Best allocation unit size for SD cards? - Atrix 4G Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I've got:
16gig Micro sd card (Class 2)
8gig Micro sd-card (Class 4)
If I format these both to a Fat32 with an Allocation unit size of 8192bytes. Will there be any performance increase? The 16 gig feels sluggish.. The icons load up around 10-30 seconds in boot up. (moved my apps to media.)
I'm currently formatting the 16 gig at the moment. backing up all my data.
Question is, Whats the best allocation unit size for SD cards in the 8-16 gig range? And is there a big performance step from class 2 to 4?
Cheers!

I'm no expert in these kinds of things, but I don't know if the allocation size will make a huge difference in the speed. The 8GB card will be faster by default because it is a class 4 and the other is a class 2.
Someone who knows more may be able to answer better than I can.

Big difference between class 2 and class 4 personally I think you should only by classic 6
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No, the sizes will affect how data is allocated. You can research it and see if there is a better one. Ususally just use default. Having too big sizes can mess with the efficiency of card handling it's overall size. I don't know how to explain, and hell couldn't even try as i'm sleepy and about to jump in bed. There can be speed differences, but nothing major that will make you want to choose a speicfic size or the other.
I voided my warranty and your mum.

As far as I know, smaller file allocations help if you have plenty of small sized files, and bigger file allocation sizes help when you have big files.
I always use default with pretty good results at least on Class 6 and up cards.
Cheers!
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Related

2 GB micro SD ultra card

Hi,
Can anyone having micro SD 2GB ultra card can tell us about its performance? I have heard that 2Gb card as such had some impact on the performance of the phone and slows it a bit down? Is there any improvement using this faster card?
I have SanDisk 2GB MicroSD - in my opinion it's quicker than my previous 1GB.
I have seen sandisk 2gb ultra II micro sd card in the market. I just wanted to know if it improves the performance over the simple 2gb micro sd card?
i have a SanDisk 2GB standard MicroSD and performance is great, no slow downs on anything.
its a lot faster than a 1Gb card (can't remmeber make, probably SanDisk) that was with my Universal, that was sloooow...
sorry that that doesnt really answer your question, but in my opinion i think that there isn't much gain in opting for the Ultra MicroSD card, as there's not anything wrong with the standard one!
Comparing performance with different flash cards, be sure they are formatted with the same file system (FAT16/FAT32) and the same cluster size. Instead, your comparision results ae meaningless.
Lurker0 said:
Comparing performance with different flash cards, be sure they are formatted with the same file system (FAT16/FAT32) and the same cluster size. Instead, your comparision results ae meaningless.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And what are the best in your opinion? (cluster size and 16/32)
sergiopi said:
And what are the best in your opinion? (cluster size and 16/32)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd suggest you to search for existing threads and articles.
There is no a one-for-all solutions. One thing that I'd recommend is to format with one FAT copy (again, do a search). Then, the bigger the cluster size, the better berformance, but, OTOH, the more space is wasted. With a statistics provided e.g. by SK Tools anybody may make their decision on how to balance. SK Tools also a good tol to format cards with.
As for FAT16 vs FAT32, this is the last thing to decide. If a chosen cluster size allows FAT16 for the card, better to use it. If it does not - you have no a choice but to use FAT32. The only drawback of FAT16 is a fixed root directory size, which is not a big isue with large (16K to 64K) cluster sizes required for FAT16 on big cards.
But the main point for this thread still is: comparing flash card speeds, use the same format parameters.
Had anyone done this kind of comparison on different micro sd cards?
It imaging that this level of testing is about pointless, the typical bottleneck here is likely to be the reader device, not the card.
The phone will likely be the slowest aspect, at least when compared to a desktop reader...
You might find a turtle that can sprint, but it will still be a turtle

XV6800 microsd transfer speeds? Class 6 worthy?

