Database Users

[Q] SD Card Worth It?

I am going to pick one of these up, but before I did, had a quick question (anyone with a WP7 can answer)
Do you feel that 8gb is enough space? Or do you wish you had more? Should I get an SD Card?

Most definitely. I have loaded most of my music and a few videos and I already used over 6GB. That's pretty much all the stock phone has. Now, I have over 14GB still left. Might put some movies on it.

My only disappointment in the focus is the 8GB stock NAND. For a $199 on contract device, 16GB really should be the minimum, especially considering a few other WP7 phones, to say nothing of Android phones and the iPhone, all start at $199 with 16GB.
That said, adding the SD card isn't that big a deal as long as you do it before you've filled the device up. For some reason there seems to be no ability to do a full backup of the phone by any means I've been able to find.

The problem with the SD Cards is that there's intense confusion/miscommunication about which cards work well. Just because it works with 6GB doesn't mean anything. What seems to happen is once you get to 8GB filled, the phone's performance takes a nose-dive, sometimes leading to losing all data.

"Enough space" depends on you, not us. I have an iPhone, iPad and iPod, all 16GB units, each with some 14GB or so of music & apps on them so it the first thing I did when I brought the Focus home was slap an 8GB card in there, format it and load it up. I have maybe 2GB free and it's worked without a single glitch for the past two weeks. For reference, mine is a Sandisk class 2. People seem to have problems with cards other than Sandisk and other than class 2 and I noticed absolutely no performance problems so if you're going to try it, try that and keep the receipt in case you need to return or swap it should something go sour.

Enough Space?
I agree with Mark, whether there is enough space or not really depends on what your usage requirements are.
I had a 32GB Zune and when I bought my Samsung Focus the Zune had over 20GB of data on it. So for me adding and 32GB SD card to the Focus was not only a desire but a very strong selling point for the Phone.
And yes, I am seeing a few issues with the Sandisk Card that is in it. Currently they are not enough to make me yank the Card because I (again) bought the device to specifically be a convergence device for myself and I am at heart a tester and tinkerer so figuring how exactly how WP7 works.doesn't work with an SD Card and the statement that MS and Samsung are working on a fix is enough for me right now.
Smaller Sized Cards seem to be more reliable than larger cards (not to mention less expensive) but that appears to anecdotal evidence as well. My 32GB Sandisk only causes freezes and resets when on Battery for example and I've not had anyone else confirm if they are seeing the same.
Not great answers but, hey, this is the fun of learning as we go along...
- MEK

FishFaceMcGee said:
The problem with the SD Cards is that there's intense confusion/miscommunication about which cards work well. Just because it works with 6GB doesn't mean anything. What seems to happen is once you get to 8GB filled, the phone's performance takes a nose-dive, sometimes leading to losing all data.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have more than 11GB on my Focus with no issues at all. No slow-downs, no hiccups, no data loss period. I am currently using a PNY 16GB Class 2 card. I previously had a Centon 8GB Class 6 card with the same results.
If you read the thread on MicroSD cards, it seems there are some cards that have been working pretty much flawlessly. Both of the cards I mentioned have worked perfectly for me. I gave the 8GB to a friend and he is using it in his Focus as well.

For me, to really make a portable phone/audio/video device be best for me it would need at least 150GB of storage... and a few TB if i wanted to listen to music lossless and a few movies.

