yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
PROGRESS REPORT

Edited: Wrong number... my bad. Here are the real numbers.

Battery stats:

-Tablet 97% ( I used it in the bathroom this morning)

-Dock 23%

Timer: 3hr 20 min

Using simple math...

(3.4hr x 100%)

---------------- = 4.4 hr

(100-23)%

In other words, dock battery only lost about 1.6 hr.

Still not detecting any heat from the keyboard. When I press on the usb1 icon, the hard drive opens up and I can still click on and read files in the hard drive. So I know the hard drive is still connected to the tablet.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] knoxploration:
Edit: Updated the following to reflect your new numbers

AFAIK the dock and tablet batteries are identical, so assuming you started at 100% charge on both, you're down 40% [100-((97+23)/2)] after 200 minutes. That means total battery life is 500 minutes [200/0.4], or 8 hours 20 minutes, at your current rate.

Quite a lot less than the original 16 hours-ish, although that battery life will vary significantly depending on what you're using (wifi, GPS, bluetooth, LCD brightness, processor / GPU, etc.), so it's not a straight comparison unless you rerun with the same parameters except the hard disk. And even 8+ hours is far better than most laptops. And of course in the real world you needn't run the hard disk 100% of the time. :-)

During discharge isn't when you need worry. It's when all components are generating maximum heat. The battery warms most during charging from flat. The hard disk warms most when under heavy use (spun up, lots of seeking). So when you need worry is during recharging from flat dock batteries while heavily using the hard disk. If it's fine then, it'll be fine the rest of the time (assuming you're not testing in strong A/C, then hoping to use it later while charging and sitting outdoors in blazing sunlight or something). ;-)
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
Which is why I am adding in an on/off switch this weekend for the hard drive. So, when it is off, the usb port will be usable. Hopefully, the battery will fair a bit better then.

Edit.

Actually, if we're doing what we're doing, then without the hard drive the battery wouldn't last 16 hr. The 16 hr figure comes from 10 hr of battery life on the tablet and 6 hr from the dock. But you're saying the 2 batteries are identical, so if the dock battery only lasts 6 hr then the tablet battery only lasts 6 hr when plugged into the dock. In other words, the original TF + dock combo only has 12ish hr of battery life when docked. Does this make sense?
[Eee Pad Transformer General] knoxploration:
Hey, it's good either way. But the better you can make it, the more awesome it'll be. ;-)

Yeah, makes sense. I'm going from memory (admittedly rusty) on the batteries being identical, but pretty sure I read that in one of the reviews before buying my own. I so seldom hit the combined battery limit myself, I'm not honestly sure what it runs...
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
Sad news, people. It is now 8 hours and the battery of the tab is at 16% while the dock is at 3%. In other words, the hard drive killed about 7 hours of battery life, assuming it was truly 16 hr to begin with.

I will definitely put the on/off switch in this weekend.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] markp1989:
any space in there to add another battery?

personally I would like it if they sold 2 editions of the dock, the one we all have, and 1 with a double capacity battery,considering with a lot of rearranging you managed to fit a hdd in it, adding a bigger battery could fit, although I don't know much about charging/working with rechargeable batteries

for my usage pattern, additional battery life would be more useful than extra storage
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
I still have no regret about putting in the hard drive. But I will definitely put in the on/off switch to help with the bat life. I already know where to put it. It's not for the faint of heart, though, because the next operation involves a virgin sacrifice to the geek god.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] Bob Smith42:
Maybe a good alternative, if you need to conserve power, is to add the USB hub and an internal flash drive - 32GB or more. It is no where near 500GB of disk storage, but not much trouble either.

Thanks for updating us with news.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
Nah, I've already bought the 500 gb hdd for $40. The hdd came in an air tight metal casing and plastic casing, so I had to take those apart. Can't return it now.

