I have the TMOUSA version, but I think this question would apply to all versions, and in fact to other phones as well.
I was just re-reading the excellent guide to storage card optimization by the great Windows Mobile guru (and XDA member) who writes under the name Menneisys:
http://www.smartphonemag.com/cms/forum/topic/17921?&TOPIC_ID=17921
That article was written a few years ago, though, with older WM versions, and older storage cards.
I am wondering if the info is still relevant, to a new phone like the HD2, with WM 6.5 and Sense, and the newer storage cards?
The 16MB storage card that comes with the HD2, although the newer SDHC type, is only Class 2, therefore relatively slow, compared to Class 4 and Class 6 cards. I am wondering if using any of the tweaks suggested in the article by Menneisys would speed up the card.
For instance, changing from FAT32 to FAT16? (FAT16 is really ancient now though, don't know if it would work well at all on newer cards and devices.)
Eliminating the FAT backup?
Also, by changing to a larger cluster size? (Which of course, would reduce the storage space, by adding more slack. But would it speed up the card's performance enough to make it worth it?)
Of course defragmentation is always a good idea, with any disk or card, old or new. That part of his advice is not in question, then or now.
But I am wondering about the other stuff--like changing to FAT16, eliminating the FAT backup, and changing the cluster size?
Anyone know? (Menneisys, are you reading? Others?)
Thank you.
well, without reading the link, (i'll save that till the kids are in bed) i can say that fat16 can't address 16gb, however re the cluster size, yes, that can deff help, especially if you have lots of fairly large files. if your card is mostly music images and video, then you can deff benefit from setting the size as large as it will go. it does mean tiny files will take up a whole block, of course, but if its mostly big files then go for it.
samsamuel said:
well, without reading the link, (i'll save that till the kids are in bed) i can say that fat16 can't address 16gb, however re the cluster size, yes, that can deff help, especially if you have lots of fairly large files. if your card is mostly music images and video, then you can deff benefit from setting the size as large as it will go. it does mean tiny files will take up a whole block, of course, but if its mostly big files then go for it.
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Very interesting article. Yes, do read it when you have a chance.
Yes, probably SDHC cards did not exist at the time of the article, nothing larger than 2 GB. So, sounds like the FAT16 option is out for current cards.
Do you know if that option of formatting a card with "no FAT backup" still makes sense on current cards? Is it a risky thing to do?
Regarding the cluster size-- most of us probably have both small and large files, not only one or the other. So, it is a trade-off between speed and storage space. What cluster size do you think is a good balance between the two?
never read anything about fat backup, so i couldn't say. as for block size, i use 16k on a 2gb card, which has 1gb of music and about 300meg images.
i would say the lost space is negligible on sdcards, even if you have a thousand 1k files, you only waste 16meg, so that's maybe 1/2 an mp3 album,, its only really an issue when dealing with hundreds of gig hard disks with tens of thousands of tiny system and program files. (just checked mine, theres only 250 files smaller than 32k, and only 120 less than 5k)
course, its a matter of preference, and i'm sure there are loads of people will say i'm wasting space and should be disowned from the community,, hehe
samsamuel said:
never read anything about fat backup, so i couldn't say. as for block size, i use 16k on a 2gb card, which has 1gb of music and about 300meg images.
i would say the lost space is negligible on sdcards, even if you have a thousand 1k files, you only waste 16meg, so that's maybe 1/2 an mp3 album,, its only really an issue when dealing with hundreds of gig hard disks with tens of thousands of tiny system and program files. (just checked mine, theres only 250 files smaller than 32k, and only 120 less than 5k)
course, its a matter of preference, and i'm sure there are loads of people will say i'm wasting space and should be disowned from the community,, hehe
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Read the Menneisys article, and he says it makes the card run a lot faster, to eliminate the FAT backup. (Something you can do with SK Tools.)
However, I would wonder if that would make the card less stable, more prone to data loss. Or, even whether a non-standard cluster size might make the card more flaky?
does wm 6.5 support exfat?
using 16G thumbdrive on win 7, exfat is wayyyy faster than ntfs.
I used the 8GB card at the beginning, switched then to a 16GB card class 6 and then to 32 GB class 2 and din´t find the slightest dfifference in speed, neither when recording videos with the cam in max resolution.
me said:
Read the Menneisys article, and he says it makes the card run a lot faster, to eliminate the FAT backup. (Something you can do with SK Tools.)
