Database Users

Is a Class2 SD card sufficient for running Android?

Hi all,
I'm going to finally have some spare time this weekend and might even get to have a mess around with Android on my HD2 if I get lucky! My concern is that I have a 16GB Class2 microSD in my Leo and while looking at HD2 stuff on ebay came across this.
The seller states that Android won't run (properly?) on his 16gb Class2 and includes a Class6 8gb card aswell for this purpose.
What's everyone's experience with running Android on a slower card? From looking around I've seen people saying 'there isn't much difference' for most things but a lot of contridictions for others.
Thanks gang!

I have no issues with my Android build currently, and it's on a 4gb Class 2 SD card.
It does help having a faster one, but It's not the end of the world.
Phil

Have been testing out froyostone sense build on a 2gb class 2 card and it's like lightening So yes, would format first though otherwise you will get lag.

Cheers - yep I won't forget to format, been reading the threads while working this week... taken in loads of info, just need to find the time to actually get it rolling

I was wondering the same thing. I installed froyostone 08.07.2010 using miri Rom on stock radio on a friends hd2 and it freezes and comes back to life very often. Would a higher class sdcard solve his problem?

I think they guy on eBay is talking rubbish. I run darkstone's 2.2 perfectly well on a 16GB Class 2. A Class 4 would probably help a little bit, but I'm not that fussed really.
I'd be more concerned about getting dodgy copies of Transformers from them!!

murdaralph said:
I was wondering the same thing. I installed froyostone 08.07.2010 using miri Rom on stock radio on a friends hd2 and it freezes and comes back to life very often. Would a higher class sdcard solve his problem?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The whole OS and all animations etc, or just touch screen response?
If its the touch screen, that's a known issue and will be addressed in due course.
Phil

It's in german, but i guess u may figure it out.
h**p://***.chip.de/bestenlisten/Bestenliste-microSD-Karten--index/detail/id/867/

I have a kingston class 2 , not working.

qingcai said:
I have a kingston class 2 , not working.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A Little more information would be useful, what's not working about it? How's it formatted? Has it even been formatted and then had a new build copied to it?
Phil

i never had issues with a class 2 before... no SOD or anything... although after switching to class 4, there is noticeable speed. now in class 10, a lot faster. but no real issues in class 2 except a tad slower (but decent speed nonetheless)

I use the 16gb class 2 card and its quick with decent quadrant tests. I think its because android loads into ram (please correct me if I am wrong, ill search for this later). I think there are apps that read or write to folders on the SD card that would gain from speed of a class 6 or 10 card and if I am right about loading to ram the boot up time could receive a benefit.
Personally I am looking to get one just to access media faster and for taking pics and vids as there is a write delay that's typical with all phones. If it helps android in its current state the cool but I'm not in a rush. Development here have made great strides in making android snappy and android is an awesome is as it is for handling background tasks. Much to the credit of Linux but I find android to be a faster evolution then most mobile oses. Much to the credit of being open source and encourage community development. Nothing here is illegal but maybe some grey areas in closed source distributing which cyanogen had an interesting situation that was resolved quickly with Google's assistance.
But I am off topic now. Yes it would help with some things but don't break the piggy bank over it.
Hope my thoughts are helpful. It would be better to get feedback from those that have done it and get before and after boot, quad, and market download responsiveness tests. I may have a class 6 8gb card somewhere I can test later tonight. I would do fresh sdformatter formats with nothing but android on the card to get a somewhat standard benchmark.
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA App

Mine is 16gb class 2, with the latest fullram zimage, i score 29.2fps in neocore test
and can play sparta! very smooth, also the asphalt 5

kerman19 said:
The whole OS and all animations etc, or just touch screen response?
If its the touch screen, that's a known issue and will be addressed in due course.
Phil
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the touch screen. The SD card was quick formatted. Would that make a difference in the builds performance ?

