So do you have any tips for battery management to get the longest life possible?

Should the battery be allowed to discharge fully before recharging? Typically I have mine on battery power for an hour or so before I plug it back in to be charged for the next day. So I only drain it halfway before recharging. Does that matter?

NiCds once had memory problems. The solution was to completely discharge and then recharge that technology. And then the problem was eliminated with newer chemistries. But the myths live on.

Discharging a battery down simply reduces its life expectancy by one. It does nothing useful.

Leaving a battery discharged (any technology) decreases its life expectancy. This is especially true of sealed lead acid batteries in UPSes.

Better chargers can be left connected to batteries - and not shorten life expectancy. Some chargers left recharging a battery too long can be harmful. That would not be the case (a problem) for laptops. Still, it is better to power off a laptop if the battery does not need recharging due to extremely rare events - because that minor energy consumption has no advantages.

In jinx's case, the battery should be (and can easily be) replaced maybe for something between $40 and $120.

Operating a laptop on battery power for an hour means you will be replacing that battery soon. Laptops used that way means replacing batteries - probably a few times. Laptops are intended to be used from AC power (not batteries) most of the time.

If I have to be plugged into the wall, it might as well be a desktop.

you could get an extension cord?

Portable generator?

A desktop stays in one location. Does not contain a UPS.

A laptop is mobile - can be used in (and powered by) a car. Contains a UPS. Can be used temporarily without power during unexpected events.

Or you can say money is no object and just keep buying batteries.

Technology is still slowly addressing this problem. Part of the solution is sold by Intel with the trade name Atom. HP and others are/were testing better battery technologies (500 cycles) in customer machines (who do not even know they were using experimental batteries). Things will get better because the computer industry is so innovative. And because some American battery companies have decided to let innovators innovate. But currently, laptops are not intended to be used regularly only from batteries.

Laptops are mobile devices that even contain a UPS. Do you regularly operate a desktop only from its UPS battery? Then learn how quickly that UPS battery fails. A UPS for desktops is a cheapest design. Wears out its batteries even faster. Laptops also have a UPS – typically rated only for 300 discharge cycles.

Yes, I understand the technological difference between the two. But if I can't drag my laptop all over the house for a couple hours at a time, then plug it back in to recharge before dragging it all over the house again... then it's no good to me.

How do partial discharges fit into this rating? Because I've had this laptop (with the original battery) for almost 3 years now, and I've run it on battery power for at least 2-3 hours a day, every single day. That's about 1000 partial discharges.

SITUATION!

If mbpark and Pete Zicato continue to refuse to PM jinx their addresses for cookie shipment, her feelings will be hurt, and I won't get any overflow cookies. Please rectify this situation, men.

/SITUATION!

I'll take em :)

point is ....she aint gonna make em if'n mitch and dar don't give her a reason to start the batches, bitches!

I've told her how beautiful, smart and and and she is. Not much more I can do...
<sulks away dejectedly>

PM sent.

Will send PM later. It's been one of those days.

Best I can provide are ballpark numbers. For example, discharging to 25% may be equivalent to 10% of a life expectancy cycles. 50% discharge may be equivalent a 35% or 40% discharge cycle. And (of course) a 100% discharge would count as a 100% discharge cycle. Ballpark numbers that only demonstrate the trend.

Another factor is how fast a discharge occurs. Some batteries last longer if each discharge cycle is slower. Or if power drain does not involve high power demand spikes. If computer useage involves repeated sleeps or other 'low power' operations, then again, a battery discharge is not as destructive to life expectancy.

Specfic numbers are difficult to obtain.

Just saw this and thought I'd pass it along.
How to make your electronics batteries last longer

how much later?

Don't trust him, Mitch. He just wants to be able to reach you in the middle of the night, to come and fix his multitude of toys. :haha:

so....

the freaking thing is doing it again. i already have the backup, and it sees the c drive, so i'm running chkdsk c: /f again.

think i should replace the hard drive?

LJ,

Yes. I think you should.

You can copy the existing HD, so you can keep the recovery partition, to another HD if you get a USB to SATA adapter and run RawCopy from the Ultimate Boot CD to transfer the data over. This will take an hour or two, but it'll work. I've used it with a Sony VAIO before.

Get the HD model and order something from the same vendor that's either the same size or a little bigger, and 7200 RPM if possible. Sony and other vendors like Lenovo are infamous for locking machines to a single HD vendor.

As stated at the very beginning to avoid exponential aggravation: All manufacturers have these diagnostics. Your problem is exactly why better manufacturers provide these diagnostics. If not provided, then use another machine to burn a bootable CD (or USB stick) with the diagnostic from the disk drive manufacturer. Idea is to learn what is wrong long before trying to fix anything ... so that data is not lost and so that the problem is not made exponentially more complex.

Chkdsk is to fix something after damage results. Is not a diagnostic tool. Is not for finding defects before damage results. A diagnostic could have answered that long ago.

It occurs to me that both Seagate and Western Digital offer free diagnostics for download, that are better than manufacturer diagnostics.

Western Digital diagnostics told me that my main XP installation C: drive was dying. Last year.

I used it for another six months while I built the system up for Win 7. I still boot into XP from time to time. It still works.

Jim , If You send the dead drive to me Ill put a .44 mag hole or a few thru it for ya , And take Pics , Maybe even Video for you

That's about the only post in this thread I understand.

I wonder what will be in working order first; my jeep or my vaio. Any bets?

I'll say the Vaio...

mitch,
if you don't mind, this is what came in the Vaio. Unavailable at newegg. This one is, though. I don't see a 7200 RPM Toshiba drive. is that 3263 the upgrade to the 3252?

and which usb to sata adapter should I get?

thanx

Get the second drive, it's faster.

I have this USB to SATA adapter here. It's pretty fast:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-014-_-Product

cool. thanks!

Ok,

I got the new Drive, and the SATA/USB adapter. I have jinx's computer up and running with the old drive. I plugged the new drive into it with the adapter, and formatted it with one NTFS partition. Now how exactly do I copy the recovery partition onto the new drive?

LJ,

Run the boot CD again, and make sure you can see both hard drives (old and new!) by running compmgmt.msc and going to Disk Management.

Make sure your old HD is Disk 0, and your USB drive is Disk 1. You can tell because your Disk 0 will have 2 partitions on it, and Disk 1 will have 1.

Run RawCopy (under Disk Tools) and select Physical Drive 0 as your source, and Physical Drive 1 as your destination.

Click Copy, and then go off and do something for a couple of hours. It will take that long!

When you're done, you'll have a copy of your source drive you can put in the laptop and use.

right arm.

first attempt failed.

It was going along with a % complete number for a while, then i checked it and it said 'attempting data recovery' for a long time, and then it said 'copy cancelled.' The f&*^%ing cat had jumped up onto the corner of the keyboard a couple times, so I assumed he had done something..... so I reset it, and cat proofed it....and it started with the % complete thing again....last time i checked it said 8.24% complete....and now...it says 'attempting data recovery' again. I'm concerned that it's cancelled again....

god hates me.

nevermind.... its at 10.06% complete now.

sorry, god.

Ok, It took all night, but it was done when I woke up. It took me 10 minutes to swap the drive in, and it started right up. Thanks again, Mitch!

welcome!

Excellent!


now . . .. about those cookies . . .

i know, right?