Ultrabay Secondary Battery discharge question

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Icee · #1 Post by **Icee** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 1:12 pm

Hello everyone!

I purchased an ultraslim battery for my T60P and I seem to be having an issue with it. It seems to discharge down to 0% overnight reguardless if the computer is in sleep mode or hibernated. The main battery doesnt seem to have this problem though. It will happily keep its charge when the laptop is off.

When I try to view the 2nd battery's details when it is completely discharged, the remaining percentage and remaining capacity stay at 0 even when plugged in with status at charging. If I do a cold boot, I will get the battery details back.

When fully charged and I go onto battery power, the main and secondary battery give me around 6.5 hours of power at full brightness and wifi on.

Is this something I should be concerned about? Or should I just remove the secondary battery before turning off the system overnight if I don't have an outlet to plug into?

Chris

rvacha · #2 Post by **rvacha** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 1:57 pm

Is the ultrabay battery really discharging, or is it a situation of the machine getting confused and giving you the wrong info? Can you unplug the main battery and run it for any length of time on the ultrabay battery, specially when it reports zero? Then, can you see charging details with the primary battery still left out? This would allow you determine if you have a software/firmware issue (fixable somehow) or a hardware problem. If its hardware I'd send it back for repair - but which end of the pony? It could be either the T60 itself or just the battery. It could also be a faulty/intermitent connector. Try pluging/unplugging the battery several times to clean the contacts.

Another thing you might try is to uninstall the "Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery"(s) in Device Manager. Make sure both are plugged in so you can uninstall both of them. Reboot machine with batteries installed and see shat happens.

Icee · #3 Post by **Icee** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 2:17 pm

I'll give that a shot tonight. I didn't think of testing the secondary battery by itself mainly because the charge cycle goes through from 0 to full perfectly. Now I'm wondering if the dang thing is overcharging the ultrabay batt.

I'll check that out and report back with the results.

#4 Post by **archer6** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 2:27 pm

Icee wrote:I'll give that a shot tonight. I didn't think of testing the secondary battery by itself mainly because the charge cycle goes through from 0 to full perfectly. Now I'm wondering if the dang thing is overcharging the ultrabay batt.

I'll check that out and report back with the results.

I'm running the ultrabay battery in my T60. Have'nt noticed a problem so far, however I have'nt checked it specifically after sitting in standby overnight. So I will do that and report back.

Cheers.... you're in good company here...

#5 Post by **archer6** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 9:41 pm

Icee wrote:When fully charged and I go onto battery power, the main and secondary battery give me around 6.5 hours of power at full brightness and wifi on.

Are you using the 6 cell or 9 cell main battery? Obviously this has nothing to do with the issue you are reporting, I was just curious about the size of your main battery as it relates to operating time along with the ultrabay battery.

#6 Post by **archer6** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 10:28 am

Icee wrote:I purchased an ultraslim battery for my T60P and I seem to be having an issue with it. It seems to discharge down to 0% overnight reguardless if the computer is in sleep mode or hibernated.

Tested mine last night and it's fine. No discharge overnight, while in standby mode.

I do not however seem to enjoy as much run time with the 6 cell / ultrabay battery combo as I would like. The duration of operating time on those 2 is around 5 hours. That's with wifi on, full brightness, and lots of apps, working as I would plugged in.

Anyone else out there using the same 6 / ultrabay battery combination? It would be great to see some reports of run times.

Icee · #7 Post by **Icee** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 11:18 am

I just tested mine in standby overnight. I did the test from a 100% charged main battery and a 90% secondary battery. No complete discharge of the secondary battery either.

I did howver find some interesting stuff about how the laptops draws power from the batteries. (At least interesting to me) When the T60 is on, it will draw power from the secondary battery until its dead, then draw power from the primary battery. When you put the laptop into standby, it seems to draw the power it needs from the main battery. I saw a 5% drop in the main battery over a 12hour standby time.

I have the 9cell battery. I got around 6.5 hours with full brightness and WWAN on. The ultrabay battery seems to give me an extra hour, hour and a half when running everything normally as if I was plugged in.

rvacha · #8 Post by **rvacha** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 8:17 pm

I did howver find some interesting stuff about how the laptops draws power from the batteries. (At least interesting to me) When the T60 is on, it will draw power from the secondary battery until its dead, then draw power from the primary battery.

This is by design and all T series have done this. The scenario is this: You use the machine for a few hours then unplug the ultrabay battery and plug in an optical drive. At that point you still have a 100% charged main battery to run from, thereby maximizing run time. Plug the ultrabay battery back in, and the machine reverts to discharging the ultrabay battery, just in case you plug something else in later.

In a similar fashion, when you then plug the AC adapter in, the machine fully charges the main battery first, followed by the ultrabay battery. When viewing the battery icon in the task bar, it reports the present capacity of *both* batteries but only reports the time to done info the the currently charging battery. So if both batteries are discharged and you plug in AC, the time to finished will be for the main battery. The timer counts down to zero, then the machine starts charging the ultrabay. At this point the time to charged time will jump from zero to, say 2 hours, and then count down from there until the ultrabay battery is fully charged. In my way of thinking the time to charge is misleading since I rarely have the ultrabay battery unplugged, and I want to know when the machine will be fully juiced.

When you put the laptop into standby, it seems to draw the power it needs from the main battery. I saw a 5% drop in the main battery over a 12hour standby time.

I'm not sure about this one, but this may be by design as well.

Icee · #9 Post by **Icee** » Sat Jul 08, 2006 1:26 pm

I tried another test last evening. On the last test, I had both batteries fully charged before I put it in suspend mode. I remember that the last time I had a empty ultrabay battery overnight was when I had put in the full ultrabay battery after then main battery was at 50%.

So yesterday I charged up the ultrabay to 100%, took it out, then drained the main battery to 23%. I then replaced the ultrabay batt, suspended the laptop and went to sleep.

This morning when I powered up the laptop, the ultrabay battery had indeed drained by 18% over the 12 hour span. I thought that the 2nd battery might be charging the main one, but the main battery had gone down by a percent. So where exactly did 5.36Wh of power from the 2nd battery go?

jagged · #10 Post by **jagged** » Sat Jul 29, 2006 1:51 am

Just curious, what's the real world battery life for a 6-cell + ultrabay battery combo on a machine with dedicated GPU?

I'm thinking of getting one to bring with me during long distance air travel.

Ultrabay Secondary Battery discharge question

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