SD Memory - post Mango - Focus General

I have been using a Sandisk Class 2 32MB SD card in my Focus since pre NoDo. It was pretty unstable before NoDo. After NoDo it was quite stable but occasionally was a little sluggish when scrolling through tiles on the Start screen. The data speeds in WP Bench were quite different between internal and storage memory, with the internal memory being 3-4X as fast. After installing Mango the system is much snappier and the internal and storage speeds are identical at 13.07 MB/s. I think it is safe to say that they have solved most of the problems with SD memory cards.

RGBell said:
I have been using a Sandisk Class 2 32MB SD card in my Focus since pre NoDo. It was pretty unstable before NoDo. After NoDo it was quite stable but occasionally was a little sluggish when scrolling through tiles on the Start screen. The data speeds in WP Bench were quite different between internal and storage memory, with the internal memory being 3-4X as fast. After installing Mango the system is much snappier and the internal and storage speeds are identical at 13.07 MB/s. I think it is safe to say that they have solved most of the problems with SD memory cards.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The sluggishness you mention usually happens just after reset.
As for snappiness, I'd say thanks to Mango, I believe everyone will agree.
For WP Bench result, I'd say contact the author, because for a Class 2 card, you should be getting 2-4 MB, and it's probably hitting both tests in Internal Memory. Considering the mSD card is an extension of the internal mem, the logic behind choosing it might be slightly off. Everyone else with a Class 2 should be expecting 2-4 MB on the card results, that's the card's actual speed.

Related

[Q] microSD card problem

Hello,
I installed Android on my HD2, worked perfectly for 2 weeks. But my microSD was only 2GB, so I buyed a new one.
Kingston class 4 8gb microSD. Putted everything just on the new SD card, didn't changed anything! Formatted it also to FAT32.
Now the problem is that Android is VERY slow with getting out of standby, takes sometimes 10 seconds. I get a black screen for 10 seconds and then Android comes up.
Also starting up Android takes ages and it sometimes just freezes or gives a blue screen.
Has this something to do with Android or is the microSD card broken in a way? I can still move/delete files on the microSD card.
Anyone got at solution?
Thanks
Did you try a different build? Perhaps try Mdeejay rEVOlution build, fastest build i've used so far,very very fast, smooth and stable. Also try updating your radio.
I bet there are several utilities to test the read and write speeds on your microSD card. You'll need a cardreader in your pc to do that, trying it through WM6 won't work because the USB will be the one controlling the max speeds.
I hope this helps a lot of people struggling with the speed of android running off SD.
My suggestion is that the card size, and not just the card speed plays an important part in the speed at which android runs...
My Evidence. I first installed various builds on a variety of Sandisk 2GB and 4GB Class 2 cards. They all ran super fast... I mean no lag at all, ever. It might as well have been a Desire HD. Being that i wanted more space I used my 16GB Sandisk Class 2 that I have been using for WM, reformatted it and installed android. It was cripplingly slow. Unusable in fact. (i tried reformat/reinstall a couple of times before giving up). I then invested in a Class 4 16GB and installed the same build. Not surprisingly this was faster, usable but still not as fast as it was on the 4GB Class 2. I am going to go back the the 4GB card unfortunately until NAND arrives.
Murg
murgers said:
I hope this helps a lot of people struggling with the speed of android running off SD.
My suggestion is that the card size, and not just the card speed plays an important part in the speed at which android runs...
My Evidence. I first installed various builds on a variety of Sandisk 2GB and 4GB Class 2 cards. They all ran super fast... I mean no lag at all, ever. It might as well have been a Desire HD. Being that i wanted more space I used my 16GB Sandisk Class 2 that I have been using for WM, reformatted it and installed android. It was cripplingly slow. Unusable in fact. (i tried reformat/reinstall a couple of times before giving up). I then invested in a Class 4 16GB and installed the same build. Not surprisingly this was faster, usable but still not as fast as it was on the 4GB Class 2. I am going to go back the the 4GB card unfortunately until NAND arrives.
Murg
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the reply!
First i'm going to test the Mdeejay rEVOlution build, hopefully it will run smooth and fast. If not, i'm gonna send back my 8GB card and get a new 4GB class 4 card.
At the moment I'm running Froyostone 3.2, works now perfectly with the 2GB microSDcard.
I will post the results.
murgers said:
My suggestion is that the card size, and not just the card speed plays an important part in the speed at which android runs...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I totally agree with this, although I cannot figure out why.
I tested with two almost identical cards, both Samsung class 4, one 2Gb, one 8Gb, formatted FAT32 64k clusters via the same memory card reader/pc. The 2Gb one whizzed along with the build I'm running now, the 8Gb one occassionally stuttered and stalled. Seems odd to me, unless fragmentation comes into play maybe?
The only reason I have stuck with the 8Gb is for my music. Oh how I'd love to stick with my 2Gb card for the speed and have a second SD slot for my music.

