topic Re: Battery Life Issue - Hard Drive Spinning in PCs & Accessories

Battery Life Issue - Hard Drive Spinning

Nutty_Mike — Sun, 10 Apr 2005 15:37:13 GMT

As regards to the hard drive continuing to spin, even when the vaio has been turned off, has anyone thought of removing the battery? This would solve the problem by stopping the disk from spinning round, and preventing the battery life from being drained.

I was just wandering whether anyone else had thought of this, and whether there could be any repercussions if I were to remove the battery.

And to combat the problem of all of your settings being lost, would it be possible to keep the Vaio within its cradle, whilst the battery is kept separate?

Please share your thoughts on this, as I'm sure many would be interested in a cure for depleted battery life

Re: Battery Life Issue - Hard Drive Spinning

DiabloVaio — Sun, 10 Apr 2005 21:44:23 GMT

That's a bit impractical to remove the battery everytime and replace it again!
A better idea is that if we could disable the time and date feature from the options. But we need a firmware upgrade for that.

Re: Battery Life Issue - Hard Drive Spinning

@4967457401015621 — Sun, 10 Apr 2005 21:54:29 GMT

has anyone tried just leaving the time and date unset? i just wonder if that might stop the clock running.. might be worth a go

Re: Battery Life Issue - Hard Drive Spinning

Nutty_Mike — Mon, 11 Apr 2005 16:43:39 GMT

That's a bit impractical to remove the battery everytime and replace it again!

Yes, i realise that it would be impractical, but it wouldn't take to long to do , yes it is fiddly the first time you take off the battery cover, but it does get easier as time passes.

As regards to

has anyone tried just leaving the time and date unset? i just wonder if that might stop the clock running.. might be worth a go

the hard disk is kept spinning so that the vaio can start up quickly apparently so I'm not sure if that would have any effect unfortunatly......

Re: Battery Life Issue - Hard Drive Spinning

@4967457401015621 — Mon, 11 Apr 2005 17:18:05 GMT

why do you think the hard drive spins continually? the hard drive will only spin once every few minutes, what you can hear is probably a transistor. Just thinking off the top of my head though, if you can constantly hear a transistor, there may be a grounding problem instead, which would mean the battery was constantly discharging and would explain the drain.
Just had a listen: I'm sure it's not the hard disk, could be a transistor, but sounds slightly wrong.. i'll have a think

Re: Battery Life Issue - Hard Drive Spinning

DiabloVaio — Mon, 11 Apr 2005 19:05:39 GMT

Yeah you may be right!
Maybe we are all the victims of a stupid engineering mistake!
I really don't like to have battery drain useless transistors in my gadgets!
I'm serious!

Re: Battery Life Issue - Hard Drive Spinning

@4967457401015621 — Mon, 11 Apr 2005 19:45:48 GMT

just had another listen.. i was being stupid, i'm sure it's a capacitor. the thing is, once it's charged it should remain charged, not be discharging unless it's discharging to something (presumably the timing circuit). however, by the amount of noise it's making it's a relatively high power cap, which is odd. sony's response that the battery drain is due to timekeeping is a pile of sh1t - my watch battery is about 1/50th of the size of that in the VP and can run a watch, light and sounder for years. i'm beginning to think that they've made a mistake, which leads to a capacitor or similar being grounded and so constantly charging/discharging (the noise you hear), flattening the battery. the ipod (much as i hate to compare the vp to it) has a clock and instant on (quicker than the VP) yet still doesn't suffer the discharge problem to the same extent (i leave my 5gb upstairs and just play to my drums with it, and one charge will be enugh for about 10 hours practise in a week) - i've only had to reset the time on that once.

Re: Battery Life Issue - Hard Drive Spinning

MadarbWoT — Mon, 11 Apr 2005 20:10:26 GMT

bentate,you seem to know much of these electronic terms and all.
could it be that you send an email to sony follow by users signatures or anything explaining the problem as you figure it and letting them know that their "big secret" is exposed?

there has to be somthing that can be done for this...
and personally i dont think that opening the vp and removing/replacing or whatever would be an alternative!

as for the battery removal proposal;it cannot be done as you have to fully drain the battery before removing it[said in the manual and i guess it is so with common logic]

