Database Users

Don't bother with anything above class 2 microSD cards

I bought a class 6 card and popped in the N1 and started copying files via USB... except it peaked out at 2mb! wtf, thought I, have I been screwed?
Pop it in a SD adapter, plug it into laptop.... copies at 8.5mb/sec
It would appear that the Nexus One itself limits the speed of sdcard writes. There is no point putting anything other than class 2 into the N1.
What a let down

Well the point is internal write speed, not external. Example would be taking a 720p video where you need fast write speed.

evilkorn said:
Well the point is internal write speed, not external. Example would be taking a 720p video where you need fast write speed.
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+1
Also the problem of slow write speeds has also already been discussed in multiple threads. Pop my sd card into my old touch pro 2 and it copies files 5 times quicker than my nexus

[Q] HD Video Recording Jerky, Because Of Class Of SD Card?

Howdy, I tried to film the aftermath of the bizarre weather we've been having here in Scotland yesterday, but I noticed that when I played it back, even converted it to an HD Avi and ran it through VirtualDub that at certain points the video lags and freezes, the sounds remains the same but the picture will pause for a second. I'm assuming (based on some research on Google and here) that it's because the memory card I'm using was the basic Class 2 that was shipped with the phone. Assuming I buy a Class 6 or that, the card will be fast enough to write HD video to it? I'm just wondering if any of you have had these problems, and/or does a higher class SD card fix it? (before I buy one!). Or, is it for a separate reason on the Desire Z that the video is jerky? Thanks! Below is my video should you want to see an example!
http://youtu.be/XX0zKKDRtUI?hd=1

Yes the class can have a massive impact on HD recording on this phone (and others), get a class 6 and you should soon see the differences.

Lennyuk said:
Yes the class can have a massive impact on HD recording on this phone (and others), get a class 6 and you should soon see the differences.
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Thank you, I shall, I just wanted to make sure! On a side note, if I change my memory card does Android get confused because of how it "deals" with the SD Card? (I'm coming from five years of Windows Mobile & I know they had no issues with SD Cards being swapped) but I noticed Android "Prepares The SD Card" whenever you unmount it or that.. Is it a straight forward swap and everything's working or is it a hassle of reinstalling certain things? Thanks!

salemfox said:
Thank you, I shall, I just wanted to make sure! On a side note, if I change my memory card does Android get confused because of how it "deals" with the SD Card? (I'm coming from five years of Windows Mobile & I know they had no issues with SD Cards being swapped) but I noticed Android "Prepares The SD Card" whenever you unmount it or that.. Is it a straight forward swap and everything's working or is it a hassle of reinstalling certain things? Thanks!
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I only ever copy files over, never had any issues doing that.

Lennyuk said:
I only ever copy files over, never had any issues doing that.
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Perfect thanks! I'm away to buy one, I assume that a higher class will improve the frame rate too! Thanks for your help!

Mine even stops recording after 13 seconds or so. Also have an older 16GB Class 2 card. I'm also getting a good Class 6 one.
Regarding files on the sdcard: Just copy everything from your old card to the new one. If you are using linux, be sure to also copy the hidden directories

dicer42 said:
Mine even stops recording after 13 seconds or so. Also have an older 16GB Class 2 card. I'm also getting a good Class 6 one.
Regarding files on the sdcard: Just copy everything from your old card to the new one. If you are using linux, be sure to also copy the hidden directories
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Thank you, shall do! I'm just waiting on it now!

I have a 16Gb Class 6 card and have noticed the same thing with my HD video recordings being choppy.
I attributed it to other things going on such as data downloading or the system splitting resources to keep other balls in the air at the same time.
I can live with it, but would like it to be better as well.
I don't think the Class 6 card will make a difference for you, but it can't hurt either.
As to switching microSD cards, there's no issue with that. I don't know what happens behind the scenes when it's 'preparing the SD card' but the only issue I had was on the G1 when I was using apps2sd and have all of my apps on the ext3 partition.
I use a couple of different microSD cards regularly, no issues with swapping.
Good luck!