MKohlman said:
I agree with Mark, whether there is enough space or not really depends on what your usage requirements are.
I had a 32GB Zune and when I bought my Samsung Focus the Zune had over 20GB of data on it. So for me adding and 32GB SD card to the Focus was not only a desire but a very strong selling point for the Phone.
And yes, I am seeing a few issues with the Sandisk Card that is in it. Currently they are not enough to make me yank the Card because I (again) bought the device to specifically be a convergence device for myself and I am at heart a tester and tinkerer so figuring how exactly how WP7 works.doesn't work with an SD Card and the statement that MS and Samsung are working on a fix is enough for me right now.
Smaller Sized Cards seem to be more reliable than larger cards (not to mention less expensive) but that appears to anecdotal evidence as well. My 32GB Sandisk only causes freezes and resets when on Battery for example and I've not had anyone else confirm if they are seeing the same.
Not great answers but, hey, this is the fun of learning as we go along...
- MEK
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You know, I was thinking about this the other day...the phone has 8GB of internal memory and if you put in an SD card it stripes data across it and the internal memory. If the card is 8GB or smaller that's fine but what happens if the SD card is larger than internal memory? It doesn't stripe the first 8GB and set the rest up as another partition and it does appear to use but it can't be striped. Now you've mentioned that smaller sized cards work better and my 8GB card works perfectly. I wonder if the file system's attempt to work with a larger card is inherently unstable? I know that if you put two different sized drives in a Windows box and stripe across them you will only end up with double the size of the smallest drive, not the actual sum of the two. Might be an interesting poll...indicate the size of your SD card and if the phone has been 100% stable since inserting it.

markgamber said:
You know, I was thinking about this the other day...the phone has 8GB of internal memory and if you put in an SD card it stripes data across it and the internal memory. If the card is 8GB or smaller that's fine but what happens if the SD card is larger than internal memory? It doesn't stripe the first 8GB and set the rest up as another partition and it does appear to use but it can't be striped. Now you've mentioned that smaller sized cards work better and my 8GB card works perfectly. I wonder if the file system's attempt to work with a larger card is inherently unstable? I know that if you put two different sized drives in a Windows box and stripe across them you will only end up with double the size of the smallest drive, not the actual sum of the two. Might be an interesting poll...indicate the size of your SD card and if the phone has been 100% stable since inserting it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not totally convinced based on comments in blogs that the disks are "striped". I think a lot of people are saying this and maybe using the term out of context and everyone just keeps using it. Has Microsoft actually come out to say "WP7 performs RAID 0 configuration"? For a phone OS which was never intended to see anything other than a single drive, don't you think throwing a RAID controller in there just for kicks is a little absurd?
The other term is "span" and if I had money, I'd bet that the two disks were spanned as a single partition, as opposed to striping like RAID 0 does.
Despite all of that, I have tried a 16gb class 4 with more issues than I cared for and currently have an 8gb class 4 with negligible issues. Any card you get, I'd run on Vista/Windows 7 and test for ReadyBoost. That at least tests the card for random access speed, which is important. My 16gb failed readyboost and had lots of issues in my Focus, whereas the 8gb passed and the only issues I've seen with that one are issues that other people might have experienced on their own phones sans sd card.

hyperzulu said:
I'm not totally convinced based on comments in blogs that the disks are "striped". I think a lot of people are saying this and maybe using the term out of context and everyone just keeps using it. Has Microsoft actually come out to say "WP7 performs RAID 0 configuration"? For a phone OS which was never intended to see anything other than a single drive, don't you think throwing a RAID controller in there just for kicks is a little absurd?
The other term is "span" and if I had money, I'd bet that the two disks were spanned as a single partition, as opposed to striping like RAID 0 does.
Despite all of that, I have tried a 16gb class 4 with more issues than I cared for and currently have an 8gb class 4 with negligible issues. Any card you get, I'd run on Vista/Windows 7 and test for ReadyBoost. That at least tests the card for random access speed, which is important. My 16gb failed readyboost and had lots of issues in my Focus, whereas the 8gb passed and the only issues I've seen with that one are issues that other people might have experienced on their own phones sans sd card.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've read both, striped and spanned...who knows. Considering how slow SD memory always was in old WinMo devices, I didn't think it absurd to stripe data to provide the same kind of speed boost you get when striping hard drives. Hard as it might be to believe, it may have just been that WinMo was slow. I hadn't thought of the readyboost test, that's a good idea. Readyboost is pretty picky.