Besides, I love my 500 gb space. After the addition of the hard drive, adding the on/off switch will be a walk in the park. I've already ordered the switch for $3. Will put it in as soon as it arrives.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] knoxploration:
Well, on the plus side, assuming the batteries *are* identical to each other, you've gained about 30 minutes from my predicted life after your earlier figures... :-) And really, once you get your switch in, the physical hard drive likely only needs very brief use now and then. Whenever you need to get to a file on the drive, switch it on, mount, copy the file to internal flash memory, then unmount and switch the physical drive back off. Hey presto, you get the advantage of the storage space, but it only uses a few minutes charge here or there, with negligible effect on battery life, and only slightly less convenience than leaving it running all the time.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
Also, FYI whenever I plug in my transformer into my desktop my desktop recognizes both the sdcard and the hard drive inside the dock. I can now transfer vast amounts of data (ahem movies) into my hdd.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] darkhawkff:
Personally, I went and bought (a few weeks ago, before this) a 32gb flash drive, with all intentions of adding it to the insides of my dock. I figured that one way or another, it'd be better than a hard drive or an SSD.

Then I thought about it more....I have a nice small little USB hub (1 in, 4 out). What if I got 2 of them and used them in there? (the hub is rectangular, 1 port on each end, 2 ports on the long side)

On top of that, what about larger drives? Well, I just noticed that Newegg has 64 gb flash drives for $104...imagine 2 of those in there? I'd imagine that if you used the port on the back right side of the dock (where one would 'normally' attach an external mouse for instance, so it wouldn't draw much power), it would probably be very doable I imagine.....Then again, I haven't opened my dock to do any fiddling around yet.

Either way, I still think it's awesome you did the mod. While I still feel 500 gb is a bit in excess (even given your 2 hour train ride situation....I watch anime at work during my lunch break...usually a combination of Initial D/Bleach/Gundam stuff), it works well for you.

Let me know how everything works out, I'd still be interested in good pictures!
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
I will take much better pictures when I take it out to put in the on/off switch.

One question for the EE's out there. Once I have my switch in, do I really need to unmount every time I want to turn it off? Or can I just turn it off? What's the harm in not using the unmount option?

And for the 1337s out there who's about to tell me how stupid I am, I work with concrete research and structural integrity, damn it. Electronics is just a hobby.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] darkhawkff:
I would unmount, simply because it's the normal thing to do......But technically, this is where it gets tricky. Is the drive formated in NTFS or FAT32? FAT32 drives don't NEED to be unmounted before removal, since they don't do write caching/delays.....NTFS on the other hand do have this ability, and the only way to cause any 'writes' that haven't been done yet to complete, is to unmount it (atleast in Windows). If you do not unmount before removing the drive (or flipping the switch), there is a likelihood that any unfinished writes won't complete and you will then have a corrupted file allocation table and corrupted drive. There's a reason that pretty much all USB flash drives come pre-formated with FAT32....it's for this reason alone.

As I said, I wouldn't worry about it so much if the drive is FAT32 formated. If it's NTFS formated, then yes, you do need to unmount.

I think everything you've done so far is pretty sound overall. All things given, you've accomplished your starting goals and are refining it. What's wrong with that? Those that disagree with your thoughts, who cares? Everyone has an opinion, just like everyone has....yeah, you can finish that on your own. :D
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
Is there a way for me to check if it's FAT32 or NTFS with this tablet? I really don't want to open it up now and yank it out to check with my desktop.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
Someone just suggested I buy a few docks, a few hard drives, and a few switches, do the mod, and sell them on ebay. Is this even a viable option?