B73C said:
I have a 16Gb Class 6 card and have noticed the same thing with my HD video recordings being choppy.
I attributed it to other things going on such as data downloading or the system splitting resources to keep other balls in the air at the same time.
I can live with it, but would like it to be better as well.
I don't think the Class 6 card will make a difference for you, but it can't hurt either.
As to switching microSD cards, there's no issue with that. I don't know what happens behind the scenes when it's 'preparing the SD card' but the only issue I had was on the G1 when I was using apps2sd and have all of my apps on the ext3 partition.
I use a couple of different microSD cards regularly, no issues with swapping.
Good luck!
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I'm using a 8GB Class4 card, same situation.
I tried to disable Live Wallpaper, put the phone in Flight Mode, close all user background program, overclocked to 1.4GHz. still lags.

If you change to the resolution just below the HD level then the videos record smoothly even on my 8gb class 2 card.
Does formatting the SD card with a different allocation unit size increase performance? Can anybody with a spare mini SD card test this -- the higher the size the better the performance (but more space gets eaten up by small files). The general idea with this is if the aus is small it conserves file space but you get slower read/writes -- if the aus is higher you get faster read/write but files take up more space.
I wonder if there is a good alternative video recording app that would handle the recording better...?

ayewhy said:
If you change to the resolution just below the HD level then the videos record smoothly even on my 8gb class 2 card.
Does formatting the SD card with a different allocation unit size increase performance? Can anybody with a spare mini SD card test this -- the higher the size the better the performance (but more space gets eaten up by small files). The general idea with this is if the aus is small it conserves file space but you get slower read/writes -- if the aus is higher you get faster read/write but files take up more space.
I wonder if there is a good alternative video recording app that would handle the recording better...?
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Ah that's a good point if anyone has one spare!
Yeah, the 480 works fine on my standard SD too!

B73C said:
IAs to switching microSD cards, there's no issue with that. I don't know what happens behind the scenes when it's 'preparing the SD card' but the only issue I had was on the G1 when I was using apps2sd and have all of my apps on the ext3 partition.
I use a couple of different microSD cards regularly, no issues with swapping.
Good luck!
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Perfect, thank you!

For info i had bought a Kingmax class10 8gb, to swap with the supplied one but
after a 10 hours use of my desireZ, i had a message "sd card is read only"(corrupted files on it, in fact), at that time i used only googlenavigation/Layar/whatsApp as software "using Sdcard" and took 2 or 3 pictures with the camera for testing.
perhaps it's a single defective unit, but for feedback and history purposes, i post that

Micro SD class speeds

I know the differences between the classes, but I'm more concerned about how the speeds effect some what I do on the phone. Currently I have a 16gb Samsung C2 that I took from an Epic. It seems to be working ok, just nothing to write home about. I am thinking about getting a 16-32gb c4 or higher. I'm just curious about what gains I would see
*would the camera be any quicker?
*I assume the gallery would be quite a bit quicker, can somebody verify?
*I use my phone as an mp3 in my car, would the lists load faster? as a player its just fine but it takes a while to load all the artists/albums, which is annoying when I am driving. I thought those were indexed but would a better card help that?
*any other daily activities that would see a direct effect?
I searched, but most people just asked questions I already knew. Thanks

Gibs679 said:
I know the differences between the classes, but I'm more concerned about how the speeds effect some what I do on the phone. Currently I have a 16gb Samsung C2 that I took from an Epic. It seems to be working ok, just nothing to write home about. I am thinking about getting a 16-32gb c4 or higher. I'm just curious about what gains I would see
*would the camera be any quicker?
*I assume the gallery would be quite a bit quicker, can somebody verify?
*I use my phone as an mp3 in my car, would the lists load faster? as a player its just fine but it takes a while to load all the artists/albums, which is annoying when I am driving. I thought those were indexed but would a better card help that?
*any other daily activities that would see a direct effect?
I searched, but most people just asked questions I already knew. Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have a 16gb class 4 and I haven't noticed any significant increase in speed from a 8gb class 2 card both were from sprint don't know the name of them yet
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

Class 4 cards will record HD without any hiccups. Class 2 skip all day long, because they can only right at 2mb a second which is far to slow for HD.

thanks for the info.

