Dual-channel?

[Thunder]

Could you use two equal SD(HC) cards in both the slots in some sort of Dual-Channel set-up?
It would be nice as that would theoratically mean twice the speed!
Which is a good thing.

Or is this just impossible...?

 

[Chip]

It is possible, but not worthwhile. Link

 

[hotblack]

Although true RAID setups may not really be worth it, some may want to combine their SD cards into one contiguous volume using similar methods available via LVM although there are obviously disadvantages.

 

[jhoff80]

Although true RAID setups may not really be worth it, some may want to combine their SD cards into one contiguous volume using similar methods available via LVM although there are obviously disadvantages.



I know I'd prefer to do this. Any chance there will be some GUI method of doing it around launch time?

 

[Squidge]

It's possible, but unlikely I think.

The closest you'll probably get to a GUI for that will most likely be an X-Term

 

[hotblack]

Anything is possible!

There are LVM GUI's out there, but I'm not sure how easily they'd be ported across. There could well be something more Pandora-centric hacked together by someone, it really depends upon the interest in doing this (if someone wants to put the time into doing so).

I wouldn't expect this to be a default option straight-out-of-the-box though, although I could be proved wrong.

 

[sdedalus83]

Actually, splitting swap between both cards would improve VM performance without the need for RAID.

 

[sindbad]

Actually, splitting swap between both cards would improve VM performance without the need for RAID.

And an easy way to set up SD swap might be good idea.

 

[Vimacs]

no, thats a awful idea...

 

[hotblack]

I'm not sure if splitting the swap across two SD cards would increase performance, possibly quite the opposite.

If anyone wants to setup their swap on a single SD card this should be trivial to do in the usual ways. But it's probably not the sort of option you'd want to make readily available in the core GUI due to potential problems and performance impacts.

 

[javaJake]

Actually, splitting swap between both cards would improve VM performance without the need for RAID.

And an easy way to set up SD swap might be good idea.


touch /mnt/sdcard/swapfile && swapon /mnt/sdcard/swapfile

 

[sdedalus83]

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/articles/maximum-swappage.xml

Most Distros have guides on how to stripe swap partitions. That's the most complete one I've seen. As long as the two cards are on separate channels, there would be an increase in performance. If they're on the same channel, then nothing would happen.

I know that having swap on an SD card is going to be slow as molasses, but for some things it will probably be necessary

 

[sindbad]

Actually, splitting swap between both cards would improve VM performance without the need for RAID.

And an easy way to set up SD swap might be good idea.


touch /mnt/sdcard/swapfile && swapon /mnt/sdcard/swapfile

I bet not every future pandora owner knows that.

It's not that bad an idea to have swap on SD cards. One of the KDE developers experimented with his n810 and found that not having swap is worse than dealing with it's slowness. Obviously the pandora won't need nearly as much ram as the n810, but a few megs of swap on each SD with proper swapiness can't possibly hurt.

 

[hotblack]

The point is that this sort of thing generally depends upon the circumstances and there are potential pitfalls (SD removal or failure being the most severe, performance issues being the most common). This is why I say it's not wise or likely to provide this option to those who don't know what they're doing and therefore don't know when this should and should not be used.

If it were a simple case of this always being a good thing then yes, an easy option should and would be provided. But it's not. And providing a tick box somewhere means more people who don't understand the surrounding issues are likely to tr it without understanding the implications. If it's something people have to manuallly do there's a chance they'll do some research and ask some questions so make an informed decision.

 

[cbox]

I would think doing a JBOD on the SD cards would be a bad idea, how would you write to the volume from a sd card reader? You'd have to hook up the Pandora and write over USB cable.

 

[jhoff80]

I would think doing a JBOD on the SD cards would be a bad idea, how would you write to the volume from a sd card reader? You'd have to hook up the Pandora and write over USB cable.

It makes it much better for syncing music/video though doing it that way, since you can have one program sync it (I use WMP for that myself since it transcodes from my lossless files to smaller lower bitrate files on the fly during syncing.