Any Reason To Continue Using Full Sized Sd Cards?

[crade]

(a USB hub chip so they could fix the main USB port and perhaps add a second full sized USB port etc.)

What is the problem with the main usb port?

 

[peca]

Standard SD cards have good size for good manipulation. MicroSD are too small for often manipulation. MicroSD are good for small mobile phones or other small devices, but not for handheld computers where they are often swapped.

 

[Alpha2]

I had a microSD sitting on my laptop one day and decided to use a compressed air can to clean some dust out of the keys... poof! 2gigs just vanished just like that. That wouldnt happen with a regular SD card. (or at least if I blew it off my laptop it'd be easier to find.)

 

[Prometheus]

(a USB hub chip so they could fix the main USB port and perhaps add a second full sized USB port etc.)

What is the problem with the main usb port?

The details of the USB 2.0 port are explained here - I hope this helps.

 

[VRAndy]

Sandisk has announced a 32GB micro secure digital card.
http://www.toptechnews.com/news/SanDisk-Offers-32GB-for-Phone-Data/story.xhtml?story_id=113008O869FM

Given that the two SD sockets are the biggest thing on the Pandoras circuit board, is there any reason to continue using full sized SD cards going forward?

The human factors alone is a good reason. No point making things uncomfortably tiny unless there's a reason to do so.

Now, if shrinking the disk slots would suddenly give them room for three times the RAM, or somehow allow it to fold down into a smaller package without sacraficing screen or keyboard size, or even just double the battery life, then that would be worth doing.

...But unless there's a reason, I don't see why you'd go to something that small.

 

[dyslexic]

Sandisk has announced a 32GB micro secure digital card.
http://www.toptechnews.com/news/SanDisk-Offers-32GB-for-Phone-Data/story.xhtml?story_id=113008O869FM

Given that the two SD sockets are the biggest thing on the Pandoras circuit board, is there any reason to continue using full sized SD cards going forward?

The human factors alone is a good reason. No point making things uncomfortably tiny unless there's a reason to do so.

Now, if shrinking the disk slots would suddenly give them room for three times the RAM, or somehow allow it to fold down into a smaller package without sacraficing screen or keyboard size, or even just double the battery life, then that would be worth doing.

...But unless there's a reason, I don't see why you'd go to something that small.

I was thinking that already from Compact-flash to SD card but got used to SD cards rather quick.
Now i have a telephone with Micro SD and found out that it is still doable size wise.
But i am pretty sure it should not get smaller than that.It would be awesome if there was a SD adapter that could hold two Micro SD cards.

 

[may88]

Because they fit!

And in addition to all of the other negative points against microSD cards, the material that microSD cards are made of usually leads to that fingernails-on-a-blackboard effect quite often.

You assume us male geeks have nails. Okay a few will play guitar but I'm sure they will rigorously guard their nail (thumb) when changing media.

 

[Prometheus]

Haha, fair point. I only have short nails myself, though (having some minor length is necessary for my geeky sewing, though - thimbles are impractical, you heard it here first! ).

 

[Kramy]

Because the Pandora's SOC hardware is only capable of addressing 2 SD cards.

OK thanks, will this be possible on another SoC or updated TI-board (ie usefull consideration for Pandora-II)?

Thank you

No. Chip makers don't see the benefit of 3-4 SD card slots, so they don't build that feature into any of the best chips. And those are the SoCs you actually want.

I suppose you could hack it in with extra chips or something, but that'd increase the cost, and might not have the same performance.

 

[DAP]

(a USB hub chip so they could fix the main USB port and perhaps add a second full sized USB port etc.)

What is the problem with the main usb port?

The details of the USB 2.0 port are explained here - I hope this helps.

Well, that link kind of explains the problem, but its facts are wrong.
USB 2.0 is a superset of USB 1.1 which means that a USB 2.0 port is REQUIRED to support USB Full Speed and USB Low Speed as well as USB High Speed.
The Pandoras Full sized port is USB High Speed only, so it is NOT USB 2.0 complaint. It could easily be made compliant by the addition of a USB 2.0 HUB IC (which can be had for a couple of bucks) which as part of its design translates USB Full Speed, and USB Low Speed into USB High Speed.
But it is too late to add this to the current Pandora design, and this has been discussed to death elsewhere, so lets not discuss this here.