SD read/write speed causing lag on my HD2 but...

So I downloaded this app call H2testw.exe to test for legit sdcards but it also tells the read/write speed as well. I am testing my 8gb and 1gb cards. I set it to write a 300 mb files to the card and verify it.
Info about Android running on the two cards:
8gb = lags coming out of sleep, touch screen freezes, write~7.5 mb/s, read~12mb/s
1gb = no lags, no touch screen, write~4.3mb, read~13mb/s
I'm confused. The read speed is almost the same yet the 1gb microsd is more responsive running MDJ android compared to the 8gb microsd. Any thought?
UPDATE: Maybe this is what's causing the problem. Stolen from Engadget.
What we've learned from our tipsters and from documents culled from Microsoft, Samsung, and others is that the big issue is random access performance -- a figure that isn't taken into account in a card's class rating. Ironically, Microsoft discovered in its testing that cards with higher class ratings actually performed worse on Windows Phone 7 because the tweaks card manufacturers make to achieve high sequential throughput can actually hurt random access times. There's some rocket science involved here, but basically, it's a tradeoff and a bit of a gamble -- if a manufacturer tunes a card for a high class rating, it takes more time to access the first byte at a new location on the card because it's optimizing access for that area of memory, but once it does that, it can blast sequential bytes at very high speed. If you've got a lot of small reads or writes you need to make to different files at different locations in the card's memory, though, you really start to suffer. Cards with lower class ratings tend to spend less time optimizing sequential access prior to the first read / write operation, so it can move around the card (that is, access it randomly) much faster.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Source:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/17/windows-phone-7s-microsd-mess-the-full-story-and-how-nokia-ca/
They are probably different classes, plus it naturally takes longer with a bigger card because there's more files and more space to read and write
Sent from my HD2 Nexus One using XDA App
I get screen freezes with 8gb and up but rarely with new builds, haven't tried a card higher than class 6
Also I'm on radio 2.15
Sent from my HD2 Nexus One using XDA App
Oddly enough, I have two 8gb cards, one class 4 the other class 6, and they hiccup more than my 16gb class 2.
Now that is weird.
I'm lost myself...I'm thinking off just getting me a 4gb card and hope for the best...
I heard the 16gb class 10 is perfect but it still cost to much for nand to be around the corner
Sent from my HD2 Nexus One using XDA App
16 gb class 10 no lag cost me over 100 pounds tho
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App
Cheapest 16GB - lags from time to time :/
Maybe defragmentation may help?
tomus said:
Cheapest 16GB - lags from time to time :/
Maybe defragmentation may help?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Defrag wont help...scan for errors...try to have only the android folder and see if it makes a different ..
Btw, guys...
all sd cards are not created equal. all sd cards of the same CLASS are not created equal.
Check out the ongoing drama with win7 phones with SD slots....
class measures throughput, what affects the SOD and related issues is random access speed, not throughput so much.
It's just my 2 cents, but I've tested Class 2, 4, and 6 MicroSDHC cards and found very little noticeable difference once Android is fully booted up and running on the HD2. Moreover, none of the cards create screen freezes or SOD issues or high battery drain problems here. That said, I have noticed that the actual boot time and file transfer speed (from the PC to the card) can be faster on average with quality higher class rated cards of the same size. Also, I've found that the larger the card size, the longer the android boot time, no matter the class. Guess that makes sense, as the system need to read more sectors with larger size cards. Please note that I've only tested Sandisk, Toshiba, TopRam and Samsung cards to date. What's kind of strange is that the Class 2 16 & 32GB Sandisk cards run just as well or slightly better for some reason than some of my higher class rated cards. Go figure...
As far as issues go, I recommend only using quality brand name cards, no ebay fakes or cheap no name brands. Also, I've had great luck formatting all my cards with SD Formatter v2.0 and v3.0, using the quick format mode with the standard 32kb cluster size.
