Why does "Media" consume so much of my battery??

[DLCPhototography]

I have a Verizon Galaxy Note 3, stock ROM, non-rooted. Very pleased with it overall. The KitKat update seemed to somewhat diminish battery life, but it remained acceptable.

In analyzing this further, it seems that "Media" consistently consumes a lot of the battery power, for reasons unclear to me. I just updated to 4.4.4, hoping that this would change, but after a short period of time, it's back up there, as the following screen capture shows:

According to the Phone's description, this includes:

Download manager
Media Storage
Downloads

I do have a 64gb MicroSD Card, Sandisk, which has never given me any problems. It is about half-full - mostly photos (copies of DSLR images from my Desktop), and several movies.

But why is "Media" using so many CPU cycles? And more importantly, how can I stop this? I would guess my battery life would be significantly improved if I could prevent "Media" from consuming so many CPU cycles.

It has been this way for months, and the screen capture above is quite typical for my phone.

Any insight appreciated.

 

[dancing-bass]

That's definately NOT normal. Typically most users will see screen as #1, and Android System as #2.

I haven't done much research on it, but from what I understand Samsung's media scanner will periodically scan your device to make sure it's media catalogue is up-to-date. The problem is when it encounters a file that is exceptionally large or it has issues with (for whatever reason). Then it will just get "stuck" at that one file, and unable to process any further, but sitting there and continually trying to process the file it got stuck at. It appears this is what's happening to you (as a rough educated guess).

If you have another microSD card, copy the files over to the other one and see if things improve. If not, plug the card into your computer and copy all the files there temporarily. (Double and triple check that everything copied over correctly before continuing). Then pop the card back into the phone and format it - which will wipe the whole works and you can start fresh. Copy all your files back to the SD card and see if things improve.

And as an aside, Samsung seems to have issues with SD cards over the long term. Some brands seem to be more reliable then others (you'd have to research which ones) but it seems that almost all brands have experienced "Sudden Card Death" where the microSD card suddenly becomes corrupt and recovering the files from it may or may not be possible (even from a PC). Hopefully this will help you somewhat.

 

[DLCPhototography]

Thanks for the reply.

When I've researched this in the past, I also had the impression that this may be related to the microSD card (which is why I mentioned it in my post). I was thinking of first just taking out the card, and seeing how the phone ran without it.

It's a 64gb card, which, I think, uses "exFAT" so the OS can "see" the entire 64gb content. The card came pre-formatted, and all I had to do was stick it in the phone, and was good to go. If I let the phone reformat it, what file system is it going to use? From what I've read, there is potential for problems here, and losing the ability to access the full capacity of the card.

 

[dancing-bass]

A formatted drive is never the full capacity, no matter if it's a solid state hard drive, conventional hard drive, SD card, or floppy disk. It will be close but not absolute 64GB (in your case)

The advantage of letting the phone format it is you know it's gonna work, but exFAT should be fine. I always let my phone format my card and have yet to have issues (knock on wood)

 

[DLCPhototography]

A formatted drive is never the full capacity, no matter if it's a solid state hard drive, conventional hard drive, SD card, or floppy disk. It will be close but not absolute 64GB (in your case)

The advantage of letting the phone format it is you know it's gonna work, but exFAT should be fine. I always let my phone format my card and have yet to have issues (knock on wood)

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I know that the file system is going to make the actual capacity different from the full capacity. I was referring to some people running into problems where they formatted a 64gb card, and ended up with only 32gb being seen. Different Windows versions handle the formatting better than others, with different options available, sometimes a USB card reader is needed to handle the formatting, etc.

But as I've researched this, it seems that a number of people have run into a variety of problems with exFAT formatted MicroSD cards in their phones. Many have no problems at all, but there are numerous problem reports. Also, it seems that Sandisk cards and Samsung devices have problems getting along at times.

In these, cases, it seems that formatting the MicroSD card to FAT32 seems to resolve pretty much all of them. The only downside here is if you have any individual files larger than 4gb, which FAT32 can't handle. So at this point, I'm inclined to reformat mine with FAT32.

Any other thoughts on the underlying problem would be appreciated.

 

[dancing-bass]

Sounds like you've really done your homework. Let me know how things go.

 

[DLCPhototography]

Sounds like you've really done your homework. Let me know how things go.

Well, phase one complete: copied all the files on the MicroSD card to my desktop's hard drive (30gb, took about 45 minutes). I then used EaseUS Partition Manager to format the card to FAT32 - took a minute or so. I then copied the files back to the newly formatted card. This took about 5 hours or so - that was the estimate when I went to sleep, and it had completed overnight. I had read that file transfers might be slower using FAT32 vs exFAT, at least using some devices, readers, etc.

Put the card back in my phone, turned it back on, and everything was seen on the MicroSD card, as if nothing had happened.

Am now recharging the phone to assess battery performance.

Also learned that the Battery Stats file isn't fully reset until a complete recharge takes place, so when I initially looked, nothing had changed, with Media way up there. But then understood that this was a reflection of the past, and so a full charge was needed to reset.

Will repost later today, hopefully with some good news to report.

 

[dancing-bass]

Sounds good so far. I use GSAM battery monitor Pro to keep an eye on my batter

 

[DLCPhototography]

Sounds good so far. I use GSAM battery monitor Pro to keep an eye on my batter

Well, Media was back up there within an hour or two...:-[

Next step I've taken is to boot into Recovery mode, where I wiped the Cache Partition. Recharged the phone to 100% to reset the battery stats, and will see if this does anything.

