Increased battery discharge after CIC SSD upgrade?

[drwankel]

Hey all,

Just curious if anybody else has seen this. I did a SSD upgrade on my CIC I drive a few months back. Immediately the next day I got a increased battery discharge warning from the car. Figuring it was probably just unhappy about battery load while I was working on it, I ignored it.

It now comes back every month or so. Never had it before the upgrade, and I replaced my battery as well. Got it again yesterday for the first time since replacing the battery.

I'm suspecting there might be some issue with the cic unit putting what was the HDD to sleep, and it can draw too much power from the SSD while the car is off.

Just curious if anybody else had something similar going on?

[Cyberdemon]

ISTA D can run the power diagnostic to see what module is drawing power when the car is in the low power state. If your CIC shows up as the offender then yes, it could be an issue that the unit doesn't know how to power down the SSD properly.

[drwankel]

Any more details about that procedure? I havent used ISTA D before, but am aware of it.

[Cyberdemon]

Originally Posted by drwankel

Any more details about that procedure? I havent used ISTA D before, but am aware of it.

If you have access to ISTA/Rheingold then you can go to diagnostics->body->Voltage and one of them is called something along the line of low power voltage test/sleep test or something like that (there are only 3 procedures IIRC, and one is battery registration).

If you don't have access to the software something like this might help:

https://www.m3post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1183365

In this case though, if the correlation is tied to you modifying the hardware there's a good chance that's the result. One option is to just return the CIC to stock and see if it persists after fully charging the battery.

[bighindu79]

Is the ssd drive a higher capacity drive than the oem one? If that's the case, I would be willing to bet that that's the culprit for increased battery discharge as higher capacity drives require more power and the oem system wasn't designed to accommodate higher capacity drives.

[drwankel]

Originally Posted by bighindu79

Is the ssd drive a higher capacity drive than the oem one? If that's the case, I would be willing to bet that that's the culprit for increased battery discharge as higher capacity drives require more power and the oem system wasn't designed to accommodate higher capacity drives.

Respectfully, that's not even close to accurate. The primary thing that would cause one disk to use more power than another is different rotational speed of the platters. 7200RPM vs 5400RPM for example. Capacity has basically nothing to do with it. Think about it. A 120MB HDD from the early 90s vs a 8TB HDD from 2021? Is there a dramatic power difference? No.

SSDs in general use less power in part because they don't have any moving parts. Don't have to waste power on a motor or moving heads around.

The reality of my situation is I am using a IDE to msata adapter for my SSD, which is obviously msata. Something about the combo of parts might be screwing up sleep mode.

I'm trying to get ista D so I can take a closer look.

[bighindu79]

Originally Posted by drwankel

Respectfully, that's not even close to accurate. The primary thing that would cause one disk to use more power than another is different rotational speed of the platters. 7200RPM vs 5400RPM for example. Capacity has basically nothing to do with it. Think about it. A 120MB HDD from the early 90s vs a 8TB HDD from 2021? Is there a dramatic power difference? No.

SSDs in general use less power in part because they don't have any moving parts. Don't have to waste power on a motor or moving heads around.

The reality of my situation is I am using a IDE to msata adapter for my SSD, which is obviously msata. Something about the combo of parts might be screwing up sleep mode.

I'm trying to get ista D so I can take a closer look.

I understand your point about spinning up and spinning down platters in HDD and it makes sense but the devil is in the details. There are plenty of discussions online regarding ssd vs hdd power draw and how ssds actually draw slightly higher power during startup and certain read/write operations based on size (manufacturer and model also plays a role here) but I don't want to derail this thread by going down that rabbit hole here.

My main point is that the e9x platform and its electronics are now over a decade old, which might as well be equivalent to dinosaurs roaming the earth in terms of technology. When you upgrade a component on a pc, the OS—and to some degree hardware—are designed for component upgrades/changes in mind. The OS/hardware vendors provide drivers/updates. What you are doing is an upgrade to a component for which the manufacturer never considered anyone doing and configured the proprietary software for specific tolerances based on the components of that time. Unless there is a way to modify these tolerances, I am not sure if this will be a straightforward plug and play upgrade.

I am in no way discouraging this effort rather would like to see it succeed. So, good luck and mod on

[brettcp]

I did the SSD upgrade a couple of years ago and did not have any issues with battery discharge after doing so.

[tdott]

cool, didn't know that was a thing.

[drwankel]

Originally Posted by Cyberdemon

If you have access to ISTA/Rheingold then you can go to diagnostics->body->Voltage and one of them is called something along the line of low power voltage test/sleep test or something like that (there are only 3 procedures IIRC, and one is battery registration).

If you don't have access to the software something like this might help:

https://www.m3post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1183365

In this case though, if the correlation is tied to you modifying the hardware there's a good chance that's the result. One option is to just return the CIC to stock and see if it persists after fully charging the battery.

Quick question- What is the correct cable I need to do this test? I've managed to get a copy of the software. I'm less knowledgeable about thew differences between BMW OBDII cables and which to use for what.

[Cyberdemon]

Originally Posted by drwankel

Quick question- What is the correct cable I need to do this test? I've managed to get a copy of the software. I'm less knowledgeable about thew differences between BMW OBDII cables and which to use for what.

This will work with a K+DCAN usb cable which you can find for under $20 on Amazon for the E chassis.

The other cables are needed if you move to the F series or later.

[derbo]

Originally Posted by drwankel

Quick question- What is the correct cable I need to do this test? I've managed to get a copy of the software. I'm less knowledgeable about thew differences between BMW OBDII cables and which to use for what.

Might as well get a BimmerGeeks Cable if you plan to do more fun stuff. Their cable has the updated firmware that fixes the ability to update DMEs.

[drwankel]

To close the loop on this, it was not the SSD.

Finally tracked it down to something simple, an old battery (10 years old).

I had asked for it to be replaced last November when I had some other work done, and I guess it got missed.

The discharge message is simply the voltage of the battery getting too low, and the car trying to save itself. The problems just happen to start when I did the SSD upgrade.

I did a current measurement, and found the car was going to sleep without issue. It sent me through a loop, because I was assuming the battery had been replaced, and the discharge had to be a parasitic draw.

Moral of the story- confirm with data.