I'm familiar with the difference between the class 4 (4MB/s transfer speed) and the class 6 (6MB/s transfer speed). But is there any value in using a class 6 card on the XV6800 (regardless of size)?
I ask because I have a 4GB class 6 A-Data microSDHC card in my XV6800 right now and there is no problem at all with it. However, I am considering purchasing an 8GB class 4 Sandisk microSDHC card. So it got me thinking, even thought the A-Data card is capable of a faster transfer speed, that doesn't mean the XV6800 is ever actually using that extra speed. So would I see any slowdown if I moved to a "slower" spec'd microsdhc card?
I looked around for transfer speeds on the XV6800's microSD card slot and didn't come across anything.
Anyway have any data on this? Thanks in advance.
Depends some on what you are using it for but I doubt you will notice much of a difference. When transferring using a card and a card reader from your computer you may notice a difference but otherwise the interface in the phone itself doesn't seem to be all that fast anyway.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the comment, but that's why I'm asking if anyone has any actual data. The device either reads and writes to the microsd card slot above 4MB/s or it does not. I have not found a way to benchmark it so I'm looking for some actual detail. But thank you.
So I found an application that is supposed to measure the transfer speeds of the card slot on a Windows Mobile device. It's from Audacity Audio. The link on Softpedia is here.
I'm familiar with the application because I used the Palm OS version on my old Treo 700P. The problem is that he results always seem inconsistent and confusing.
In any event, I ran the test on two different microSD cards. The first is an empty 1GB Sandisk microSD card with. These cards don't have a "class" rating. The second is a 4GB AData Class 6 microSDHC card. I still had 2.5GB of the 4GB empty.
1GB
Wrt32bit/Wrt8KB/Read8KB
1105/330572/7943757
1105/335208/7710117
1123/366634/7710117
1030/311705/7489828
1070/306242/7489828
Avg
1086/330072/7668729
4GB
1462/109317/6393756
527/111408/6241523
1462/119482/4161015
517/85724/6241523
1581/126334/6241523
Avg
1109/110453/5855868
Honestly, the scores don't seem to make much sense. The read speeds all indicate north of 4MB/s and most of the time above 6MB/s. That's good. But the write speeds seem pointless. 330KB/s (.3MB/s) for the 1GB and 110KB/s (.1MB/s) for the 4GB ?!?!?! That doesn't seem right.
Anyway, any ideas would be welcome.
Write speeds are typically going to be a great deal slower for flash memory. And larger cards being even slower for writing makes a twisted sort of sense. All flash cards have "load-leveling" algorithms built into them to spread the writes across the flash disk in order to reuse locations as little as possible (flash memory cells have a limited lifetime). So the bigger the card, the more memory the load leveler has to manage. Of course, I could have it completely wrong....

SD Card formatting

Hey guys
Recently I got a new 8Gb Kingston microSD as a present. On it, it says the card is class 4, which should be faster than the one we get with our HDs. Copying to and from it seems dreadfuly slow for some reason, slower than the sandisk one. Is there any special way to format it to gain more speed, or special setting for the format? Thanks.
If someone wrote от a label: speed is xxx, it does not mean, that this card is really fast. And, as far as I know you cannot increase your card speed by software.
Sandisk is more trustful for me than Kingston. I don't insist, just my own experience.
As a matter of fact, when I got my HD, card included was class 6 Transcend, fast enough.
Of course you can try full format, say, using a Big Brother's cardreader.
while formating try changing cluster size to 64kb instead of 32kb default
hopefully it will solve the problem ......
There is a speed bottle neck on the phone. So the speed of SD Card is not so important on phone rather tban on compufer. If I am not wrong, HTC HD phone max out at class 2

[Q] best allocation unit size for microsdhc?

in win7 i can choose between 32k and the new 64k when formatting the card. which should I do which is best for the phone,or should I just format it in recovery?
dyetheskin said:
in win7 i can choose between 32k and the new 64k when formatting the card. which should I do which is best for the phone,or should I just format it in recovery?
Click to expand...
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What file format? FAT32?
Generally I just leave it at the stock settings, which I believe is 4K allocation unit size. Android runs off a ton of smaller files, I think the larger allocation unit sizing is just going to be inefficient on space. Since this is flash based storage there probably is going to be minimal or no performance differences, I would think.
**edit**
nevermind, I need to read things first. For the SDCARD, which is mostly general storage, small file sizes arent likely a reason to opt for 4k over 32k or 64k, but I still don't know if you'll get any performance gain. Honestly, try both and benchmark them. Let us know if one is for some reason significantly better than the others..
I just benchmarked 14 tests between both 32K and 64K allocation unit sizes and 7 different caches between 128 and 4096. The sweet spot for me was 64K when formatting the card and setting sd-booster to 4096. my card is a 32gb lexar sdhc class 10. I get roughly 9.1 for write and 22.6 for read.
What did you use to format? When I put my 64gb sdxc card I got a message saying the card is damaged would you like to format it and I said why yes, I would like to format it and it just did it without any options. All I know is that it formatted as FAT32. Can I check in the phone what allocation unit size it is at?
feralicious said:
What did you use to format? When I put my 64gb sdxc card I got a message saying the card is damaged would you like to format it and I said why yes, I would like to format it and it just did it without any options. All I know is that it formatted as FAT32. Can I check in the phone what allocation unit size it is at?
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no you cant check on the device. the options are in windows7 in the format screen
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dyetheskin said:
no you cant check on the device. the options are in windows7 in the format screen
sent from tapatalk on my rezound
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Okay, thanks. I formatted in the phone since I figured it would format it properly. I saw that it was FAT32 when I was putting some music on it but never check anything further than that.
Antutu Benchmark results (my card is class 6):
Write - (5.0 MB/s) 50
Read - (5.7 MB/s) 57
Internal card results:
Write - (7.0 MB/s) 70
Read - (6.4 MB/s) 64
I have no idea if that's good or bad. My first smartphone so I've never had to pay that much attention to this stuff.
Were your speeds MB/s also? If so, maybe I'll try reformatting, although mine is class 6 so I don't know how much to allow for that.
I also saw something about Android OS supposedly not supporting more than 32gb but mine is 64gb. Would that be a factor?
Allocation size should be based on "average file size"
If apps, keep it smaller, or the normal 4k. Music/movies, you can up it a few notches.
Benchmarking this with benchmark programs are useless as they have preset small files they use to bench the speeds. Being flash memory, allocation size will also most likely put forth no noticeable speed difference on already speed limited SD cards. if seektime mattered, allocation would also. in our cases allocation only has the effect of potentially wasting space.
just use the smallest allocation size for the most use of the space on your card. you select higher allocation unit sizes, all the teeny files android and apps use will take up the amount of space equal to the allocation size, regardless of its true size (4k allocation means ALL files take a minimum of 4K, or in increments of 4K. therefore files <4k take 4k, 4+ to 8 take 8k, 8+ to 12 take 12k.)
Yes 64gb cards are usually fine on aneroid. What are keeping on there, pron???
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nrfitchett4 said:
Yes 64gb cards are usually fine on aneroid. What are keeping on there, pron???
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I never keep pron on my aneroid. I wouldn't know how to get it on/in (?) there!
lol mmm Pron