 

[droneb]

The primary advantage of the Micro SD card is that it is about 1/4 the size of the SD card.
I am not so worried about price since that will fall, and if the micros ever overtake the full sized cards, they will quickly become cheaper.

The smaller size would free up a bunch of space on the main board for other things. (a USB hub chip so they could fix the main USB port and perhaps add a second full sized USB port etc.) Currently it appears that 1/8th of the component side of the board is used by the SD card slots. It would be nice to be able to recover 3/4 of that space.

But most of that could be achieved if they could find or have designed an SD connector that would stack the SD cards instead of having them side by side.

doable if you stack one above and one on the other side of the pcb, of course it would be only useable if you use only smd shield, because th would be on the way of the another shield

 

[j6cubic]

The primary advantage of the Micro SD card is that it is about 1/4 the size of the SD card.
I am not so worried about price since that will fall, and if the micros ever overtake the full sized cards, they will quickly become cheaper.

By the way, that's pretty unlikely. The flash storage sector got hit pretty hard by the recession due to its razor-thin margins. That's why flash prices have been stagnant (sometimes even rising) for the last two years. Expect the prices to stay stable until the recession is completely over. In one year an 8 GB microSD will cost pretty much the same as today so I wouldn't call 64 gigs of microSD (the most you could get out of two SDHC slots without violating the spec) affordable until the Pandora is already obsolete.

Right now you can get 2x32 GB Class 6 SDHC for about 150 EUR (2.34375 EUR/GB). The best MicroSDHC has to offer is 2x16 GB Class 2 for 90 EUR (2.8125 EUR/GB). The difference doesn't sound big (the SDHC ones being much faster nonwithstanding) until you compare within the same size or speed category:
2x16 GB Class 2 microSDHC are about 90 EUR (2.8125 EUR/GB).
2x16 GB SDHC Class 6 clocks in at about 80 EUR (1.25 EUR/GB).
2x16 GB microSDHC Class 6 sets you back about 160 EUR (5 EUR/GB).

So if I care about speed I can get a Class 6 full-size card for about half what a Class 6 micro card costs. Class 10 is even worse, with microSDHC costing a bit more than twice what normal SDHC costs. If I don't care about speed, a single 32 GB Class 2 SDHC costs about the same as two 16 GB Class 2 microSDHC, leaving me with one slot I can use for other things.

Also note that I couldn't find any 32 GB microSDHC cards on the market while the first SDXC cards can already be bought. microSDHC lags behind size-wise; miniaturization isn't easy and AFAIK micro cards have to spend proportionally more space on the controller than regular cards so they don't profit from shrinking flash cells as much.

I'll also agree with other posters who complain about microSDs being fragile and easy to lose – it's amazing how little stress the things can take before cracking. When I sink 50+ bucks per slot into storage for my Pandora I'd like that storage to be a bit more rugged.

MicroSD is great for when size is important – mobile phones are a good place to use them and there are tiny USB readers for the things that allow you use them as extremely small USB sticks. However, it sucks at size, price (and it's unlikely for that to change soon) and ruggedness. I'd only use it if a) regular SDHC would disappear (which is unlikely) or B) I really don't have enough space to put in a full-size slot.

 

[willrandship]

here's what I suggest for most people who have issues:

find some extra space in the pandora, pop in a usb hub. Build in a microsd adapter, attach the full size port (for 1.1 compatibility) and use the two remaining ports for something awesome, like G3 or ethernet.

 

[DAP]

The primary advantage of the Micro SD card is that it is about 1/4 the size of the SD card.
I am not so worried about price since that will fall, and if the micros ever overtake the full sized cards, they will quickly become cheaper.

The smaller size would free up a bunch of space on the main board for other things. (a USB hub chip so they could fix the main USB port and perhaps add a second full sized USB port etc.) Currently it appears that 1/8th of the component side of the board is used by the SD card slots. It would be nice to be able to recover 3/4 of that space.