Micro SD Class 10 card test results

To All,
I did a bit of testing on Micro SD cards All claimed they were class 10 in other words they should (as claimed by the manufacturers) to read and write 10 mb per sec
The Reality is the only one that really hit that mark was the Wintec which also was cheap)
I used two of the sd card testers from the app store. One called sd card tester the other was ssd card tester (one was free one cost a buck)
I did the tests using various buffer size (2, 4 and 8 mb) did it 3 times and averaged. This is not scientific but it did show that there is alot of misrepresentation going on...........
The findings are as follows
Wintec averaged 9.3 write and 12.5 down
Patriot 7.8 write and 10 read
king max 7mb write and 8.2 read
Kingston 6 write and 8 read (what a dog)
None could really reach the 10 write threshold consistently. So, basically what I would recommend is read up and do your research and watch out for false review claims from the manufacturers.
I am now using the Wintec 16 gig and it does improve the response of the phone when writing or reading from the sd card. But this nothing compared to the awesome custom roms found in our dev forum. There is where the speed resides
It was fun doing this hope this helps some .........

That is weird because I have the Kingston 16gb Class 10 microsd card and I transferred my avatar movie at 11-12mb/s.
I found out that if you format the card through the phone, the speeds are slow. But if you format the card through windows, that card is fast.

mdkxtreme said:
That is weird because I have the Kingston 16gb Class 10 microsd card and I transferred my avatar movie at 11-12mb/s.
I found out that if you format the card through the phone, the speeds are slow. But if you format the card through windows, that card is fast.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
probably a file system difference. formatting in windows will make it ntfs, formatting on the phone will format it to...? rfs? fat32?

No I didn't format it in NTFS. I formatted to FAT32.

Ntfs has better perdormance than fat, anyways, so I dunno what he means by that.
Its cause the cards are low qual. Kingstons inclided. There was a huge article by someone on the internet about them (not directly the speeds, though).
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

N8ter said:
Ntfs has better perdormance than fat, anyways, so I dunno what he means by that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
that was my point, that if you formatted it ntfs in windows it would perform better than the phone's formatting (which is probably fat32). but looking into it, i don't think android supports ntfs.

Like I said guys, I formatted in FAT32 and it outperformed the phone's formatting scheme. I didn't know I could format it in NTFS because I didn't know if it would work or not so I formatted in FAT32

yea NTFS wont work on android

Formatting on the phone is standard fat is all it recognizes it is possible if you are on 4ext instead of 2e (stock like my phone) then you could get better speeds. The problem as one of you stated is the low quality control, all these cards rarely get the stated speeds.

Yea, I made my initial statement knowing it didn't support NTFS.
But the other person gave me the idea that he thought NTFS would give lower performance than FAT32.
And yes, even Kingston's expensive cards are in many cases low quality cards, Sandisk as well.
That is why most knowledgeable users prefer a hefty amount of NAND storage in the phone as well as an SD slot just in case we need a bit more storage (and that's part of the reason the Galaxy S is so popular as well... No other Android phone has this much in-built storage).

N8ter said:
Yea, I made my initial statement knowing it didn't support NTFS.
But the other person gave me the idea that he thought NTFS would give lower performance than FAT32.
And yes, even Kingston's expensive cards are in many cases low quality cards, Sandisk as well.
That is why most knowledgeable users prefer a hefty amount of NAND storage in the phone as well as an SD slot just in case we need a bit more storage (and that's part of the reason the Galaxy S is so popular as well... No other Android phone has this much in-built storage).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well put that is one of the reasons why I like this phone so many things are well thought out and yes san disk is real junk I never use them on my nikon they write way slow......

N8ter said:
Ntfs has better perdormance than fat, anyways, so I dunno what he means by that.
Its cause the cards are low qual. Kingstons inclided. There was a huge article by someone on the internet about them (not directly the speeds, though).
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
http://www.testfreaks.com/blog/information/usb-flash-drive-comparison-part-2-fat32-vs-ntfs-vs-exfat/
I terms of speed NTFS came in last.