I'm using a Kingston class 2, but it performs with 5,5MBs writing speed when used in a computer slot, so in practice its a class 5,5. Works great! Froyostone sense v1

pappadj said:
I use the 16gb class 2 card and its quick with decent quadrant tests. I think its because android loads into ram (please correct me if I am wrong, ill search for this later). I think there are apps that read or write to folders on the SD card that would gain from speed of a class 6 or 10 card and if I am right about loading to ram the boot up time could receive a benefit.
Personally I am looking to get one just to access media faster and for taking pics and vids as there is a write delay that's typical with all phones. If it helps android in its current state the cool but I'm not in a rush. Development here have made great strides in making android snappy and android is an awesome is as it is for handling background tasks. Much to the credit of Linux but I find android to be a faster evolution then most mobile oses. Much to the credit of being open source and encourage community development. Nothing here is illegal but maybe some grey areas in closed source distributing which cyanogen had an interesting situation that was resolved quickly with Google's assistance.
But I am off topic now. Yes it would help with some things but don't break the piggy bank over it.
Hope my thoughts are helpful. It would be better to get feedback from those that have done it and get before and after boot, quad, and market download responsiveness tests. I may have a class 6 8gb card somewhere I can test later tonight. I would do fresh sdformatter formats with nothing but android on the card to get a somewhat standard benchmark.
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You have experience with your G1, the class 6 I use on mine makes definite difference when running apps from your sd card. I've been alternating using my 16 GB Class 2 and my 8 GB Class 6 in my HD2 but I haven't seen any speed difference with android so I believe that it runs on the internal ram.

i think class 2 is enough

murdaralph said:
the touch screen. The SD card was quick formatted. Would that make a difference in the builds performance ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Touch Screen lag/freezing is a known issue right now and doesn't relate to the SD card.
It's being worked on.
Phil

I have a class 2 16GB sandisk drive and score 1578 in quadrant standard, that said i usually get write speeds of around 6MB/sec on my computer

i personally think it helps a bit ( i ws previously running Android off the 16GB class 2 card the HD2 came with) but experienced some lag when scrolling.
That said, it was an early build of Android so it was probably just that.
The thing is, 8GB class6 cards are relatively cheap to buy (i picked up an A-DATA 8GB class 6 for $21 canadian at CanadaComputers)
so..why not upgrade to the class6 card? I'm sure it wouldn't hurt and no matter what you'll experience at least have SOME sort of performance gain in other aspects (music, pictures, file managers, etc)

Smaller size sdcards work better then big sized sdcards (also known as high capacity)

OK so I've been running many version and builds of android since day one on my tmous hd2. At first it was with the stock 16gb sdcard, (till it got corrupted, LOL) so then I switch to a 2gb I had around. I have only formatted this 2gb card once in the begging and never again.many times I have deleted the android folder and many times I has switch to new builds ( I think I try everyones.latest I been using n very stable JDMS 1.3) n haven't had any issues. Like freezing or SOD. Now two days ago I help my friend with his and his wife's tmous hd2 with the 16gb card. So I did a fresh format fat32 then flash the same rom (ozDroid) and radio I been using for months. It results they are getting freezes and occasionally SOD. So for a test I took my wife's tmous hd2 with 16gb card did the hole setup an guess what the freezing and SOD is the more often..when I don't get any with my sdcard 2gb. Could there be an issue with high capacity cards. And could that be the reason why many tmous have the more problems with freezes and SOD
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA App

I use stock 16gb and dont have those issues.
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA App

this is common knowledge in the IT field. the larger the card, the more slowly it will write and access small files, such as the files needed to run android. take 100 small text files and copy them to a 256 thumb drive, and an 8 gb thumb drive. you can copy them all to the 256mb drive, and delete them all again, before the are all copied to the 8gb thumb drive. the 8 gb drive, will work much faster copying an .avi, or large file than the 256, but it sucks at lots of small files.
but it's good that you're posting your exp here. many people would not know this otherwise, and may stop experimenting with android due to frustration, when all they need is a $10 2gb card from walmart.
another couple tips when dealing with solidstate memory. just like a harddrive, files can become fragmented if you have multiple tasks or file transfers going at the same time. to avoid this, make sure each is done before starting another set of files. next, do not defrag solid state drives. they only have a limited amount of times they can read and write to each sector, and defragging, and excessive copying/deleting, wears down the material, and kills sectors of the drive. and last but not least, watch your battery. just as it says not to attempt an install with less than 50% battery, don't run your phone down to a dead battery when possible. because your booting of the microsd, it's constantly being accessed by read and write functions, and if the battery dies before it finishes writing, you get corrupted files, and you'll have to do your install all over.