My first impression is nobody is going to buy them because of price. The dock is already $120+. The hard drive is about $40. Anything less than $50 for labor is a waste of time. That's asking $210 for a docking station.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] asdfuogh:
maybe you could flash ubuntu on it, then use something like gparted to check what the partition on your hd is?
[Eee Pad Transformer General] SwiftLegend:
What if we provide you with everything? $50 for labor sounds good. That can be just for the hard drive itself, if you want an extra battery that another $15 or so, etc.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] Lanpirate:
OP, great job btw. This forum is not for people to ask how/where to solder, only the idea of doing it is planting the seed. Those pics tell me a lot. OP, you suggest less than $50 to do it for someone else would be a waste, agreed! I'm sure it takes around 2 hours to do. ****, I get more than that to put some pads and rotors on a car as a side-job. This is more of a satisfaction of doing it your self kind of thing. Also, he runs the additional responsibility of not messing it up with other people's dock and hdd. Its much more fun when you ruin your own stuff modding it.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
Well, for now the mod is not up to standard yet, considering the hard drive is on all the time and is sucking a lot of juice from the batteries. Wait until I put in the on/off switch and that will be a killer.

But yes, I am seriously considering doing this mod for a fee. If for nothing else, it's to help out fellow tech enthusiasts. Again, this mod is not for the squeamish. If you think you might get a heart attack from seeing the guts of a dock, this is not for you.

I can tell you guy this, though. For now, my transformer absolutely does not look like it's been modded. No scratches on the outside at all. I can't say the same after I put in the switch, though. It's gotta go somewhere accessible.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] knoxploration:
That information is only valid for Windows, AFAIK, and even there I believe write caching can be enabled on FAT32, it just defaults to off. It's perfectly possible that Android doesn't replicate Windows' behaviour with respect to write caching, and frankly I wouldn't risk it for the ~1 second it takes to unmount before powering off. (Not to mention the potential for losing data that hasn't been written to disk from the HDD's own buffer memory, depending on the model -- something the operating system itself potentially has zero control over.)
[Eee Pad Transformer General] w04g005:
Could you please be so kind and test if your USB-Hub works with the transformer on the external USB? I have bought one 2 weeks ago (a hub without external power supply) and it didn't work! I tested it with 2 usb thumb drives and only the first i plugged in worked! My plan was it to put the usb hub into the keyboard dock with my 3G dongle and a thumb drive.

greatings
[Eee Pad Transformer General] Beards:
Put it on the UK Ebay and I'm sure you would get orders....

In the UK the Dock alone is expensive ~ Amazon UK £99.99 (164.08 USD) and that's the cheaper price. So, charging 210USD (£128.69) is not a great deal more to pay.

Basically for an extra £28 (45.95USD) you are getting a much larger storage option.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] Frosty666:
Hi Everyone,

After I saw this thread I had a look around on eBay for some cheap, high capacity storage media. Of course, most are incredibly expensive.

I was, however, shocked when I looked up 256gb flash drives.

Have a look here: http://shop.ebay.com.au/i.html?rt=nc&LH_BIN=1&_nkw=256gb+usb+flash+drive&_trksid=p3286.c0.m301 and specifically here: http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/256GB-US...ash_Drives&hash=item45fcc29b06#ht_2782wt_1139

That's around $50 Australian for a 256gb flash drive! This would be more than adequate for many people, plus most of the trouble about rearranging the internals of the keyboard to get everything to fit would be dealt with. Other issues like the high power consumption of keeping the drive spinning wouldn't matter either.

Here's some specs on the flash drive: http://www.kingston.com/ukroot/flash/dt310.asp?id=1

It's Kingston, and it seems legit.

I assume there's something wrong here, it seems too cheap for too much...

Just thought I'd share...
[Eee Pad Transformer General] Underwater Mike:
I'd bet these are counterfeit versions of the real thing. There's no way a real Kingston flash drive that big would sell anywhere for so little -- that's the selling price of a 32G drive on Amazon.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] Frosty666:
You're most likely right, which is unfortunate.

Strange though. The seller has sold 49 these (http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/256GB-US...ash_Drives&hash=item45fcc29b06#ht_2782wt_1139) and still has 100% positive feedback.

EDIT: Make that 50 sold. There was 47 sold when first found that page. He must be doing something right... ;)
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
Because most people are dumbasses. There are fake hard drives floating around from china. They are not real. They have been rewired to say however big the faker wanted to say. Your data will be lost once its real capacity is passed.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] Frosty666:
100% Correct. :)
[Eee Pad Transformer General] S.82:
This may be a dumb idea, but why not leave the extra usb connector and connect it also to the hdd cable so you can use it in other devices while not docked? Each set of leads would be disconnected while the other is in use, and so should not conflict with eachother. Would make it easier to copy from tab to pc.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] Bob Smith42:
This ebay listing is awesome.