Best to all,
R
rhacy said:
It's just my 2 cents, but I've tested Class 2, 4, and 6 MicroSDHC cards and found very little noticeable difference once Android is fully booted up and running on the HD2. Moreover, none of the cards create screen freezes or SOD issues or high battery drain problems here. That said, I have noticed that the actual boot time and file transfer speed (from the PC to the card) can be faster on average with quality higher class rated cards of the same size. Also, I've found that the larger the card size, the longer the android boot time, no matter the class. Guess that makes sense, as the system need to read more sectors with larger size cards. Please note that I've only tested Sandisk, Toshiba, TopRam and Samsung cards to date. What's kind of strange is that the Class 2 16 & 32GB Sandisk cards run just as well or slightly better for some reason than some of my higher class rated cards. Go figure...
As far as issues go, I recommend only using quality brand name cards, no ebay fakes or cheap no name brands. Also, I've had great luck formatting all my cards with SD Formatter v2.0 and v3.0, using the quick format mode with the standard 32kb cluster size.
Best to all,
R
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Great info here. I think I will just order me a new card from a reputable brand. Maybe my card is just getting old. Maybe a 16gb from Amazon will do. They aren't too expensive nowaday. ~$26.
Does the Radio version effects the lag of the sd card? Or the kernel?
distruct said:
Does the Radio version effects the lag of the sd card? Or the kernel?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, not on the sd but radio does effect how the build will run, your phone calls, your battery.
Could this be the reason why class don't matter on hd2 android? I mean even some class 4 & 6 have lag and sod problem. I pulled this bit from engadget. It's an article on wp7 and memory card issues.
What we've learned from our tipsters and from documents culled from Microsoft, Samsung, and others is that the big issue is random access performance -- a figure that isn't taken into account in a card's class rating. Ironically, Microsoft discovered in its testing that cards with higher class ratings actually performed worse on Windows Phone 7 because the tweaks card manufacturers make to achieve high sequential throughput can actually hurt random access times. There's some rocket science involved here, but basically, it's a tradeoff and a bit of a gamble -- if a manufacturer tunes a card for a high class rating, it takes more time to access the first byte at a new location on the card because it's optimizing access for that area of memory, but once it does that, it can blast sequential bytes at very high speed. If you've got a lot of small reads or writes you need to make to different files at different locations in the card's memory, though, you really start to suffer. Cards with lower class ratings tend to spend less time optimizing sequential access prior to the first read / write operation, so it can move around the card (that is, access it randomly) much faster.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Source:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/17/windows-phone-7s-microsd-mess-the-full-story-and-how-nokia-ca/
azzzz said:
Could this be the reason why class don't matter on hd2 android? I mean even some class 4 & 6 have lag and sod problem. I pulled this bit from engadget. It's an article on wp7 and memory card issues.
Source:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/17/windows-phone-7s-microsd-mess-the-full-story-and-how-nokia-ca/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Obviously.
Been saying this for a while, myself - I have experimented, and I get SOD every time with my 16gb class 6 card, but rarely with my class 2 8gb, and never ever (and, tbh, better responsiveness overall) with my 2gb NON-HC card
enneract said:
Obviously.
Been saying this for a while, myself - I have experimented, and I get SOD every time with my 16gb class 6 card, but rarely with my class 2 8gb, and never ever (and, tbh, better responsiveness overall) with my 2gb NON-HC card
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I hope so...my class 2 16gb will be here in a couple of days...i hope it's faster than my current 8gb class 4....
Update: my 16gb class 2 sandisk is here. Things have improved alot. Wake up is faster now with less lag, market download speed is faster now (10kb vs 100kb). Hopefully system performance will be better...

