Thinkpads Forum

I recently found my old ipod mini from who knows how long ago. Since a 4gb, gray-scale media player is pretty useless I ripped the microdrive out intending to use it as extra sstorage in my x31.

Does anyone know how much this will reduce my battery life, if any? I want to use it to save my outlook .pst to so it will constantly be in the x31.

Power consumption of a Hitachi Microdrive is 13/15mA in standby, and 230/280mA in operation. (3.3V/5V)

So let's say that if you use it really often, it would at most use up about 1W of power on its own. This is not including any circuitry on the X31's system board to interface with the CF slot, though... the best way for you to see how it goes is to install the microdrive into the CF slot, and set the ThinkVantage Battery Meter to show wattage while on battery (it's a sub-menu option when you click on the green battery in the taskbar)

Hitachi datasheet for a microdrive is here: data sheet

If the carcass of that iPod Mini still works and you want to give it a new home, give me a PM