[Q] Micro SD cards

Hi guys
I'm looking to buy a Micro sd card, samsung 32GB, class 10
So my questions are:
1- If someone already using sd card just like this one, tell me is it working fine with your android device?
2- Do you think that patriot or some other manufacturer cards are better then samsung?
3- Does your phone in some cases really feals faster with an sd card with bigger class number ( does reading speed of your card effect phone's speed? )
4- I heard that class 6 ( 6 MBps ) is more than enough for android devices, and also that some class 10 cards slow down a device, is it true?
5- Will i ever have enough memory on my phone
I know that there are the same threads on forum somewhere, but i need answers quickly and thats why im opening this one..
Marchello1 said:
Hi guys
I'm looking to buy a Micro sd card, samsung 32GB, class 10
So my questions are:
1- If someone already using sd card just like this one, tell me is it working fine with your android device?
2- Do you think that patriot or some other manufacturer cards are better then samsung?
3- Does your phone in some cases really feals faster with an sd card with bigger class number ( does reading speed of your card effect phone's speed? )
4- I heard that class 6 ( 6 MBps ) is more than enough for android devices, and also that some class 10 cards slow down a device, is it true?
5- Will i ever have enough memory on my phone
I know that there are the same threads on forum somewhere, but i need answers quickly and thats why im opening this one..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. It works fine.
2. It just user preference. Their both great.
3. Reading and writing to the SD card will be faster. It won't affect phone speed unless your device is using certain mods such as swaps, int.ext. sd swaps, etc. or you have apps on your SD card.
4. While class 6 may be quite fast for a device, there is no way a class 10 could be slower.
5. That's up to you .
tnx Theonew
if i understood it well, an app called swapper 2 can allow device to use some memory from partitioned sd card like a ram memory and provide it a slightly better multitasking, and speed.. ?
And i have read that it can also affect an sd card's life..
So, is it worth it?
Marchello1 said:
tnx Theonew
if i understood it well, an app called swapper 2 can allow device to use some memory from partitioned sd card like a ram memory and provide it a slightly better multitasking, and speed.. ?
And i have read that it can also affect an sd card's life..
So, is it worth it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, swapping can degrade the life of the SD card but it is worth it if your device is a low-end one (and slow). It will assist in stuff like gaming, etc.
No, I really don't think its worth it. It really affects the cards life and does not really add much ram, even for slow phones...
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krismerful said:
No, I really don't think its worth it. It really affects the cards life and does not really add much ram, even for slow phones...
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An additional 256mb is quite a lot compared to 192mb (total).
Quick benchmark of Samsung SD card class 10 in the ASUS Transformer TF101.
Code:
[email protected]:/home/kuisma# hdparm -t /dev/block/mmcblk1p2
/dev/block/mmcblk1p2:
Timing buffered disk reads: 60 MB in 3.09 seconds = 19.43 MB/sec
Reference, the internal nand flash (/data partition):
Code:
[email protected]:/home/kuisma# hdparm -t /dev/block/mmcblk0p7
/dev/block/mmcblk0p7:
Timing buffered disk reads: 52 MB in 3.10 seconds = 16.79 MB/sec
If comparing read vs write, large blocks vs small, sequential vs random etc, the SD Cards wins a few times, the internal flash a few. It's more or less a draw. I would say this SD card got "good enough" performance, although far from SSD performance.
good enough for smartphone
are you talking about solid state disk?
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Marchello1 said:
are you talking about solid state disk?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
"SSD" was referring to "solid state disk", yes.
i found one for a 40€, micro sd, 32 gb class 10, its a good price here, im buying it next week
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