I just put a 16GB Class 6 card in my Evo and it more than doubled the write speed and more than tripled the read speed. I had the stock SD card that came with the phone. I believe it was an 8GB Class 2 SD Card.
I do alot of flashing of new ROMs and such, so the increase in write speed is very noticable when copying files to the SD card. I use to hover around 1.9-2.0MB/sec and now I'm seeing 4-5MB/sec write speeds.

[Q] MicroSD Suggestions

Do you use a MicroSD? What kind? I'm shopping for one and can use some suggestions... From cheap to expensive... Preferably cheap (;
16gb or 32gb
Class rating, I'm not sure. Are there any consideration for this on the tablet?
Ordering from NewEgg so if you have a link for one there, post'em.

Don't go too cheap. With stuff like this you do get what you pay for to some extent.
Sandisk, Patriot, Kingston, PNY, Sony etc are all brands I've had luck with. At present I've got a 16GB PNY. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820178378
I got it for a higher price a while back, but no problems here in my Gtablet, A500, PC or either of my 2 laptops, one of which runs Debian 6.0

I get mine from Amazon, since I get free 2 day shipping with Amazon Prime. Picked up a Sandisk for a little over $56.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003WGJYCY

Is there a difference between SD and SDHC? And what about class?

Heres what im looking at-
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220547&Tpk=microsd
2x32gb for 80'ish which seems like a good deal to me considering 1 goes for near 70... or am i reading that wrong... wife could use one for her hand me down archos 101.

gammaRascal said:
Is there a difference between SD and SDHC? And what about class?
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SD is limited to 2GB, SDHC was the newer standard, supporting up to 32GB. SDXC is the newest, but I don't think there is a micro form factor yet and I don't imagine our devices have SDXC controllers in them. I may boycott SDXC for using proprietary exFAT as the recommended filesystem too.
Class is a speed based thing. Class = minimum write speed in MB/s(technically a multiple of 8Mbps). So Class 2 = 2MB/s. Class 10 = 10MB/s. Write speeds. Keep in mind reads will be faster usually.

Awesome, thanks for that concise explanation.
Does the tablet have a maximum class rating? Will it bottleneck on class 10? I'm looking at the class 6 as a minimum.

Well, maybe class 4... I just want to store my music on it and have it as some extra storage. Class 4 should be fast enough, eh? I wont be moving apps to it - ill keep those on the primary storage. But for playing music, accessing pictures, class 4 seems like it would fast enough for that.
Thoughts?

Folks,
Also, I have been using SDHC's and microSDHCs for a while now and it
has been my experience that sometimes there a little incompatibilities.
Even good brands sometimes don't seem to work for some reason.
I'm saying, pick your best choice, but that doesn't GUARANTEE it
will work. Need a little good fortune also!!!
Rev

Okay, I'm ordering:
Kingston 16GB Micro SDHC Flash Card w/USB Reader Model MRG2+SDC4/16GB
$32.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139195&cm_re=microsd-_-20-139-195-_-Product

I wouldn't pay any extra for anything beyond class 6 or so for a tablet. If a 10 was on special for a really good price maybe, or if you shared it with a camera that needed a class 10 maybe get one.
I suppose we could port hdparm or bonnie to our tabs and run it from adb shell or busybox and see if different class cards got different rates.

I got my SD card a few days ago - the one I linked to two posts up.
Plugged it in (has a usb sleeve) and moved a few songs onto it, put it in the tablet, started the tab, started Google Music and it saw them all. Shut down, moved about 8 gig of music onto the card, plugged it back into the tab, booted, launched Music, took a few seconds but it saw them all, played some and everything is golden.
I'll check in if I ever have any issues.
Thanks for the help folks!

I realize you already got your card, but figured I'd throw in one extra piece of info in the event that anyone stumbles upon this thread in a search at a later date.
You asked a question about class and an early poster provided some great info about what SD card classes mean. I think it's important to note that the class you need depends on the intended usage of the card. High speed cards (those with high class ratings) are most important for applications that require you to write large amounts of data in short amounts of time. The best example of this is photography. Rapidly taking high resolution images requires that a ton of data be written to a storage medium very quickly. As such, you'll see class ten cards in a lot of cameras.
If you intend to do things like store documents, music, etc. on the card - primarily for consumption - you don't need high speed.
One thing to note - if you write to the card a bunch (throw a few new hd movies on there every couple days) you will appreciate a better write speed. Also, picking up a higher speed card means that it can be used for a number of different applications (sharing with a camera for example). Given that there often is only a slight difference in price between a low speed and a higher speed it's usually a better deal to get a higher speed card (the flexibility and time savings are worth a few extra dollars).

