16MB/128MB SD cards

[ashdjones]

So I reverted to lazily putting everything on one 16GB card. Which, if it ever corrupts, will completely ruin my day.

Happened to me twice, and these were proper 16gb cards from Play.com


Back up stuff. I can't stress strongly enough.... back... up...

 

[TrashyMG]

I don't know. 16 or 32MB seems like too much of a hassle to fill up the cards then swap them around, not to mention carrying them and remembering which one contains what, and where you've left it the last time you used it. You can get a 2GB card for something like £3 and it's a HUNDRED times more space. I wouldn't be bothered with smaller cards.


So my suggestion would be to put them on a display case and stick that on a wall that would tell the history of storage memory. I'm doing that currently with old chips (I got several 386 and 486, and old AMD processors laying around). No better decoration for a geek's bedroom


Something like that:

Spoiler

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A display case with some old floppy disk (3.5 and 5''), maybe some old 8-bits broken cartdridge, memory cards and microdrives, and more recent hard drive platter would definitely look good.

I've owned or built for someone every one of those processors.. except for the pentium pro.. I even had the IBM bluelightning as well. Very Nice collection.

 

[gruso]

So I reverted to lazily putting everything on one 16GB card. Which, if it ever corrupts, will completely ruin my day.

Happened to me twice, and these were proper 16gb cards from Play.com


Back up stuff. I can't stress strongly enough.... back... up...

This has been on my mind. New thread time!

 

[Blue Protoman]

I've never, EVER, had issues with SD cards. Did I mention that mine always work?

 

[TrashyMG]

I've had one bad SD card.. Most of my issues have been with USB thumb drives, I've had some seriously bad ones.


Suggestion.. put both in your pandora and raid those suckers.. with the combined space you could fit a video on it between the two.

 

[Blue Protoman]

Raid those suckers? In what way?

 

[Asiyura]

[…] 486, and old AMD processors laying around). No better decoration for a geek's bedroom


Something like that:

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[…]

am486 DX 4 100, the first x86 CPU I owned.


When my dad bought his first Pentium, he gave me all the separate parts of his old computer.


He told me that if I was able to build back the computer, it would be mine.


Luckily I'm pretty good with a screwdriver

 

[TrashyMG]

Raid those suckers? In what way?

it wouldn't be too difficult to setup a software raid 0 setup, which even a SD card could be setup this way... Angstrom had the mdadm tools availible to setup software raids..


It's kind of silly to do, but you can do it.. it's just kind of complicated to setup..

 

[gruso]

I've never, EVER, had issues with SD cards.

Nor I. And in several months of Pandora use, I've never bothered unmounting one before ejecting it. I figure my time is coming.

 

[Blue Protoman]

I never unmount my cards. Or, not in the past; I'm trying to get in the habit of doing so. Again, no issues.

 

[- Theo -]

When my dad bought his first Pentium, he gave me all the separate parts of his old computer.


He told me that if I was able to build back the computer, it would be mine.


Luckily I'm pretty good with a screwdriver

Wow. I want to be that kind of awesome dad when my kids grow up

 

[Austin25]

I would set up libpam-rsa on the smaller card.

 

[Blue Protoman]

What's that?

 

[Austin25]

Use the SD card instead of a password.

 

[Blue Protoman]

I see.

 

[wardred]

I've never, EVER, had issues with SD cards.

Nor I. And in several months of Pandora use, I've never bothered unmounting one before ejecting it. I figure my time is coming.

I've 2 bad 4 gig cards. Decent brand name - not home to see which. YMMV, but they seem to have a higher failure rate than HDs I've owned. Possibly due to abuse on my part - formatting and physical.


As far as unmounting, especially if you've done a lot of write operations, it's a VERY good idea. For small operations, you can probably get away without it, but on larger things, moving largish images or movies around for instance, a lot of things get cached. Unmounting the SD card forces that cache to be written.

 

[Tom`]

I've never, EVER, had issues with SD cards.

Nor I. And in several months of Pandora use, I've never bothered unmounting one before ejecting it. I figure my time is coming.

I've 2 bad 4 gig cards. Decent brand name - not home to see which. YMMV, but they seem to have a higher failure rate than HDs I've owned. Possibly due to abuse on my part - formatting and physical.


As far as unmounting, especially if you've done a lot of write operations, it's a VERY good idea. For small operations, you can probably get away without it, but on larger things, moving largish images or movies around for instance, a lot of things get cached. Unmounting the SD card forces that cache to be written.

IIRC the Pandora mounts SD cards with the 'sync' option by default, which means writes to the card shouldn't be cached, and it should be fairly safe to eject the card without unmounting. I still make sure to unmount it first, though.

 

[urjaman]

IIRC the Pandora mounts SD cards with the 'sync' option by default, which means writes to the card shouldn't be cached, and it should be fairly safe to eject the card without unmounting. I still make sure to unmount it first, though.

That was changed in some HF to be with 2s (IIRC) write flush timeout, because of really poor write performance with the sync flag (ugh, hated that lots...)


So just wait 2s, check that the SD led is not blinking, and eject should be relatively safe.

 

[Tom`]

IIRC the Pandora mounts SD cards with the 'sync' option by default, which means writes to the card shouldn't be cached, and it should be fairly safe to eject the card without unmounting. I still make sure to unmount it first, though.

That was changed in some HF to be with 2s (IIRC) write flush timeout, because of really poor write performance with the sync flag (ugh, hated that lots...)


So just wait 2s, check that the SD led is not blinking, and eject should be relatively safe.

Okay, I stand corrected.

 

[Jourdy288]

I'm doing that currently with old chips (I got several 386 and 486, and old AMD processors laying around).

Absolutely. Freakin'. Awesome.


If you want to get a use out of your tiny SD cards, why not create a micro time capsule? Seems madness to attempt to use them with the Pandora. They cry out for an 8bit system, but the card swapping would be excruciating,

I do just that with Dual-Layer DVDs, specially made for my Xbox 360.