When Battery Dies?

[Marshall]

Just ordered an X3 400, no WiFi.

My brother-in-law has a Toshiba PocketPC. If the battery ever dies, he loses all of his data. It's totally wiped out. I called Toshiba about this, and they said that's the way all PocketPC's are. He said I could store data on the compact flash card, but there are problems doing that, too.

I admit... I ordered this because Dell had a big discount when purchased with a new PC. I'd like to be able to sync my Outlook addresses, tasks and notes with it, and I'll use it as an MP3 player, too.

But I'm worried about this battery thing... what's the deal with the Axim if the batteries die? And, should I store all my data on a storage card? Any problems with that?

[edgett]

The Axim (and many other modern Pocket PCs) have a lithium backup battery cell. If your battery dies you will not be able to turn on the Axim but the lithium battery will protect your data. This lithium battery will eventually drain and it is NOT rechargeable. You should depend on it is only an emergency backup.

[Marshall]

Whoa.
So when Toshiba says that draining the battery kills everything in memory, what they're saying is, "our device stinks."

Because with an Axim, no data loss will occur, but with a Toshiba, it will? Toshiba tech support told me many times that letting the battery die will lose all data in memory (SDRAM) - apps, data, everything.

[woochman]

Hey Marshall -

I understand you concern. The last person who replied was correct.

Let's take an example:

You are going away and won't be using your Axim for several months. You want to make sure that the datat on your Axim (or any other PPC) is preserved. Here's my reccomendation:

- Charge it before your store it
- Do a full backup of your Axim before you store it away. This way, if you do lose your data, you can restore it to the condition it was in before you put it away.

Here's how I back up my Axim:

1. I do a full backup in Active Sync
2. I copy the Built-in storage and Storage Card Folders to my PC.

This way you’re covered. I know the ActiveSync backup backs up everything in ROM, and I’m not 100% sure if it backs up the Built in Storage Area. I know it doesn’t backup the storage card, so I’m set all the way around in case I loose all my data.

To refer back to the last post, yes, if the main battery drains, the backup battery preserves your data until it drains. Once it drains bye bye data. A thorough backup is the name of the game, at least once a week, depending on the data that you store on it and how often it changes. You can also do a full backup, and then incremental backups for data that has been added or changed. I do keep all data that’s important on a SD card. That’s just the way I do things.

Hope this is helpful,

Wooch