Good info. Thanks for chiming in!

just a small FYI ...
with froyo ... SDcard IS SDcard & you can APP2SD or used what I have sworn by -->> MOD INSTALL LOCATION ( in phone forums )...etc
Now.. we have HONEYCOMB... and it partition a little differently. ( although I believed it's the manufacturers that have the final saying... based on the comparision between the Acer & the Asus )
the 2 read your physical SDcard like this:
Asus -->> REMOVABLE
Acer -->> EXT microSD
Your EXT SDcard is only good for storing data/medias ...etc ( currently apps cannot be install on the physical card.
your whole internal is actually partitioned into 2 areas
/ 1 small part for the OS/ROM ..etc
/ the LEFTOVER is actually read as THE SDcard !!!
use a file manager and explore the directories structure to see what I mean !!
so ... 2 future solutions:
1/ XDA DEVs will find a way to let us install to a preferred location. ( and they will !!... in due time )
2/ application developers just have to write their new programs to accommodate Honeycomb ..etc

SD Card is So Freaking Slow!

I have a PNY U3 Turbo Performance 64GB High Speed MicroSDXC Class 10 UHS-I, up to 90MB/sec Flash Card. It seems to get slower with time. I mean it is literally taking me like 60 seconds to delete a few pictures. The card is formatted to portable storage. I only store music and photos on it. Reformatting offered no improvement. It is borderline unusable.
So, I benchmarked and found that my read speed is about 59 mb per sec and my write speed is 4.4 mb per sec. I can live with the read speed but the write speed is horrible. What gives?

How many pictures are you talking about, and how large are they?

128KB clusters?
I found trying to use 4K clusters in exfat was resulting in the same slowness. Reformatted to 128KB clusters and it flys (~20MB/s write ~70MB/read). Sandisk ultra plus 64GB.

I have this issue as well I have one of the fast Samsung cards. First few months worked great super fast but now takes a while to carry over a gig of pics and music. I also notice lag in loading and delteing photos through the phone

These are normal pics 5-6 MB. There has to be something wrong.

Irieone said:
These are normal pics 5-6 MB. There has to be something wrong.
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If you find any info/solution let us know.
Im thinking about running it through one of the tests that show the read/write speed, if its not up to par on that I will contact samsung see if its covered under their warranty.

Why not opt for a 128GB sd card? My Moto X Pure will be here Thursday. I have a 64GB in my old phone but I may get 128.

Has the OP tried backing up their data and reformatting the card?

gpz1100 said:
Has the OP tried backing up their data and reformatting the card?
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Yes, I have tried this a few times and it did not help. The write speed of this particular card is somewhere between 5 and 9 mb/sec. I have used multiple benchmarking tools that all confirm the same thing. The sad thing, if you drill down into the specifications for a lot of these new sd cards there is no mention of write- speeds. I asked a question similar to my OP on Reddit and had somebody with the same card echo my issue. Terrible write speeds. I am not in the mood to buy another card with great specs only to find it performs poorly in my phone? There is still a part of me that thinks it's hardware or software related and specific to the phone. I can't quite believe that something advertised as "turbo", UHS-1, Class 10, and 90 mb/sec has an actual write speed of 5 mb/sec. It seems criminal.

^^See my post #3. I've found this card to have very good write speeds on the phone of ~14-16 MB/s, reads around 40-50. On the pc through a usb 3 card reader I can write at the speeds posted above.
But yes, unless you drill down, the marketing and advertising doesn't list write speeds. I can see why. It all depends where you'll be using it. I'll be lucky to see sustained 10MB/s read through my dash cam (not sure what the write speed even is) even through the card is capable of 40MB/s +.
I should say, using the moto x, through MTP, I've seen read speeds upwards of 35-40MB/s, write speeds of about 7-10MB. The card is faster through twrp, backup stats indicate ~14-16MB/s.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/moto-x-style/general/micro-sd-speed-chart-t3196020