SD Card Partitions

I have a Nook Color that is rooted running CyanogenMod 7.1.0 on internal memory. I have a 16GB Class 10 SD Card in it and was wondering what people are using for partitions on their SD Cards. I have pushed pretty much every app over to SD Card but some (not all) applications (Google Maps for instance) seem really sluggish and many times it force closes.
Is the Nook just not powerful enough to run Google Maps or is there something I need to adjust? Maybe a bigger swap partition? I set them up quite a while ago and don't recall what I set them to off the top of my head.
Using CyanogenMod I am overclocked to 1.2GHz with the Governor set to Performance.
VM heap size set to 48MB.
Thanks
class 10 cards are not as good as you'd think for any Android device. Android devices tend to write smaller files... a class 4 card (Sandisk recommended) is actually best for these devices.
DizzyDen said:
class 10 cards are not as good as you'd think for any Android device. Android devices tend to write smaller files... a class 4 card (Sandisk recommended) is actually best for these devices.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am mainly using Class 10 as that is what I had laying around in the Micro SD Card Format.
I have a 32 GB Class 4 in my Thunderbolt and it is fine. Do you really think it would slow it down much if it is Class 10? I could always toss it in an adapter and use it in my Canon T3i.
This thread here explains what the issue is and will tell you how to test your cards out to see if they'll work. Basically that Class10 card only gets Class 10 speeds when transferring large files and for small files (like an OS/app uses to write temp files) you get crap speed. it's not normally noticed in everyday use because the files are small and a little delay writing it isn't noticed by the user. Class 4 cards from SanDisk seem to be overall performers for files of all sizes.
- Aerlock
Aerlock said:
This thread here explains what the issue is and will tell you how to test your cards out to see if they'll work. Basically that Class10 card only gets Class 10 speeds when transferring large files and for small files (like an OS/app uses to write temp files) you get crap speed. it's not normally noticed in everyday use because the files are small and a little delay writing it isn't noticed by the user. Class 4 cards from SanDisk seem to be overall performers for files of all sizes.
- Aerlock
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm, that is interesting. Now does it matter that I am booting off internal memory? I am not dual booted and have CyanogenMod on internal memory. I am running Google Maps which is one of the programs that is really slow on internal memory. My guess is that what you are saying would apply because of the swap space being used on the SD card. I will say that my wife also has a Nook Color that I put my old 8GB Class 6 card from my old Nexus One in and hers seems to perform a little faster than mine. I haven't done the tweaks to VM heap size to hers that seems to have helped mine a little. So you may be on to something. I have a couple of these class 10 cards that I use on my Camera and have been happy with them. I think they are Samsung. The DSLR is 18MP so those files are pretty big so it might be just better to leave those cards for use there and get a couple of those SanDisk Class 4 cards for our Nooks.
Yeah, running apps from the sd would benefit from a fast sd card. When you get one, use CrystalDiskMark (pc) to check the 4k read/write speeds. I bought an 8gb and two 16gb Sandisk class 4 cards from Radio Shack that have reasonable speeds and work well. They're all in the .5 range for writes - not as good as some I've heard of, but they work well! Some (a Kingston and a knockoff Sandisk) I tested were as low as .006! I tried to use the Kingston before I tested its speed and got lots of instability and FCs. hth
Sent from my CM9 NookColor using Tapatalk

[No Root] Sdcard as internal storage.