However, I would wonder if that would make the card less stable, more prone to data loss. Or, even whether a non-standard cluster size might make the card more flaky?
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Click to collapse
lets take a step back and think about what the FAT backup is. i believe it is another table that mirrors the contents of the primary table. essentially, it can be used to recover your file system table in case the primary backup is corrupted/lost. now lets think about WHEN this table is read. to the best of my knowledge, the backup is read ONLY if the primary is found to be corrupted. similarly, the backup is UPDATED/WRITTEN only when the primary is UPDATED/WRITTEN.
thus, any speed gain due to disabling the backup should be seen in WRITE operations ONLY. read speed should be not be affected by that tweak. i could be wrong though!
if i am correct, then try disabling the backup if you desire write speed. however, you will lose some of the "robustness" of the file system. and FAT (and its variants like FAT12, FAT16, FAT32) are already fairly fragile file systems.
regarding cluster sizes, a smaller cluster size means LESS wastage when having many SMALL files. a larger cluster size means MORE wastage when having many SMALL files. however, a smaller cluster size means MORE clusters to address, which means a LARGER allocation table, which means MORE TIME spent looking up/updating the table's contents. conversely, a larger cluster size means LESS clusters to address, which means a SMALLER allocation table, which means LESS TIME spent looking up/updating the table's contents. so the sweet spot would be somewhere in the middle. HOWEVER, most modern operating systems load the allocation table in MEMORY so i imagine the speed gain would be negligible. the fact that the table is managed in memory and periodically updated back to the disk is the reason behind most corruptions in a non-journaling file system like FAT.
i've over simplified things a bit, but it should give you an idea of what kind of gains to expect by such tweaking (i.e. little to none in my opinion!).
Again, I'd suggest reading the Menneisys article.
ASCIIker said:
lets take a step back and think about what the FAT backup is. i believe it is another table that mirrors the contents of the primary table. essentially, it can be used to recover your file system table in case the primary backup is corrupted/lost. now lets think about WHEN this table is read. to the best of my knowledge, the backup is read ONLY if the primary is found to be corrupted. similarly, the backup is UPDATED/WRITTEN only when the primary is UPDATED/WRITTEN.
thus, any speed gain due to disabling the backup should be seen in WRITE operations ONLY. read speed should be not be affected by that tweak. i could be wrong though!
if i am correct, then try disabling the backup if you desire write speed. however, you will lose some of the "robustness" of the file system. and FAT (and its variants like FAT12, FAT16, FAT32) are already fairly fragile file systems.
regarding cluster sizes, a smaller cluster size means LESS wastage when having many SMALL files. a larger cluster size means MORE wastage when having many SMALL files. however, a smaller cluster size means MORE clusters to address, which means a LARGER allocation table, which means MORE TIME spent looking up/updating the table's contents. conversely, a larger cluster size means LESS clusters to address, which means a SMALLER allocation table, which means LESS TIME spent looking up/updating the table's contents. so the sweet spot would be somewhere in the middle. HOWEVER, most modern operating systems load the allocation table in MEMORY so i imagine the speed gain would be negligible. the fact that the table is managed in memory and periodically updated back to the disk is the reason behind most corruptions in a non-journaling file system like FAT.
i've over simplified things a bit, but it should give you an idea of what kind of gains to expect by such tweaking (i.e. little to none in my opinion!).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
These tests might be of some interest to you.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=756781&highlight=card+speed+test
Recently, I've been using my Leo to view scanned maps, large JPEG files 10 to 20 MB, something like 3000x5000 pixels or bigger. Of course, in order to see the full details, I need a 100 %zoom, that is - pixel to pixel. The problem is, no picture viewer or manager I tried, allows me too see those maps in full. Here are some problems :
1. HTC albums - the Zoom In function is limited to 50% or worse, there are a couple of threads here about that - none answered with a solution
2. Default Windows Mobile viewer goes to 100% from the Zoom Toolbar , but if I try to move in another portion of the image after a few moves, or after Zoom Out - it says "Cannot complete the requested action. Out of memory". In Task Manager I see Pictures & Videos is using maximum 10.5 MB of RAM (while I still have 250 Mb free). From there on, there nothing useful can be done with it, it keeps saying the "Out of memory ..."