Not for the usb drive as we know it is fake (youtube disassembly video at link).

Rather, somehow the listing person has achieved 100% positive feedback, all 5 stars, and sold over 50 fake items without receiving any feedback what-so-ever, neither positive or negative.

So the *awesome* bit is the seller figured out how to completely block ebay feedback. ROFLMA

;)

PS: Read some of the *actual* reviews of fake items on newegg.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
There are a bunch of fake sdcards, micro sdhc, and thump drives, and hard drives on amazon. I and several others I know have personally identified them as fakes. And yet they received overwhelming 5 star reviews. Why? Because most people are dumbasses. All they did was plug it into the device and when the device says 32 gb or 64gb or however many gb are available they go online right away and gave it 5 star.

These dumbasses never even bothered to test out their new storage devices.

There are actually 1 gb drives that have been rewired to show however big the storage was claimed to be. Once your data surpasses its real limit, the drive is programmed to quietly drop your data.

Like I said, too many dumbasses in this world.

http://www.cracktwo.com/2011/04/chinese-fake-hard-drive.html
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
What really disappoints me is why none of the agencies we have reported these fake goods have responded. They seem to be ignoring these fake goods all together.

What the hell is going on?

http://ipohchai.com/the-chinese-could-fake-everything.php
[Eee Pad Transformer General] Bob Smith42:
Well, it is obvious to me. Check out this site about 1000 negative & neutral reviews before ebay closes account.

The forums at ebay go off line because of inability of ebay IT to properly route their servers, e.g. http://foo:1234/forum/readsomething.html instead of the actual URL like http://forum.ebay.com/forum/readsomething.html. Many sellers complain in the forums of their sites being offline for weeks, and no IT support by ebay. It seems their service quality is lacking, in my opinion.

ROFLMA.

Sorry for taking this thread off topic. I am back on topic now.

I still think it is a great mod to use either a real hard drive for massive storage, by limiting the power consumption with a on/off switch. Otherwise, I would go with installing a small USB hub and pluggable flash drive instead. The hub and flash drive would still draw power from the batteries and needs to be connected to power from somewhere that will shut off in standby. Historically, attaching internal USB hub requires finding the *correct* point to draw 5V power.

Thanks OP for keeping us up-to-date with news. :)
[Eee Pad Transformer General] Sei911:
Nice post. I had this idea in my mind since I got my tablet+docking station, but decided to just stick with SDCard for bettery battery and lighter weight. I might do this one day if I need the additional space lol.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] darkhawkff:
I know mine works because I had both a USB mouse and USB Flash drive plugged into it. I dunno, maybe the one you bought just took too much juice?
[Eee Pad Transformer General] darkhawkff:
Linux has the same ability in regards to write caching....No reason that Android couldn't as well.

That being said, you are correct regarding FAT32 and write caching, by default it is disabled, but it CAN be enabled.

On that note, I just plugged in my NTFS formated USB flash drive (the one I use to transfer files > 4gb), and low and behold it has write caching disabled as well.....I've kind of come to the conclusion that it really depends on the host system. I don't know how the inner functions of Android work so I can't comment further than that. Either way, I'd still 'safely remove' the device before physically disconnecting the device.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
Can I please get a consensus whether turning off the hdd without unmount is safe or not, even if its fat32?
[Eee Pad Transformer General] darkrangr:
Instead of putting a hard drive in there, how hard would it be to add a battery in there to extend its life even further? did u have to make and perma mods the to structure (plastic and what no cut) or just move around the guts (wires)?
[Eee Pad Transformer General] knoxploration:
Don't misunderstand, I wasn't saying write caching couldn't be changed in Android. I was just saying you can't rely on it being disabled, which we're now in agreement on.