Hey OP, thanks for the test though. Because of this I am returning my Kingston for the Wintec since it's 50 dollars cheaper. Not countering or complaining about this thread, it's just I think most people get different results when it comes to SD cards. I actually thought about it and don't even need that high of a speed for external microsd because my nand is fast enough. Thus the reason why I want the lower pricing. Thanks again for the results.

t1n0m3n said:
http://www.testfreaks.com/blog/information/usb-flash-drive-comparison-part-2-fat32-vs-ntfs-vs-exfat/
I terms of speed NTFS came in last.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's almost a 2 year old article, and it's hardly scientific.
It fails to mention a bunch of factors that affect the performance of NTFS, and doesn't really optimize the other filesystems for the media.
FAT32 is a simple file system with no security, encryption, and recoverability. FAT scaled up for larger volume sizes, basically. (using Fat32 is the reason why Android cannot encrypt SD cards).
NTFS performace scales up (i.e. gets better) the larger the volume gets. FAT32 performance scales down (i.e. gets worse) the larger the volume gets. Typically above 8GB it's better to use NTFS, if you can. The largest size in that article is 8GB and the disks weren't used in a way to really show how the filesystems perform in common scenarios (i.e. searching for files on a disk with lots of files that's 75% full, where NTFS would best FAT easily).
Testing NTFS vs. FAT32 on a bunch of 4GB and 8GB memory sticks proves nothing.
It's not January 2009 anymore. Lots of people have 32 GB+ memory cards/thumb drives and FAT32 performance simply does not scale up at all to those volume levels (not to mention it doesn't support volumes over 32GB without a modified version) compared to NTFS, which gain in performance as the volume size grows larger.
In addition to that, formatting as FAT32 wastes lots of space compared to NTFS. It has HUGE cluster sizes on large volumes (i.e. 16-32GB microSD cards).
exFAT is a pretty good middle road between the two, but NTFS will probably outperform it on large volumes. Its performance is more consistent than FAT32, though.
SD and Thumb drive filesystems corrupt more when formatted as FAT, compared to NTFS, as well.
That article you linked is useless.

N8ter said:
That article you linked is useless.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Since the file systems are older than the article, I don't see how that article doesn't apply.
You are are welcome to link your own test. Give more proof than your word. (Because I, for one, do not believe you.) In terms of raw speed, in our phone, on an SD card (with it's size limitations) ... Give more proof. The other factors are irrelevant to this discussion IMO, due to the discussion being about performance (I infer "performance" to mean "speed" due to the discussion about SD card speed.) Although they are admittedly important, I think you are just trying to use them as a point of obfuscation to try to worm your way out the erroneous statement:
N8ter said:
Ntfs has better perdormance than fat...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A link to a test performed would do nicely.

I picked up Patriot 8gb class 10 from frys yesterday. I haven't done any tests but the card is significantly faster than stock 2gb card. When i started transferring my files to new card, i thought i copied them to wrong location cause it was going so fast.
I'll run few tests and post results.

mrxela said:
I picked up Patriot 8gb class 10 from frys yesterday. I haven't done any tests but the card is significantly faster than stock 2gb card. When i started transferring my files to new card, i thought i copied them to wrong location cause it was going so fast.
I'll run few tests and post results.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would be very interested in seeing these results, I have yet to see a card faster than a SanDisk Class 6 8GB. However, I would like to start seeing some Class 10 16GB cards that step up to compete with the SanDisk in terms of raw speed.

