Hardware failure?: Laptop fails to complete boot on battery power only

English Hardware
1

I recently installed Leap 15 on my Lenovo X220 laptop, which boots off an internal mSATA SSD. I did a clean install to the SSD.

Booting up on battery power is successful only to the initial stages (past GRUB, loads Linux), and fails to complete to the graphical login screen, giving multiple error messages forever that indicate there are multiple ATA errors on the boot SSD. I’d show the errors here if there was a way to capture them. The system is essentially nonfunctional, except showing each new error as it happens, and allowing me to switch virtual consoles via Ctrl-Alt-[function key]; it can not even power down or reset normally.

Booting up on AC power completes successfully to the graphical login screen like it should.

There is no indication during boot or in the system journal that the internal spinning hard drive (used for swap and /home only) is malfunctioning.

SMART long test result of the SSD says:


SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

I don’t think the SMART test result is particularly meaningful here, since I can only do the test when the laptop is AC powered, not when running on battery and the malfunction is evident.

Dredging the Internet for similar problems revealed the most common cause of this type of problem is a faulty SATA connection, usually due to a defective cable. Since my SSD is an internal mSATA SSD without any cable, I removed the drive, cleaned both male and female connectors. and re-installed the drive. The problem still persists exactly as before.

Right now I am favoring diagnosis the problem is most likely a defective SSD that needs replacing despite having been 28% over-provisioned to promote longevity (it is 7 years old); or, the battery may be defective and not supplying adequate voltage, or the ATA bus itself is defective. I’m not sure which. The battery is one year and 7 months old with infrequent usage (I mostly use the laptop on AC power while the battery remains connected to the laptop). KDE is not indicating there is anything wrong with the battery, and there are no problems charging the battery.

The SSD is a RunCore 60GB Pro V SATA 6G 50MM mSATA (Mini SATA PCI-e) SSD - RC P-V-T5060-MC.

The SSD filesystem btrfs.

Linux version is 4.12.14-lp150.12.22-default, which is the most current LEAP version as of today.

I would very much like to get input form the openSUSE community about the most likely cause of failure before I spend money on a part that is not the solution to this problem. Any help is appreciated.

2

https://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/x220_x220i_x220tablet_x220itablet_ug_en.pdf says to maximize battery life, do pretty much the opposite of what you do, so I vote battery. Batteries don’t have to get old to go bad.

3

Thanks for that reference link. I have not read that file in years.

Thank you mrmazda for your vote. My experience occasionally and infrequently does show “batteries don’t have to get old to go bad.”

Having a second battery would be quite handy, and it is far less expensive than the Samsung 860 Evo I’d buy to replace the probably defective SSD (USD$92 versus USD$189), so I may test replacing the battery first first.

If one is following what the “Maximizing battery life” section says (shown below), mrmazda must be removing and re-inserting laptop batteries quite often. For me, that is just not practical, and I’d rather buy a new battery every 5 or so years (based on my experience with my X220) than go through all that hassle.

Maximizing battery life
To maximize the life of the battery, do the following:
• Use the battery until the charge is completely depleted-until the battery status indicator starts blinking
orange.
• Recharge the battery completely before using it. The battery is fully charged if the battery indicator shows
green when the ac power adapter is plugged in.
• For a new battery or a battery that you have not used recently, do one of the following:

  1. Recharge the battery completely before using it. The battery is fully charged when the ac power
    adapter is plugged in and the battery indicator is green.
  2. Use the battery until the charge is completely depleted-until the battery status indicator starts
    blinking orange.
    • Always use power management features such as power modes, screen blank, sleep (standby), and
    hibernation.

Thank you again mrmazda for your vote.

4

I replaced the mSATA SSD and now my Lenovo X220 laptop boots and runs properly on battery power.

The replacement SSD is a Samsung EVO 860 (1 terabyte), and it works very well.