But most of that could be achieved if they could find or have designed an SD connector that would stack the SD cards instead of having them side by side.

doable if you stack one above and one on the other side of the pcb, of course it would be only useable if you use only smd shield, because th would be on the way of the another shield

Not doable that way. The other side of the board is the keyboard, there is no room there. The only way to do it is a custom dual stacked SD connector that puts both SD slots stacked on top of each other on the same side of the board. I have not yet seen a connector like this.

 

[Kramy]

2x16 GB Class 2 microSDHC are about 90 EUR (2.8125 EUR/GB).
2x16 GB SDHC Class 6 clocks in at about 80 EUR (1.25 EUR/GB).

In Canada, MicroSD is the same, but SDHC is far cheaper. I can get 2x16GB for about $70. (50 euros) It's almost half-price.

MicroSD devices literally cost about $40 more after factoring in the more expensive cards. I only buy full SDHC devices.

 

[Snorbert]

i have not seen a class 6 microsd with more than 4GB. ok, maybe somewhere out there there is a 8GB one.

you can miniaturize the nand, but sd is a standard, where the controller is on the card. and that is the bottleneck.

actually, would be much easier to miniaturize, since the cards are controllerless. but it lost the race...

After losing a bunch of money with an Olympus camera that kept clobbering Smart Media cards for no apparent reason, and where the media could only be reformatted using a DOS tool and a particular SM reader chipset that was no longer on sale , I would never consider using any gear that uses Smart Media or its very proprietary descendants.

FWIW, the Wikipedia article states the max theoretical write/read speed of 2GiB cards as 3.75/6 MiB/sec, so whatever bottleneck limits SDHC media, would not be likely to offer faster speeds.

 

[Patrick R Ludvigsen]

I'm sick of "oops I dropped it on the sidewalk and can't find it I SURE HOPE I DIDN'T LEAVE ANY PERSONAL DATA". Regular sized SD is

 

[quadomatic]

I'm sick of "oops I dropped it on the sidewalk and can't find it I SURE HOPE I DIDN'T LEAVE ANY PERSONAL DATA". Regular sized SD is

I hate it when I had to worry about that after someone stole my phone...but that's kinda different.

 

[j6cubic]

2x16 GB Class 2 microSDHC are about 90 EUR (2.8125 EUR/GB).
2x16 GB SDHC Class 6 clocks in at about 80 EUR (1.25 EUR/GB).

In Canada, MicroSD is the same, but SDHC is far cheaper. I can get 2x16GB for about $70. (50 euros) It's almost half-price.

MicroSD devices literally cost about $40 more after factoring in the more expensive cards. I only buy full SDHC devices.

Actually, I didn't even select the cheapest cards for my estimates but tried to provide a very rough average. A-Data and Transcend offer 16 GB Class 6 at about 30 EUR, which comes out to 60 EUR for 32. Still more expensive than in Canada, though.

By the way, can you give me the address of a reputable Canadian vendor? Depending on what I get, (Canadian price + international shipping + customs duty) may just be cheaper than (German price + local shipping). Having a strong currency can be pretty nifty.

 

[Kramy]

Actually, I didn't even select the cheapest cards for my estimates but tried to provide a very rough average. A-Data and Transcend offer 16 GB Class 6 at about 30 EUR, which comes out to 60 EUR for 32. Still more expensive than in Canada, though.

By the way, can you give me the address of a reputable Canadian vendor? Depending on what I get, (Canadian price + international shipping + customs duty) may just be cheaper than (German price + local shipping). Having a strong currency can be pretty nifty.

A-Data 16GB cards are pretty good. Fast, and they seem to last a while.

I included taxes.

I have a feeling you'll be better off ordering from the US. They have cheaper international shipping than we do. When I need to find a low price on something, I usually use ShopBot. (keep your ad blocker on )

I don't know which sites ship internationally. I usually order from NCIX, Newegg, etc.; NCIX has pricematching, and I occasionally get discounts from them, so they're my favourite.