t1n0m3n said:
Since the file systems are older than the article, I don't see how that article doesn't apply.
You are are welcome to link your own test. Give more proof than your word. (Because I, for one, do not believe you.) In terms of raw speed, in our phone, on an SD card (with it's size limitations) ... Give more proof. The other factors are irrelevant to this discussion IMO, due to the discussion being about performance (I infer "performance" to mean "speed" due to the discussion about SD card speed.) Although they are admittedly important, I think you are just trying to use them as a point of obfuscation to try to worm your way out the erroneous statement:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Anyone with any knowledge about filesystems knows that FAT32 performance degrades when the size of the volume increases. That is why FAT32 has a maximum volume size of 32GB (without workarounds) and even a low maximum file threshold on the volume. It can also hold a low maximum number of files on the volume, because a FAT32 volume with as much files as NTFS supports would probably crash and burn.
When you a volume with a lot of files on it, NTFS will outperform FAT.
If that wasn't the case, Microsoft would have simply added the security and fault tolerate features (among other things) on top of FAT instead of developing NTFS for Windows NT.
FAT lived long because:
1. It's simple to implement, which makes it a great system for inter-OS compatibility.
2. Consumer disk sizes did not grow at a rate proportional to server storage sizes during the reign of pre-NT consumer Winodws OS.
3. Reliability and Security on consumer OSes (including Macs and PCs) simply wasn't taken all that seriously back in the day.
4. Hardly anyone with a PC had a volumes with a ridiculous amount of files on them.
Performance is more than just raw speed. NTFS is faster at searching for files on large volumes than FAT32 - why do you think Media scanner takes forever when you have tons of files on the SD card? It stores small files in the MFT if they can fit there, which makes accessing them monumentally faster than FAT, etc.
The robustness of a filesystem is a component of its performance.
Look at any HD2 thread and one thing you always see is "make sure to format your SD card before installing Android to it, to avoid constant FC's."
The only three advantages over NTFS that FAT32 has is that it is very fast on small volumes (and by volume I mean Capacity as well as the amount of data on the disk), it's relatively cross platform, and it doesn't fragment as much, due to larger cluster sizes (but fragmentation is not much of an issue on flash disks, unless they have very bad random I/O performance).

No links to back you up... Most of what you are talking about doesn't apply in context of this thread. Were this a thread about a pc you would have some valid points.
I am done.
Eat at Joe's

I'm not talking about a PC. I'm talking about storage cards. Load up a 32 GB card with 20GB of music and Albulm Art/Meta Data, Documents, etc. and then compare the FS performance.
I'm sorry you have no idea what you're talking about, that you want me to scour the internet to "back up" something any decent developer/IT professional can agree with.
LOL @ Troll. Were you not the one who responded with a one liner of inconsequential info in an article from almost 2 years ago (Microsoft improved NTFS. NTFS in Win7 isn't the same as NTFS in Windows XP, 2000, or NT 3.1).
At least you got fed.
Like I said, that article you linked is not a "test" in any serious use of the word. I'm not going buy SD cards/thumbdrives to do any sort of test, and I'm certainly not Googling for you. If you want to verify, you can do that yourself. Ad hominems, do not help your point.
Ciao!

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.
Click to expand...
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
Click to expand...
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.

Moto x Style(pure) Maximum external storage question.

I currently am debating on getting a high capacity micro SD card for my moto. I was wondering what the maximum capacity is, I know they sell up to 512 GB micro SD cards but am wondering if the phone would even support it. If not what is the maximum capacity? Thanks!!

I think the max capacity supported is 128 GB.
http://m.gsmarena.com/motorola_moto_x_style-7229.php

!Iamdeath! said:
I think the max capacity supported is 128 GB.
http://m.gsmarena.com/motorola_moto_x_style-7229.php
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just want to see if anyone has tested larger cards and had success. I appreciate the reply

I am using a 200GB Sandisk card with no issues.

H411UCIN093NIC said:
I just want to see if anyone has tested larger cards and had success. I appreciate the reply
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I too have a 200GB Sandisk and it works fine.

No way!! That's awesome! Thanks for the reply. anyone have any luck with the 512 or another nock off brand 512?

I don't believe that anybody has more than a 200GB card running in their phone for two reasons.
Firstly, there is some kind of filesystem or standards issue which is limiting the cards to 200GB of addressable space. I'm sure Wiki has more info. Secondly, the only mention of a 512GB MicroSD is this (http://www.cnet.com/au/news/microdia-will-sell-a-1000-ish-512gb-microsd-come-july/), which as it turns out, is nowhere to be found, 9 months later.
Having said that, 200GB for $70-something USD is incredible bang for buck. Add to that 32GB or 64GB of onboard storage and that should cover everybody.