The answer is that it's not 100% guaranteed to be safe. You'll likely get away with it most of the time. You might even get away with it all of the time. It's possible that it could lead to file corruption, or if you're extremely unlucky, to drive corruption, though. It's just not worth risking, regardless of what file system you're using.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] jdmnash:
How can you make a post about such a substantial mod on a hack/mod/developing forum and discourage anyone else from trying it? Seems a bit conceded if you ask me. There are PLENTY of people on this site that are not "faint at heart".
[Eee Pad Transformer General] darkrangr:
Concievably if there is room i could pop 2 droid x batteries in there. the dock battery is ~2250 mah @3.7 volts. A droid x2 extended battery is ~2600 mah @ 3.7volts. putting 2 of these in gets you close to doubling total life (3300 + 2250) = 5500 compared to an addtional 5200.

is there room to fit something of this size in there?

http://www.wirelessgalaxy.com/batteries/msn-extended-battery-motorola-droix-x-2-extended-back-door.html
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
The battery pack is actually a lot thinner than the dock. They had to put cushions on top of the battery pack to keep the keyboard from collapsing in. So, yes, if you only want to add an extra battery pack you can just take the cushions out and put it on top of the existing battery pack.

The trick is you have to solder in the wires in the right places to add the battery parallel to the current battery. If you have to ask, then you are not up for this job.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
Because I know most people are not up to something like this. You can go ahead and try this if you want. I can't stop you. But take my word for it, this really does take some very delicate soldering jobs. Do you feel confident soldering pinhead size places on a board? Do you even have the equipment?

Also, take a look at the following thread on me modifying my car to mount the tablet.

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1192291

Read the subsequent comments telling me what an idiot I am for putting that in. In fact, I have no doubt that you at this moment think I'm an idiot for doing that mod with my car even though I explained in that thread very clearly that I checked many times to make sure the mod is out of the way of the air bag and air bag deployment area. Go ahead and read the rest of that thread. See how people started desperately looking for a reason to criticize that mod because it seemed scary.

Well, this mod is 10 times scarier than that car mod. I simply don't think most people are up to something like this.

But if you really want to try this out yourself, tell me and I will post step by step instructions on how to do this. Take a look at my viewsonic g tablet for dummies site linked in signature. I am very good at writing instructions for dummies.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] darkrangr:
I'm with ya, I understand the soldering parts, just didn't know about the room. Is there room on the top or sides?

Id take mine apart but I have to rma it for the faulty energy conservation problem
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
There are room both on top and sides. In fact, this weekend when I go back in to put in the on/off switch for the hdd, I will try one last time to figure out a way to add the extra battery pack. 500 gb hdd + extra battery = yummy!
[Eee Pad Transformer General] chatch15117:
i'd rather put a couple more lipo cells in the dock. 48 hour use? :D
[Eee Pad Transformer General] lude219:
No offense to the OP, but that's one of the dumbest logic that I've read on here. I mean, do you even know what website you're posting on? There have been guides that are 10x as long as what you're about to do (if you indeed incline on writing it up) and the consequence of ****ing it up is monumental (most unlocked phones cost 2x as much as the TF101). Why should you neglect all the folks who are just teething for knowledge to appease those who are too stupid to follow directions? If that has been the case, this board would turn into a ghost town. The element of flushing a $400 investment down the drain should be enough for anyone with half a brain to approach cautiously, and if not, that's what a disclaimer is for.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] knoxploration:
You fairly obviously didn't read the other thread, which is on the exact same site, and in which several people immediately started laying into him as if he were the devil for simply daring to post a quick pic of his car setup.

Frankly, if you don't have the gumption to figure it out without somebody holding your hand, you don't have any business messing around with a soldering iron right next to batteries that would just love to burst into flame.

If you're not happy with his mod or his thread, go start another yourself, and share all your great work there. Don't attack somebody else for not catering to your every whim.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
No offense taken. I will write out instructions after I put in the switch.