Database Users

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
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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!
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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

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.
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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
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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

MicroSD Duel: Sandisk Class 10 vs Samsung UHS-1

Hello,
I happen to have 2 fast microSD 64 gigabyte storage cards, and decided to run a benchmark test on each, using my International Galaxy Note II model GT-N7100. I thought there might be some interest on the forum in whether there's any significant performance difference between these cards on our devices.
The two cards are as follows:
- Sandisk Ultra Class 10 64gb microSD
- Samsung UHS-1 64gb microSD
Both cards are empty, and factory-formatted with the exFat file system. Prior to testing on my phone, I mounted each card in a USB 2.0 card reader attached to my Windows 7 laptop and did a full chkdsk with sector scan to verify the storage was as advertised and there were no problems. Both cards scanned as clean with no detectable problems.
My phone is running Android 4.1.1, using Samsung baseband N7100XXALJ2, kernel version 3.0.31-310959, with a build number of JRO03C.N7100XXALJ3.
This phone has never been rooted or flashed with a non-factory ROM.
The benchmarking program I chose to use was "SD Card Tester" version 1.0.5 as downloaded from the Google Play Store.
Each card was tested immediately after rebooting the device and waiting one minute for the system to fully stabilize. Power Saving mode was not active during these tests.
I ran each test 3 times. The results below are the average of the 3 tests per card.
Sandisk Ultra Class 10 (64gb) results:
13.68 MB/s read, 10.26 MB/s write
Samsung UHS-1 (64gb) resuts:
32.8 MB/s read, 14.65 MB/s write
I hope some of you find this information useful. If anyone has questions or suggestions for other ways to compare these storage options, let me know.
Sent from my GT-N7100 using xda premium

interesting..

Samsung :good:

I'm getting different results but with 32gb SanDisk class 10

Thx for that
Sent from my GT-N7100 using xda premium

I was getting worse results with my phone but considering the Sandisk only cost $40 I'm not overly concerned. So long as it doesn't die on me. The Samsung card is like double the price of the Sandisk.

Well, I've got a bit of a disappointing update as I've continued to work with these cards today.
Once you load up these cards with data, a lot of the performance advantage for the Samsung appears to go away.
I now have both of these cards about 33% full (same directories and files on each), and I'm finding no more than 1.5 to 2.5 MB/s measurable difference, either in writing or reading. Although the Samsung has remained the fastest in every test so far, it really isn't much of a difference at this point.
I'd like to understand why the Samsung card appears to suffer more of a performance drop than the Sandisk as the cards fill up, but can't hazard a guess right now.
The small differences I'm now seeing, both in tests as well as normal usage, certainly do nothing to justify the premium price of the Samsung card, IMO.
Sent from my GT-N7100 using xda premium

My results

ronj1986 said:
My results
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Click to collapse
Couple of comments:
1) You need to bump up the size slider to about 2150MB to get a reliable result. As you move the slider, a colored pop-up will turn green when you have reached a size that should yield "excellent" results.
2) Unless you have somehow swapped the internal & external storage cards on your device, your screenshot appears to show the results of testing your internal card rather than your external one.
If 2) is the case, here is a graphic showing how to select your external card (it can be somewhat tricky with this app, especially the "tap" called for in step one - I often have to double-tap rather than single-tap, and it usually doesn't work the first time or two I try it...).
Sent from my GT-N7100 using xda premium

New disappointing results

My 64gb class 10 SanDisk results:

TJCacher said:
Well, I've got a bit of a disappointing update as I've continued to work with these cards today.
Once you load up these cards with data, a lot of the performance advantage for the Samsung appears to go away.
I now have both of these cards about 33% full (same directories and files on each), and I'm finding no more than 1.5 to 2.5 MB/s measurable difference, either in writing or reading. Although the Samsung has remained the fastest in every test so far, it really isn't much of a difference at this point.
I'd like to understand why the Samsung card appears to suffer more of a performance drop than the Sandisk as the cards fill up, but can't hazard a guess right now.
The small differences I'm now seeing, both in tests as well as normal usage, certainly do nothing to justify the premium price of the Samsung card, IMO.
Sent from my GT-N7100 using xda premium
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Click to collapse
Can this be corroborated?

SANDISK Micro SDXC 64 Go
Writing : 17,06 MB/s
Reading : 31,35 MB/s

Karlfox said:
SANDISK Micro SDXC 64 Go
Writing : 17,06 MB/s
Reading : 31,35 MB/s
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How full is the card

SD Card Slot speeds

With black friday coming up, I'm looking for a large micro SD card. My main debate is through speed. I want the 128GB Sandisk microSD card, but it's capped to 30MB/s sequential reads, while the 64GB extreme goes up to 80MB/s. Can the tablet take advantage of those higher speeds? I want as little a difference between the internal memory and the external memory as possible. My only concern is 64GB may not be enough, as I download a metric ton of games, and I'm blowing through the internal memory. Basically, I'm asking for buying advice, and this is all very specific to the shield tablet. I have no other intended uses for the SD card.