You can use your Sdcard as internal storage on all 6.0+ devices.
Refer to this video:
https://youtu.be/D64UNGaAUoI
Don't forget to press the thanks button!
one thing to keep in mind: you'll want a fast card if you're planning on doing this. my sandisk UHS-1 cards has a speed of 30MB/s and I find it almost unusably slow for internal memory. simple reading apps took 10-15 seconds to load, and operating within the app was equally frustrating. formatted it and i just use it as storage, so everyone is happy
No cards are fast enough yet to make it worth the hassles, for me anyway
aviwdoowks said:
No cards are fast enough yet to make it worth the hassles, for me anyway
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm using a combination card, 30gb adopted, 90gb external. It's a Samsung uhs1 card. Definitely slower response from heavier apps stored there, but it's nice to offload stuff that I use less frequently or that doesn't need a lot of speed (utilities, eBook readers, etc) to maximize onboard storage for the apps that need it. I dump media to the external portion so it is usable on other devices should I need to do so.
if you're interested in seamless performance, check out the new A1 series that SanDisk is producing. It conforms to the new standard that states it should be as fast as internal memory when used as adoptable storage. http://www.droid-life.com/2017/01/05/sandisks-new-256gb-a1-microsd-card-wants-apps/

slow sd formatted as internal

Very slow sd speed formated as internal, what are you guys getting in a1 sd bench?
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.a1dev.sdbench
optionalmgrr.la said:
Very slow sd speed formated as internal, what are you guys getting in a1 sd bench?
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.a1dev.sdbench
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
"slow" means what speeds exactly for you?
strongst said:
"slow" means what speeds exactly for you?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Like less than 5mb/s
optionalmgrr.la said:
Like less than 5mb/s
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What SD card do you have installed, and is it a Class 10, or a UHS-1 or UHS-3? The type of SD card and what it's rated for will heavily impact your expected speeds, especially if you adopt the SD card.
Though my SD card is not formatted as internal storage (and thus not subject to encryption, which may slow down the read/write speeds), I'm getting similar speeds to what my SD card is rated at.
SD card: Sandisk Extreme 32 GB (UHS-3, v30 rated, up to 90 MB/s read, up to 60 MB/s write)
Formatted as: portable storage.
System: stock 7.0 June 2017 security patch, NPJS25.93-14-8.
A1 SD: 81.9 MB/s read, 51 MB/s write
echo92 said:
What SD card do you have installed, and is it a Class 10, or a UHS-1 or UHS-3? The type of SD card and what it's rated for will heavily impact your expected speeds, especially if you adopt the SD card.
Though my SD card is not formatted as internal storage (and thus not subject to encryption, which may slow down the read/write speeds), I'm getting similar speeds to what my SD card is rated at.
SD card: Sandisk Extreme 32 GB (UHS-3, v30 rated, up to 90 MB/s read, up to 60 MB/s write)
Formatted as: portable storage.
System: stock 7.0 June 2017 security patch, NPJS25.93-14-8.
A1 SD: 81.9 MB/s read, 51 MB/s write
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Uhs1 I wonder because encryption it bogs down the carx
optionalmgrr.la said:
Uhs1 I wonder because encryption it bogs down the carx
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's definitely possible as UHS-1 cards are rated for a minimum write speed of 10 MB/s. Encryption and being adopted as internal storage may decrease that write speed even further.
You could try formatting the SD card as portable storage, see if speeds improve (plus apps will behave better if they're kept on internal storage, widget work and they launch faster).
If you're still intent on adopting cards for internal storage, I would want to consider UHS-3 as a minimum rating on SD cards (minimum write speed of 30 MB/s). They're more expensive, yes - but the faster the speed, the fewer issues you may run into.

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