Repurpose/Reuse of Old Android Tablet of 2013 in 2019

With New Advancements in both software and hardware technology the time gap for releasing new upgraded version of their products have reduced form yearly release to quarter for some manufacturers like [Xiaomi for eg] with new Lineup of Products with upgraded specifications launching every now and then with minor upgrades, Even the Reasonable Buyers have started to upgrade their  Phone , Tablets even before the Device has ran out of its software and Security Updates Guaranteed by the Manufacturer or any hardware fault  occurs, because of which in almost every household  in  India there is drawer somewhere getting filled with old smartphone and tablets with their chargers gathering dust with much of its life left

                                 

I too had a almost mint condition unused Android Tablet Lying around

Year of Manufacturing  : 2013
Android Version            :4.1 (Tone of Bloatware)
Battery                           :3100mah
Screen Size                    :7 Inch
Bluetooth Support         : Nope
Processor                       :ARM Cortex A-9
Storage                          :512 MB RAM | 8 GB ROM 

Step 1: Cleanup
-> Finding a custom ROM and flashing it is tedious and isn't worth the time so its better flash or reset the device first to factory settings and  download a root app like King ROOT or Super Root and root the Android and Remove all the Bloatware after reset , to Reduce Resource Consumption and Improve CPU Performance 

Step 2:Setting UP
-> Setting Up  , I won't recommend setting up Android account  or personal accounts in such old hardware, so do not sign with google ID  , better browse the internet and download the Lite or Mini Versions of the Essentials Apps .apk files and Install it  like UC mini for Web Browser , MX Player for VIdeo , Google Go apps Series for Google Services 

My Purpose was to use the Tablet for Reading Purpose So i used Lithium Epub Reader to read epub files  of ebooks and foxit PDF reader for PDF

Step 3: Transfering Data In and Out
-> with all the Apps set up its time to load the content if the content is available in the browser you are good to go but if you are Money saver who dont buy , or pay for Music, streaming services and use your Geeks Skills to get hands on the content [Try Telegram ;)] the best cross platform and Simultaneous Sync service and move content in and out with the use of Cloud  i would recommend using Telegram messenger for transfering Movies , pdf books and links across digital devices

Step 4: Switch off all the Non essential Settings
-> to reduce the battery drain and improve performance switch of settings like wifi scanning, check for software updates, and other irrelevant settings 


i have almost a dozen of different electrical devices which have a lot of their life left and can be reused for some other purpose until they die of their natural death and can be disposed of Properly [Will find a proper e-disposal and recycle service in my region] lets see which all device get resurrected :)

Here is the Pic of my New E Book Reader

Hard Drive Failure !

Last to last week Finally my Hard Drive Failed which i wasn't expecting this soon as the Bad  sector Reallocation count as well below the Threshold Value  but it just happened All of sudden when system froze and when i tired to reboot it kept on freezing without booting up ..Even Ubuntu Didn't boot up because of the Disk Failure

Left with no option I rushed to the market and got Samsung EVO 850  ssd 250 gb to replace my HDD....(SSD are really expensive in comparison to HDD ) After which the real trouble started when the system Image I created in windows didn't load up in SSD due to its smaller size(although the size of image was still smaller than ssd size) so after 2 DAYS of multiple time swapping of in and out of ssd and trying to bring back my old HDD to life by re-writing the drive with its own image using external adapter and then Migrating my OS along with software's to SSD  . I was Finally Back up and running on my PC

Although still trying to figure out how to keep up with 250 gb space on SSD. ...So after a big hole in my pocket in buying ssd and days of troubleshooting the System has speed up phenomenally with power up to launching chrome in 25 sec and all apps launching withing 2-3 seconds even Visual Studio !! Love the new Speed and performance improvement

Hope PC stays like this for long time  :)

Pics of Me replacing HDD

Disk Crash !

Everything was up and running fine until last Tuesday when my Laptop Suddenly froze while i was working on some C# application in Visual Studio . I waited for about 4-5 minutes for system to become responsive again as I couldn't power it down as i had unsaved work in background ..Since it was around 3:00 AM in midnight so i thought that this might due to background windows 10 update being installed automatically (default timings are between 3-4 AM in most of Windows Devices)
After waiting for a little longer the system did became responsive again but the performance was so sluggish that i had to call it a day and shutdown the system  .

The Next Day when I booted up the PC the Thinkpad Diagnostic gave a beep during the error and when I ran the Diagnostics i showed that the S.M.A.R.T status had Failed ...WHAT ..it had been only two years since i got that HDD and my Disk is Failing now ..Back in Windows when i Ran Crystal Disk Info I got this result

Seeing that my Drive had got some bad sectors ...I immediately backed up all my drive and Data ..and created an Windows Image in case the drive fails completely (took about 8 Hours to complete the process ) and did some search online ..turns out sooner or later i have to get my Drive replaced in case the Bad Sector Count Increases ..(Will Upgrade to SSD :D ) but seeing the Cost of SSD I'm holding back the replace and taking the chance to run the Drive until the Bad Sector count reaches 2-3 or the system crash/freeze become intolerable ...So lets see how long the drive will work properly .

PS : Upgrading to SSD will be literally  like driving a Car on Nitro All the time ..pretty excited about ..if the upgrade happens 

Backups ,System Updates & Partitioning

With the Windows 10 Anniversary update coming this week and the current version giving me a hard time with lots of bugs like (frame freeze in the Movie Player when resized, Sudden Wi-Fi loss due to DHCP client crash and delay in reading my fingerprint during login by windows Hello ) . I finally had a chance to fix all this in one go with the Latest Redstone update.

As I began to download the update (the offline setup as i don't trust my internet connection for a direct live update: P)  It came to my thought that apart from my regular backup updates inside Windows ,I should create a system image as a last restore option as I couldn't risk losing all my progress on my Internship Project .So i started the windows image tool which ran for about a minute or so but kept crashing due to some conflict in Windows Shadow Copy Function 0x8078012D 

After an hour of searching i found out that it   due to Less Space in System Reserved Partition which I resolved using the tool : http://www.minitool.com/partition-manager.html

With 1 hour of downloading 2 hours of installation and next 2 hours in system maintenance and Disk Defragment I was back On my system that was  much faster ,stable  , and better in interface ( although the fingerprint reader completely stopped working after the update ). Looking Forward to update my Linux Ubuntu to 16.04 LTS update as soon as my Internship Project is complete.