I have a Samsung 64gb PRO up to 90mb/s and this is the result

Is that what the shield tablet is actually able to write at? If so, then it's worth it for the increased data loading in my games. That's my main concern. Also, how efficient is app2SD type transferring? I want to know if my SD card will be used effectively, or if I will still end up running out of storage space.

Nintonito said:
With black friday coming up, I'm looking for a large micro SD card. My main debate is through speed. I want the 128GB Sandisk microSD card, but it's capped to 30MB/s sequential reads, while the 64GB extreme goes up to 80MB/s. Can the tablet take advantage of those higher speeds? I want as little a difference between the internal memory and the external memory as possible. My only concern is 64GB may not be enough, as I download a metric ton of games, and I'm blowing through the internal memory. Basically, I'm asking for buying advice, and this is all very specific to the shield tablet. I have no other intended uses for the SD card.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There's a new version of the 128gb that rated 48mb/s. But if you want faster card you can only get them in 64gb. Like the Samsung pro at 90mb/s.

aznmode said:
There's a new version of the 128gb that rated 48mb/s. But if you want faster card you can only get them in 64gb. Like the Samsung pro at 90mb/s.
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Click to collapse
I'm afraid to ask how much this new 128GB model is. I can't justify spending $200 on a micro SD solely for tablet storage.

Nintonito said:
I'm afraid to ask how much this new 128GB model is. I can't justify spending $200 on a micro SD solely for tablet storage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I got one for my note 4 at $109. Might find good deals on black Friday
http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Memor...416866651&sr=1-1&keywords=128gb+micro+sd+card

Unfortunately this isn't available yet in canada

Mine is a Samsung 64gb UHS-1 pro, formatted with NTFS and 64gb cluster size:

Nintonito said:
Unfortunately this isn't available yet in canada
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Click to collapse
I see. But I think even at 48mp/s, it's not gonna be the same as internal. If you want something close then the Samsung Pro 64gb with 90mb/s is your best bet. But you are only going to match the read speed. The internal memory's write speed is still faster by 2x. But I really doubt you're going to care about that much if you're just transferring 1-2gb of data to the sdcard. And I'm assuming these are game data? Once those are transferred, it's pretty much done with. Even with my 64gb card now with 11.73 mb/s write speed is plenty fast when I move files to the card. If there are game saves that needs to write to the card, they are gonna be small data. I have about 20 game data on the SD card using Folder Mount and I don't find any issue launching them. The only one that I noticed takes longer is Half Life.

Yeah that definitely sounds good. Faster the better. I want a seamless experience.

Does anyone have experience with PNY sd cards? I saw one for $110 that's a 128GB card with 40MB/s sequential read speeds. How would the card perform, ans would it be enough?

Personally I don't think the extra speed will make that big of a difference. Those benchmarks provide controlled and consistent circumstances which are not realistic. Almost nothing you do on the tablet in normal use will push the read speeds. Tbh write speeds could be more important, as they are typically much slower then write speeds. I'm not saying read speed doesn't matter, but that there is certainly a diminishing return on speeds.
Sent from my SHIELD Tablet using XDA Free mobile app

http://www.amazon.com/Lexar-High-Pe...id=1417018420&sr=8-6&keywords=128+gb+micro+sd
Currently that's the fastest 128 GB card I've found, but you're going to pay for it out the nose. I'd vote to wait a bit and see if you can swing it with at 64 GB UHS card first, like the Samsung Pro series. The faster the card the more seamless the experience will be, and even though use will not mimic the benchmark situation it's still going to take less time to write and read to a very fast card in daily use so it will make a difference for sure.

livinonnoslp said:
http://www.amazon.com/Lexar-High-Pe...id=1417018420&sr=8-6&keywords=128+gb+micro+sd
Currently that's the fastest 128 GB card I've found, but you're going to pay for it out the nose. I'd vote to wait a bit and see if you can swing it with at 64 GB UHS card first, like the Samsung Pro series. The faster the card the more seamless the experience will be, and even though use will not mimic the benchmark situation it's still going to take less time to write and read to a very fast card in daily use so it will make a difference for sure.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What about if I simply want to use it to load up and watch videos? No gaming nothing else. Is a SanDisk 128GB microSDXC @ 30MB good enough for that? Like say, this one?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/SanDisk-128...05&prg=11353&rk=3&rkt=6&sd=151483862076&rt=nc

Yes that should be fine I just wouldn't put any apps on it at all only media

Thanks for your help guys. Ended up buying a Sandisk UHS-3 64GB card for $100. So far so good. Although android's sd card support for apps is SO BAD.

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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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