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Help SD Card Draining Battery

Yesevil

Yesevil

Android Enthusiast
Hi all, I know there are probably numerous threads on this subject but I wondered if anyone can help.

Whenever I use my music player (poweramp) for hours afterwards SD Card drains my battery like crazy (all my music is on sd card). It starts high then gradually comes down.
Is this caused by a corrupt file and is my only option a reformat of the sd card?

Thanks in advance
 
I don't think that's the problem, are you doing anything else with the phone while listening to music ?

You might have a lot of still running apps in your background that haven't been closed. I would these two apps "Fast Reboot" and "Juice Defender" I use them personally and they have done wonders for my battery usage.
 
How do u know its the external sd thats draining battery mate?
And if you unmount it in Storage settings after listning to music, does the drop still happen?
Ive never heard of this before tbh
 
Wasn't doing anything else whilst listening to music as was playing music in the car.

I know it's the SD card draining battery as when I click on battery in settings SD card is at the top at about 47% which is the highest battery usage for the day, even though I was only playing music for like a 10 min drive
 
Yesevil said:
Wasn't doing anything else whilst listening to music as was playing music in the car.

I know it's the SD card draining battery as when I click on battery in settings SD card is at the top at about 47% which is the highest battery usage for the day, even though I was only playing music for like a 10 min drive
Click to expand...

SD cards don't drain or use power though. They are just an expansion of space for your phone.
 
I understand that the SD Card SHOULD'NT use power as its just a storage device but after using my music player the battery drains very quickly. When I look at battery in settings it will show something similar to the following:
SD Card 47%
Screen 23%
Firefox 10%
Media 6%
etc etc.

So, we know that the SD Card shouldnt be draining the battery but looking at the above it IS draining the battery. Just wondered if anyone knew why this is happening?
The percentage that the SD Card is using gradually drops over the next few hours, prob around 4-5% an hour. But whilst its running it can drain my battery at between 3-5% per 20 mins.
 
Yesevil said:
I understand that the SD Card SHOULD'NT use power as its just a storage device but after using my music player the battery drains very quickly. When I look at battery in settings it will show something similar to the following:
SD Card 47%
Screen 23%
Firefox 10%
Media 6%
etc etc.

So, we know that the SD Card shouldnt be draining the battery but looking at the above it IS draining the battery. Just wondered if anyone knew why this is happening?
The percentage that the SD Card is using gradually drops over the next few hours, prob around 4-5% an hour. But whilst its running it can drain my battery at between 3-5% per 20 mins.
Click to expand...

I haven't had the problem personally no, it seems really wonky to me. In all honesty your fix is probably going to be backing up all your music, pictures and files on to a cloud or what have you and do a factory reset of your phone. SD cards do not drain power under any circumstances, they are just an expansion of space on your phone. The culprit is probably some bad firmware or a botched install of something critical on your phone.

I bet if you back up all your stuff and then do a factory reset this will be fixed.
 
Could my problem be related to a rogue app draining the internal sd card which is sucking the juice from my battery?

Would betterbatterystats show me the culprit?
 
I'd like to know what happens if you unmount the SD card after you use it, like funkylogik suggested. I'd say charge your phone, check your battery usage, play your music, check the battery usage again, unmount the SD card, check later to see if you have the same issue, and, if so, check the battery usage again to see if it changed.
 
My friend it is not the sd card of course. As mentioned it is just a storage device.

If it were a barnyard fenced-off area for various goats, cattle, hogs and ducks, it'd be the hogs that I'd suspect. ;)

As mentioned, you've got an app/widget in there calling on one or more services that head to the hog trough and gobble away. :D

I'd stay away from task killers, as also mentioned in this thread, as they usually cause more issues by stopping things that rely on services which automatically try to run as soon as they are ceased, causing a loop of resource drain.

You can spend a bit of time investigating excessive battery drain by removing things one at a time, running your device, checking for drain, doing it again, etc. Just keep in mind that the battery meters in these things are not as reliable as we'd like them to be in the first place. Usually there's more juice left than reported, and most often a reboot will show that. ;)
 
May be try a different player to see if it makes any different. I use MX Player and don't use the stock one as it seems to stay ON in the background.
 
Im not sure weather Sd Card in stock battery stats is the internal memory (what the s3 sees as Sd Card or Sd Card0) or if its the external memory card (the s3 knows it as Ext Sd Card)
 
From this
1361962377218.jpg
The fact that it says "system" sounds like its the internal sd. Cand find anything in my stats relating to the external one
 
Hi Yesevil, my S3 also had the same problem as yours. Besides this, I also encounter "SD card not detected" error after upgrading to 4.1.2. I reformatted the card and it doesn't help at all. Anyway, I did a factory reset and changed the SanDisk SD card to a Samsung brand and it solved the problem.

What I did first was do a factory reset and monitor for a couple of days. The battery did improved slightly but not as good as before.

The SD card error still occurs once a while. I installed an app, "SD Card Monitor" from Google Play to monitor the card activities. From midnite to 8am, the SD card was 'mount' and 'unmount' for more than 50 times. I think this could be one of the reason it drains the battery.

I then changed the SD card to a Samsung brand. For the last 2 days I have not received any SD card error message and now my fully charged battery can last 17 hours with 36% remaining.
 
Thanks for all the responses. It seemed to be a short term error as I tried to replicate it again and failed. Have installed GSAM Battery Stats so I can keep a better eye on what eating my battery.
Will try a Samsung SD card if it occurs again as I'm currently using a Sandisk 32gb Class 10.
 
My sd card today also started draining my battery. It was right after I had it connected to my computer.
 
Mine has also done that in the past, after it is removed from pc both SD Card and Media drain my battery like crazy for around 4-5 hours then it goes back to normal
 
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