3. Resco Photo Manager 7.10 - for large files it has the same limited Zoom In as HTC Albums, although in a more perverse way : the view is pixelated at 100% - which means is a fake 100%. In Task Manager I see Resco Photo Manager tries hard not to use more than ... 3 MB of RAM !!! There's no setting for the amount of RAM that can be used by the software ...
So the question is : is there a picture viewer who can take advantage of the great hardware of HD2 ?
I suspect that its due to the very large size of the files you are viewing a 10 or 20 mb file the phone needs much more space than that available to be able to view it - no different on a PC
at default its not viewing at 3000x5000 pixels more like 800 X 600
In Windows XP, I see the default Pictures and Videos Viewer (rundll32.exe) takes 210MB for a 20 MB jpeg file.
So there is enough room in HD2's memory. Maybe WinMo imposes a RAM limit on processes, like XP's limit of 1.5 GB, but much lower ...
Anyhow, I can't understand why the image viewer don't selectively load only the portion of the file displayed on screen ... if RAM is too low.
The conclusion is : no good image viewer under WinMo 6.5
So I have enabled the my interests wallpaper which changes high def wallpaper every few hours. I am liking it so far..the problem is that I cannot find where these wallpapers are being saved at. Given that a new one is downloaded every 3 hours, it is my concern that this will take a bite out of my internal storage. I have located the "Image" folder in the gallery but this only have 7 images and none that I have ever seen so I am thinking these are the stock Samsung images.
Anyone have an idea where these images are stored at?
The images are probably stored in RAM after its downloaded and then kept in cache temporarily for future use without re-downloading it again. I imagine it wont be a big file so you wont see a dip in ur internal storage. Luckily, our Note 4 has it's SD-card option for another 200GB (or 128, 64, 32 & 16)
Okay so to start off, I was digging around in my phone a couple days ago (Keep in mind this is a white 16 gig S4 on CM13). And i stumbled across a weird folder, it was a faded one (I did have hidden files on). So I tapped and opened the folder, and for some reason, It was loading so slow (s4s pretty fast storage wise for me), but that slowed it down.
And as ES File Explorer was showing me, there was 44,000+ files. In that very folder alone. So I wondered what it could be (was a ton of old stuff I knew I had deleted).
But the strange thing about it is, once I selected each and every photo, the total amount of storage space used made no sense, it was using 24.6gigs of storage.
My phone remember is only a 16 gig model. But the folder took up 24.6 gigs, and I know it wasn't the sd card, since that was practically full of other things and wasn't in the phone at the time. After moving or trying to move it all to windows, I wound up with about 7000+ photos and 2 12+ gig files that can't be opened nor used at all. it gave me about a gig and a half back in storage as well. (phone has about 6-7+ used with 1.94 or 2.40 left after clearing cache and what not.)
What I'd like to know, has anyone had this 'issue' before as well or do they know what it could be?
I found it in DCIM>Thumbnails. Any information would be very helpful. It still bogs me as to why that happens.
it's function is for gallery apps to show thumbnails. and for the size, maybe the files where a file representing your data partition? very strange.
RDChase said:
it's function is for gallery apps to show thumbnails. and for the size, maybe the files where a file representing your data partition? very strange.
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Hmmm, could be but my data partition is no where near that size. It could of been compressed files, but I'm pretty sure 24.6 gigs would equal a decent 10 or more gig file, and to add to that, after deleting that first one. Two more popped up, each at 25 and 26 gigs respectively, I have no clue what the issue is. But it's only present on cm 13. Cm14 and 14.1 do not give me that issue.
For some reason, I seem to be running out of space on my 128gb version of the OP5.
As you can see from the screenshots, System data shows as 28.8gb and in the Storage + Memory it states other is 38gb . This can't be true as the largest folder is my DCIM folder which is 36.8gb which is accounted for in the "Images and Videos" section.
I've had a look through myself at various folders and just don't understand where this 28.8gb is. My friend who also has a OP5 has this value at around 6 gb which is understandable for the OS, but this can't be typical as owners of the 64gb model would be complaining about this for sure.
Any suggestions? I'd rather not convert to uploading all my images to google photos to save space.
[Solution]
Thanks for the input but I realised there was an update for the app I was using to calculate storage use in terms of support for Oreo. I was under the impression Spotify was taking up 10-15gb of usage, but in actual fact it was just over 30gb. This clears things up.
Use this:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mobile_infographics_tools.mydrive
Used it once to know what took space on an S6 Edge when S Voice took 9 GB for nothing. You should be able to see what's the curlprit.