200GB is the max supported size so buying larger is a waste.
Sent from my XT1575 using XDA-Developers mobile app

I'm using Sandisk's 200GB SD card as well.
No issues whatsoever.
I have it set up as portable storage though.
No interested in that other mode added with MM.

Max SD speed & capacity supported by Huawei P8lite? Different sources confuse me!

Can someone provide some insight about this total mess? I got this Huawei P8lite (or P8 Lite? damn hipster names!) and no idea about what faster and bigger capacity microsd card supports!
Android Pit, CNET, Car Phonehouse and XDA says 128GB.
Ubergizmo says 144 GB (16GB+128GB?)
Notebook Check says the specifications are 32GB, but it worked with a 64GB SDXC card.
Phone Scoop says "up to 32GB".
GSM Arena says it supports 256GB.
256GB can be too much space, but I find convenient to use the phone as some kind of HDD and use some syncing tool (Syncthing, Dropbox) to have all files on all my systems and backup online. I'm worried about those slim microusb connectors, something I need to solve
What's the maximum speed this device is able to support? I'm unable to locate it too? Why isn't specified? How to locate it? Sandisk Xtreme PRO has U3 (UHS 3) and supports reads up to 275MB/s* and writtings up to 100MB/s, for example. Can this mobile support it?

timofonic said:
Can someone provide some insight about this total mess? I got this Huawei P8lite (or P8 Lite? damn hipster names!) and no idea about what faster and bigger capacity microsd card supports!
Android Pit, CNET, Car Phonehouse and XDA says 128GB.
Ubergizmo says 144 GB (16GB+128GB?)
Notebook Check says the specifications are 32GB, but it worked with a 64GB SDXC card.
Phone Scoop says "up to 32GB".
GSM Arena says it supports 256GB.
256GB can be too much space, but I find convenient to use the phone as some kind of HDD and use some syncing tool (Syncthing, Dropbox) to have all files on all my systems and backup online. I'm worried about those slim microusb connectors, something I need to solve
What's the maximum speed this device is able to support? I'm unable to locate it too? Why isn't specified? How to locate it? Sandisk Xtreme PRO has U3 (UHS 3) and supports reads up to 275MB/s* and writtings up to 100MB/s, for example. Can this mobile support it?
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It can support class 10 and above sdcard(I inserted a slow sdcard so it showed a notification that use class 10 or above sdcard(on emui 3.1) . I think 128 GB the max capacity.

Suleiman01 said:
It can support class 10 and above sdcard(I inserted a slow sdcard so it showed a notification that use class 10 or above sdcard(on emui 3.1) . I think 128 GB the max capacity.
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Thanks for your input, it's greatly appreciated. What capacity that SD card had?
Yes, it said the same here. I know that's going to be an issue, as I want a massive SD card for different stuff.
Are there someone that casually has big SD cards (128GB+?) and wants to do some tests? What about speed tests?

timofonic said:
Thanks for your input, it's greatly appreciated. What capacity that SD card had?
Yes, it said the same here. I know that's going to be an issue, as I want a massive SD card for different stuff.
Are there someone that casually has big SD cards (128GB+?) and wants to do some tests? What about speed tests?
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I don't really use that space. I am fine with 16GB class 10 external SD card(the slow one was class 4 8GB). I don't think this phone can handle 128GB sdcard well since it's a midrange phone. However I can ask Huawei care center about this.

@Suleiman01 i think it should, i have the G play/ Honor 4x (same hardware specs than p8 lite, except internal storage, battery and screen size), and it says max support 64gb, but a 128GB sdcard works too

panchovix said:
@Suleiman01 i think it should, i have the G play/ Honor 4x (same hardware specs than p8 lite, except internal storage, battery and screen size), and it says max support 64gb, but a 128GB sdcard works too
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Then you are right. But it might not be able to handle 128GB+ sdcard. I have emailed Huawei lets see what they say.