Re: Battery Life Issue - Hard Drive Spinning

@4967457401015621 — Mon, 11 Apr 2005 20:28:54 GMT

i've got a fair clue as to what's happening with electronic stuff, so i might send sony an email and see how they respond when i point out that the battery is too big to be drained by pure timekeeping/storing setting. depending on how they respond, i'd then write another email with a more detailed response, and add signatures from other users. this could be a lengthy process, as last time I emailed sony it took 3 or 4 weeks to get a response. what would be useful though would be the original email where sony blamed the battery life on the timekeeping element, and stats on how long people have to leav the battery for it to be flat (rather than just a day or two)

Re: Battery Life Issue - Hard Drive Spinning

MadarbWoT — Tue, 12 Apr 2005 11:55:32 GMT

well if theres anything that you need from us forum users please do ask!

i would support any effort of solving this problem.
i actually find your idea very organised and probably it will have an effect on them.

go get them:smileywink:

Re: Battery Life Issue - Hard Drive Spinning

ronnieboot — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 09:20:30 GMT

This battery life issue seems to be a real problem and Sony will just not respond to it. If such a large organisation can be allowed to produce such a poor product (unfit for purpose) and get away with it, then they do not deserve such a loyal customer base. I for one will not be purchasing Sony again and I will tell everyone how badly they treat us all.

In the UK, we have the 'Sale of goods act' to fall back on if we wish, but the cost would be greater than than the cost of the product.
We must put it all down to experience I guess!
Ron

Re: Battery Life Issue - Hard Drive Spinning

samartin — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 09:47:10 GMT

Have to agree with Ronnie in some respects...

I am p!ssed that I went down the Sony route, but I only had the option due to fact I needed the ability to store photo's from my trip at the beginning of the year...

The HD spinning isn't a big thing with me, I use my VP everyday without fail so battery life is generally pretty good for me, I can get pretty much what they state from my VAIO as I can work with music on BUT !!! All it takes is Sony to go back to roots and write ground up some decent software for transferring back & forth...

If they ever do get a decent SS working then I'll be a happy man, but I will not purchase Sony again, I have never been a big fan of Sony but I needed it at the time...

Re: Battery Life Issue - Hard Drive Spinning

@4967457401015621 — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 16:43:07 GMT

I think the problem may be a little worse - earlier today I had my finger touching the base plate of my amp (which is grounded) when it touched the metal battery cover of the VP, and I got an electric shock. Nothing big, but if there is a connection somewhere that allows the metal plate to become live then there could be a potential source of battery drain. I'm going to ring Sony about it, as it's clearly unacceptable to get electric shocks from the VP, but I was wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience? I might check my brother's VP to see if his does the same, otherwise it could just be a defect in mine. It's not the amp, as I checked with the amp off (it needs to be plugged in to be grounded but I'm confident that it's not the amp). I wouldn't advise actively checking for an electric shock unless you know what you're doing but has anyone else experienced one?

Re: Battery Life Issue - Hard Drive Spinning

MadarbWoT — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 20:02:09 GMT

nothing like that has happened to me bentate but i am sure that it must a fault in something having to do with the battery...
i know sony was untrue about battery life but getting electric shocks from it would be far out for sony to have missed it!
it is an international company after all!

but you can point a finger at them with this evidence[and many others actually!]

Re: Battery Life Issue - Hard Drive Spinning

@4967457401015621 — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 22:00:40 GMT

I rang them this afternoon and, suprise suprise, they tried to blame it on my amp instead (which was off, grounded and fused). I pointed out to them that even if the casing of the amp was live then the VP still should not have been grounding it, and I think the person I was talking to just didn't know enough about it so promised to pass it on to their engineers to investigate and said they'd be in touch again. I also asked about the symbol that seems to appear the charging is faulty (battery symbol with a red circle with a white cross in it) and they said they'd discover what that meant as well. Fingers crossed they'll do something about it, I'm not going to let Sony electrocute me

Oh and Sony could have missed it, as it's a low voltage (essentially not dangerous) so the human body has too much resistance to let it flow to ground normally (so you don't feel anything) but in my case it was only an inch or so of my finger it had to flow along. I'll get out a meter at some point and test exactly what voltage is being released, I'd estimate somewhere between 4 and 6V. Anyway..

Re: Battery Life Issue - Hard Drive Spinning

MadarbWoT — Fri, 15 Apr 2005 15:07:59 GMT

well they did both things they were expected to do:
deny it and not know any details about it:smileytongue:

keep us informed on the case...