No lockup or freeze with 16GB.

prking07 said:
I use stock 16gb and dont have those issues.
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same here. 16 gb SDHC, no problems.

I haven't noticed any difference between a Class 2 2gb, Class 2 16gb, or a Class 4 8gb - they all run about the same with not noticeable differences in boot time, smoothness, or SODs, even though the class 4 is 2x as fast.

hi guys,
before you post any comment, you can grab a none SDHC card, and do a comparison.
if you have benchmark software, please look at the "access time", the None-SDHC card always faster than the SDHC card. not the speed, but the access time.
after I change to 2GB SD Card, I never meeting any sleep, lag program with any version of roms.
if you don't have none-SDHC card, please do not make any conclusion.

16 gb class 10 kingston sdhc
works great
compaired a class 6 no name 8gb sdhc and the stock 16gb class 2 the class six lags less than the class 2 but the class 10 16 gb kingston is super fast

I am using class 4 8GB and 16GB, no diffrence found.

I can confirm, going from 16gb to 8gb, I've had far less issues with the 8gb card using the same setup. 0 SODs when I'd get them daily with the 16gb card. May or may not have anything or everything to do with it, but I'm sticking with the 8gb card. lol

My experience has been that performance has been about the same whether using a 2 GB SD card or a 16 GB SDHC. However, it seems that my 16 GB card was slower at one point because I had an excessive number of individual files on it. It's a double edge sword because you have all that capacity but the more you use it the slower it seems to run.

I had this issue aswell but I updated my radio to 2.12.xx.xx. and since then I have not seen any performance issue due to the SD card size.
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA App

qingcai said:
hi guys,
before you post any comment, you can grab a none SDHC card, and do a comparison.
if you have benchmark software, please look at the "access time", the None-SDHC card always faster than the SDHC card. not the speed, but the access time.
after I change to 2GB SD Card, I never meeting any sleep, lag program with any version of roms.
if you don't have none-SDHC card, please do not make any conclusion.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's very presumptuous of you.
I fixed all of my lag and screen freeze problems with a combination of setCPU settings, ADW launcher settings, and updating my radio rom.
Before I finished doing all of that this morning, I'd get a freeze from wake fairly often. Since then, not a single freeze, and trust me, I've been trying to get it to freeze up.
Believe what you will my friend, but punishing yourself with a 2GB card just seems silly when people are outright telling you that the size isn't the problem.
Good luck either way!

apallohadas said:
That's very presumptuous of you.
I fixed all of my lag and screen freeze problems with a combination of setCPU settings, ADW launcher settings, and updating my radio rom.
Before I finished doing all of that this morning, I'd get a freeze from wake fairly often. Since then, not a single freeze, and trust me, I've been trying to get it to freeze up.
Believe what you will my friend, but punishing yourself with a 2GB card just seems silly when people are outright telling you that the size isn't the problem.
Good luck either way!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes ur are right with the new builds and using setting and programs like setcpu or even auto killers will help eliminate this problems. But I I said in the first post was that high capacity cards tend to give u more problems, using my 2gb (I think all the way to 6gb is non high capacity) I have no need for such adjustments to whatever build I use..u can read post 2, is very well explain there.
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA App

My 32GB did worked only one time, after first reboot i cant use android. But 2gb works like a charm

[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?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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

[Q] Honeycomb on Nook running very slow

I'm running deeperblue's honeycomb off an 8gb sd card on my Nook Color. Everything runs extremely slow, even things as simple as checking email, accessing the web, etc.
Any suggestions?

