted July 30, 2008 I've got it.... it is the latest and greatest... well...it is what we did when I was in school... I never ran out of power.... We used pencil and paper! Really it is Crazy... but we did! as to the OP.... is a bigger battery an option?? and a serious question for all of you.. if everyone is taking notes on laptops (yes, I knew you whipper snappers did this) isn't it really noisy in class rooms?? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Smith Posted July 31, 2008 Posted July 31, 2008 is a bigger battery an option?? Yes, the 6-cells will be available probably in september, but for the time I won't have it I absolutely need to find a way of using less power. Now I can do 2h20 under normal use. If I can get 10-15 min more, I will be able to get three classes out of it. So, does a mechanical HDD uses power when idling ? And will a SDcard will use less power than a HDD ? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zertz Posted August 1, 2008 Posted August 1, 2008 (edited) So, does a mechanical HDD uses power when idling ? And will a SDcard will use less power than a HDD ? Straight from WD website: Power Dissipation Read/Write 2.50 Watts Idle 0.85 Watts Standby 0.23 Watts Sleep 0.19 Watts So, it wouldn't make a huge difference, if any, by using an SD card and the card would be much slower Try getting memory usage down, on XP you can do much better than 300MB, turn off hardware you're not using (WiFi, Bluetooth, etc when you don't need them) And yeah, NCIX is awesome, always get my stuff a business day or two after I order Edited August 1, 2008 by Zertz Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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