Basically it can support all sizes but depends on the file system used. I have a Sony 32GB Class 10 which by default was formatted in FAT32 and i have formatted it to exFAT and it works great on my P8. If the phone supports officially at least 64GB cards then it'll support bigger sized ones because SD cards with capacity of 64GB and up by default come in exFAT file format so this means that it can support higher capacities. Here's the proof
If you are going to buy one then go for the fastest possible or you will have stutters while listening to music and doing some file transfers at the same time. ????

I have a Sandisk 128GB (Obviously formated to FAT32) and works good as hell. All SD cards formatted to FAT32 should work.

pilililo2 said:
I have a Sandisk 128GB (Obviously formated to FAT32) and works good as hell. All SD cards formatted to FAT32 should work.
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What about using EXT4 instead? I use Linux.

Ive never seen a microsd card formatted to ext4. Bigger cards are formatted to exFat which is the formatting that a lot of phones dont support and thats why they say thay they dont support sdcards over xxxGB, but what they actually dont support is exfat. Thats why if you format any size card to FAT32 it will work on any phone regardless of what the manufacturer specifies as the maximum sdcard size. Also ive heard EXT4 is not very nice on flash memories since it wears them out very quickly because of indexing, but I might be going way far here.
Edit: Anyhow linux will support FAT32 so i dont think that makes a problem

@pilililo2
It would be very interesting to know. I know EXT4 provides extensions for SSDs and such since years, but not sure about flash drives (that it seems to use some kind of "HDD emulation in them", right?).
There's this 2010 article about what's the fastest filesystem for cheap flash devices
Arnd Bergmann replied on August 2015 the following in the "ext2 vs ext4 vs exFAT for XO content SD cards?" forum thread:
arnd at arndb.de
Thu Aug 20 16:55:07 EDT 2015
SDXC cards are mandated to be using exFAT (just like SDHC cards have to use VFAT, and indeed this is the only difference between the two) by the SD card standard. If you don't use this, you are strictly speaking
in violation of the standard and the cards might not behave as designed.
In particular, the card is allowed to only do efficient garbage collection for the access patterns that you get with a single exFAT partition that spans the entire card and has all its metadata aligned exactly in the way that the spec defines.
In practice, things tend to work mostly ok with other file systems, but if you use NTFS or ext3 (rather than ext4), you are usually asking for
trouble.
The best longevity would be provided by f2fs, which is designed to work fine on most SD cards. The downside is that it only works on relatively modern Linux kernels (3.x or higher).
I would expect that cards today use only dynamic wear leveling, not static wear leveling as real SSDs do. This means that content on a read-only partition will decay with the normal life of the card (several years, but depending on the quality of the card and the environmental conditions, e.g. not too hot), independent of the presence of partitions you write to.
Dynamic wear leveling works best if you have a lot of unused blocks, so a good strategy for long life would be to leave a whole partition (e.g. 20% of the size of the writable partition, the more you have, the longer the card will survive) that never gets written after manufacturing, or at least gets erased using the fitrim ioctl command after the initial imaging.
For a 128 GB card with 115GB of actual space, you could then use something like:
* 80GB zisofs/cramfs/squashfs for static data
* 30GB f2fs/ext4 for writable data
* 5GB unused space for wear leveling
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You very probably already know that exFAT is totally owned by Microsoft and that there's a leaked GPL-based.exFAT driver for Linux kernel, but this filesystem it's patent encumbered and not merged into mainline.
Why do I mention this?
Because it's a pain in the butt to use it across operating systems and needing to use a custom kernel on your Linux box makes things harder.
I know many custom ROMs with custom kernels use exFAT and very probably even official kernels too, but that's a gray area. Phone manufacturers are able to pay the Microsoft's Android Tax if they want to.

Sooo, what about the bus speed? Is p8 lite compatible with UHC 3 even?