nking79 said:
I'm running deeperblue's honeycomb off an 8gb sd card on my Nook Color. Everything runs extremely slow, even things as simple as checking email, accessing the web, etc.
Any suggestions?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try a different SD card. Cheaper cards are generally better for running a rom because they have a faster small block read/write speed. More expensive cards are better in nearly every other aspect then what you're trying to do. I run HC (Madcat's Hybird) of a class 2 4GB Sandisk card (about $15 at Wal Mart) and it runs great. My wife's running CM7 off an identical card. Both are perfect.

I'm running HC off a PNY 8GB class 4 card, which was $24 from Best Buy. Maybe I should try to format the card and start over? Should I install CM7 on the card as well? Not sure of the process to follow - can you provide a link?

I'll bet you need a different MicroSD card to solve your performance issue, as hockeyfamily737 mentioned above.
See this thread: SD Strange-results - or - How I learned to love CM7 on SD
to find out why.
This software : Crystal Disk Mark is what we are using to test card speed.
Office Max is having a sale on SanDisk class 2/4 MicroSD cards, 8 gig size, for 12.99 a piece until saturday, might want to see if there's one around you.
Having been in the situation you are in, the MicroSD card used makes a significant difference.
Also, try downloading the app "SD Speed Increase" by Diego Stamigni. Setting the cache size to 2048kb can dramatically improve performance on the card you are using now. It's one of my must-have apps for running android from the SD card on the Nook.
Edited to add:
I used to run the same honeycomb version you are, but I swapped over to Dualboot Phiremod / Honeycomb Image. I run it from the sdcard, and the phiremod version of cm7 is my new daily-driver. It's a great image, you might want to check it out.

also honeycomb isnt fully reeased for AOSP so the nook version is just a port of the SDK, also maybe try a class 6 sd card? you can get a class 6 8gig for like $18 of amazon, i use a class 6 and its very fast

[Q] WP7 don't support my memory card

I used a sandisk 8gb class 4 when I first installed wp7 but I thought I should make a dual boot and I bought a samsung 32gb class 10 microsdhc.
wp7 couldn't load and I got a message the memory card wasn't compatible...
right now I use android and everything works like a charm but I would love to do that dual boot.
I there anyway to fix that except buying a new card?

format card with SDFormatter v3.0, insert to phone and do hard reset with Volume Up and Down together and power up... maybe not help but you can try...
i use Sandisk 32 gb class 2 and card is very fast and stable under WP7, faster than Sandisk 8g class4 from original HTC 7 Pro device

totaly rad said:
I used a sandisk 8gb class 4 when I first installed wp7 but I thought I should make a dual boot and I bought a samsung 32gb class 10 microsdhc.
wp7 couldn't load and I got a message the memory card wasn't compatible...
right now I use android and everything works like a charm but I would love to do that dual boot.
I there anyway to fix that except buying a new card?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is a huge amount of info out there on what cards to buy, but none of it is 100%, it still might not work, and going for a class 10 card was probably the big mistake, dont get me wrong, some folk have them working, but generally WP7 tends to like class 2/4 and potentially 6 the best, its believed its to do with random access speeds which are usually lower on higher class devices
tthere has been some development with cards that install but sometimes reboot, some small reg tweaks have had a positive effect, but cards that do not work at all is going to be very unlikely to get working. you can format it all you like but the installer will clear all partition tables and set new partitions up, meaning it wont make much if any difference.
ive spent all week looking at new cards, crystal disk mark seems to be a good judge, but if you dig through the net at revews and forums you'll see why its very much hit or miss, the bench marks are all different. Bt the more you look at and the more a given card looks ok, the higher the chances of it working. Ill tell you saturday if mines any good, but i physically couldnt do any more in identifying a working card, so its an educated guess
in answer to your question, no, you need to install WP7 first, then partition it and install SD android, so unless you can get WP working you'll not dual boot them, send the card back, say it wasnt working with your camera or something