I’m looking to get one of the expansion modules to basically use as a portable ssd. I was wondering how much power they draw, as I want to be able to use it with my phone to transfer files easily to my desktop and laptop. I’ve had bad luck with ports on older phones being able to power external storage. Has anyone tried this or know how much power the modules draw? (I know I could probably use a normal little flash drive, but I want the additional speed and reliability of a full ssd, as well as supporting Framework)
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I don’t know how much power they draw, but I believe there are several people on this forum who have tested using one with their phone and it works fine. I’d say it’s more of a flash drive than an SSD. I can confirm personally though that I have plugged mine into my desktop Windows PC and it’s worked fine.
I’ve got a Framework 12 with one of the second-gen 250 GB expansion cards. I have Pika Backup running a backup to it hourly, but it rarely takes more than a couple of minutes.
The card is always hot, despite only a few minutes of read/write per hour. I have concerns about the power draw. The product info for the Phison U17 controller claims 550 mA read/write at 100 mA at idle. I speculate that this is the draw the controller allows, and not just the requirement for the controller itself. 100−550 mA at 5 V is still 0.5−2.75W. Not much, but my machine seems to be pulling around 12 W with not much going on but typing this message in a browser, so 20% more power usage for a few minutes hourly isn’t nothing.
I’ve got two experiments queued up:
- How much longer does the battery last with the SSD expansion card disconnected? This real-life test could influence me to do my backups directly to the network.
- How much power does this card actually draw? My tester is built into a cable so I’ve got a USB-C female-to-female adapter on order.