Thanks for the battery monitor recommendation. I started using Battery Doctor a week or two ago - seems ok, but I'm not convinced it's doing much.

 

[recDNA]

the only thing that works is reformatting from phone then connect to computer to put files back

 

[DLCPhototography]

the only thing that works is reformatting from phone then connect to computer to put files back

Thanks for the reply. You could well be right, but what's the basis for your stating this to be the case?

If I let the phone format it, what file system will it use? Or will it just keep whatever file system it currently has (in my case, FAT32 at this point). And as I alluded to above, some have reported being restricted to 32gb on a 64gb card during format, on at least some phones, and some versions of Android. Any thoughts on this?

For what it's worth, I have an Asus Infinity tablet, with the same 64gb Sandisk MicroSD card, and essentially all the same apps, and don't have this problem. Any insight here?

Thanks for the suggestion. In the few hours since wiping the Cache Partition, Media is back up there, as #1, so clearly I haven't gotten to the bottom of this yet.

 

[recDNA]

trying everything else

 

[DLCPhototography]

trying everything else

Interesting - so apparently you had the same problem, and this is the only thing that ended up fixing it. Anecdotal evidence, but pretty compelling as anecdotal evidence goes! Will have to give this a try.

Do you know what file system the GN3 uses when it formats the card? I just like to understand what I'm doing before I do it!

 

[recDNA]

Re: Why does "Media" consume so much of my battery??

no clue but it uses my yr GB card

 

[dancing-bass]

Re: Why does "Media" consume so much of my battery??

OP, I did some quick searching and as long as you don't need to use your card in a camera, formatting to NTFS sounds like the best idea. Better file structure and more stable then FAT or exFAT.

Personally I just use mine for storing pictures and music, so when I buy a new card I've always popped it into the computer, formatted it to NTFS, slapped it into the phone, let it format it to whatever, and gone from there without worrying about it.

Of course if I actually bought brand name cards the might last a bit longer....

 

[DLCPhototography]

Thanks for the reply and suggestion.

I have been wondering about NTFS, but for some reason the various threads I had read didn't mention it, with much more mention of FAT32.

But I went ahead and let the phone format the card, and I'm near the end of the phone's copying back the 30gb of files once again!! Hopefully this will resolve the problem, and that recDNA will have been correct.

Interestingly, I did an online chat with Samsung Tech Support, asking what file system the phone would use when one lets the phone reformat the card: NTFS, FAT32, exFAT, or if it just used whatever file system was on it and just cleared it using the same. Bottom line, the guy didn't know, and didn't offer to try and find out.

So experiment #3 is now in progress. Given the late hour, I won't be able to test it out until tomorrow, to see if this solves my problem. Will repost some time tomorrow.

If even this doesn't work, perhaps NTFS might be worth a try.

 

[dancing-bass]

I'm still wondering if perhaps you have a file on there somewhere that the media scanner just can't process. I'm starting to think that's where the problem itself is.

 

[DLCPhototography]

I'm still wondering if perhaps you have a file on there somewhere that the media scanner just can't process. I'm starting to think that's where the problem itself is.

Interesting thought. You mean like, perhaps, a particular file extension? When certain files are copied over the Android OS does give a warning of sorts, that it isn't capable of playing them (like a .wav file, for example), indicating that the file can be stored, but not played. In this case, there are 3rd party apps that can play/open this type of file, even if they're not handled natively.

Or do you mean a corrupted file? If so, wouldn't this have been eliminated by the format and re-copy process? Or if not, how would I identify the corrupted file?

Just restarted the phone; after 6 minutes, Media is still on top. Not a lot of time, but worrisome....

 

[dancing-bass]

Try these tips and see what happens.

http://geeknizer.com/fix-android-media-server-scanner-sdcard-cpu-battery-drain/

 

[DLCPhototography]

Try these tips and see what happens.

Fix Android Media server scanner SDcard CPU, Battery drain

Great minds think alike!! I was reviewing that page a couple of hours ago, and am working through some of the steps.

Reformatting out of the phone, in the phone, transferring files in directly on the Desktop, transferring files in via USB directly to the phone - none of these seem to make any difference at all.

I had previously tried deleting cache/data for Media Storage several days ago - didn't fix the problem.

I'm thinking that you're correct that there are certain files that are creating problems. Some threads I found indicated that .mp4 files were creating problems for them. I had a dozen or more movies on my card: both .mp4 and .avi. I went ahead and deleted all of the movies, and will monitor. I re-deleted the Media Storage cache/data, to let it rescan the MicroSD card, to 'reset' the process.

As expected, Media was pretty active initially, as it had to rescan everything, but seems to have quieted down to a significant degree. Media is no longer #1 on the list, having dropped down to #2. I'm hoping that the movies were causing the problem, but we'll see.

I also have a moderate amount of music on the card, which I'd hate to delete. But I also have quite a number of photos - copies of DSLR shots over the last 14 years or so, so it's probably several thousand jpegs, organized by year and month. It's very neat to be able to see any of those photos whenever I want, so I would really hate to have to delete those.

Will update when I have more info. I appreciate your working along with me on this!

Don