Hdds Vs Sd Cards

[Tobs]

So, external HDDs are far cheaper per Gb than SD cards, but they're also slower.
Portability isn't much of an issue, since on the train I travel on, they have mains sockets available and otherwise it'll only be used at home.
What about speed of data transfer though? From past knowledge I know USB HDD drives are fairly slow, but expensive SD cards are pretty fast. And then of course you have that SD cards are prone to memory wear...
I'm thinking about getting a cheap HDD for general use, and SD for on the road stuff.
But tell me internet, what are you doing, HDD, SD, both, flash drives? Or what are your thoughts on them?
Ta,

Tobs

P.S. Apologies if this has come up before, is a terrible topic to search; no words under 3 letters (HDD, SD), "hard" comes up with a hundred results about how difficult porting some titles will be, and "drive" is equally useless ^^

 

[paddy]

its all about compact design and the two sd slots are a mega idea,so ill be using both slots 32gig on each so 64 gig to play around with will makeme happy.

if this thing could be hooked to a network then you could have access to
the desktop/laptop hard drive when at home for movies and msic collections,or you could use an old ipod for a spare 40 gig usb storage.

 

[geo12]

The only time I'd use a hard drive would be in my house, and I have wifi in my house so there's really no purpose. I'm going with 2x16gb SD.

 

[gruso]

A couple of recent threads:

Smallest External Hard Drive Without Sacrificing Storage
Pandora Storage Space Hd

 

[Tobs]

@Gruso; none of those were the same question as mine. The first was about which HDD to buy, the second evolved into talking about compatible HDDs, I didn't really want to hijack any threads.

Does anyone know if the pandora supports SMB, or other filesharing protocols?
Would wireless filesharing fast enough access times to play games that load resources on the fly?
Thinking about that, does anyone have any experience of watching movies/playing games off of a USB HDD? Does it go without hiccups? (I'll assume that the pandora can pull data from a USB HDD at about the same speed a computer can...)

Tobs

 

[Yigguth]

Actually, I keep most of my games and movies on my USB HD because they won't fit on my computer and they always run nice and smooth

 

[gruso]

@gruso; none of those were the same question as mine. The first was about which HDD to buy, the second evolved into talking about compatible HDDs, I didn't really want to hijack any threads.
You asked a pretty broad question about peoples thoughts, so I linked a couple of recent threads that I found by browsing the last couple of pages.

Make sure you have a read of the Pandora Information Index thread: http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=44746

And the FAQ (linked in that thread): http://pandorawiki.org/FAQ

SMB will be supported. Pandora's USB and Wifi should operate the same as on a PC, so streaming movies via either method should be fine. Not sure about running games over Wifi, but again, performance should be of a similar standard to PC.

We all feel your pain with the searching. Too many Three Letter Acronyms to search for. Google site search is helpful, but the results can be a bit patchy.

 

[Prometheus]

I keep rips of my DVD collection on an external (and quite large in physical size, so I won't be using it with the Pandora) USB HDD, so that I can avoid the incredible noise generated by my DVD drive when it's in use, and simply open the resultant ISOs in VLC - no problems here, either.

I've got a much smaller (but with more storage space) USB HDD put away for Christmas, which I'll be using for the same purpose when taking my Pandora on long trips/vacations, as it will save me from having to bring both a DVD player and my DVD-wallet in addition to the Pandora. For everything else I'll be using SD Cards, although I may use one of the USB flash-drives I have kicking around for storing documents and other work-type things on.

 

[pcklee123]

http://www.chipchick.com/2007/04/seagate_f...hard_drive.html
this would be good for a swap drive or sor programs which frequently writes to the hd

 

[lobski]

So, external HDDs are far cheaper per Gb than SD cards, but they're also slower.
Portability isn't much of an issue, since on the train I travel on, they have mains sockets available and otherwise it'll only be used at home.
What about speed of data transfer though? From past knowledge I know USB HDD drives are fairly slow, but expensive SD cards are pretty fast. And then of course you have that SD cards are prone to memory wear...
I'm thinking about getting a cheap HDD for general use, and SD for on the road stuff.
But tell me internet, what are you doing, HDD, SD, both, flash drives? Or what are your thoughts on them?
Ta,

Tobs

P.S. Apologies if this has come up before, is a terrible topic to search; no words under 3 letters (HDD, SD), "hard" comes up with a hundred results about how difficult porting some titles will be, and "drive" is equally useless ^^

The biggest drawback with portable HD's is the battery life, even with those small 2.5 mobile HD's. It will cut back 50%, or even 60% of the battery.

 

[mrsnature]

P.S. Apologies if this has come up before, is a terrible topic to search; no words under 3 letters (HDD, SD), "hard" comes up with a hundred results about how difficult porting some titles will be, and "drive" is equally useless ^^

google: "site:www.gp32x.de your search terms here"

 

[senquack]

I think you're crazy to use a hard drive instead of a 32GB SD. A 32GB SD should be more than enough for any on-the-go stuff.

Hard drives are much less reliable than flash media. They'll just randomly stop working, and if you ever drop it, you can usually kiss it goodbye. You'd have to try very, very hard to wear out an SD card. I.E., it will never wear out unless you try to serve a corporate database off it for a year. Plus, you could drop it off a cliff and it'd still work.

Furthermore, flash has a tiny latency as opposed to a hard drive's huge latency in the 5-15ms range. This can help make up for its relative lack of throughput versus hard drives in terms of overall speed perception.

 

[centrlink]

I have to say it is hard to imagine wanting more than 64 gb on the go at one time, so I'd definitely avoid a HD. Sure, some PSX ISO's could start filling things up pretty quickly (N64 much less - fingers crossed , but with all the other great systems with literally 10's of thousands of games with relatively small footprints, a HD would, for me at least, be serious overkill.

Cheers

 

[cosam]

A 32GB SD should be more than enough for any on-the-go stuff.

Yes, and 640K of RAM should be enough for everyone too ;-) 32GB is a lot for on the train, but I know I'll be taking a hard disk with me if I'm away for any longer than a couple of days. With about ten times the storage for the same price, they definitely have their uses.

 

[lobski]

Don't forget about the battery life...

 

[Tor]

The HD has rotation latency which the SD card doesn't have, but the HD could still (depending on the drive) transfer data faster than a card. But there's not just that latency, there's also the spin-up latency. All handhelds with HDs (e.g. the Palm Lifedrive) spins down the disk when it's idling, otherwise it just uses too much juice. It's not feasible to keep it spinning at all times. So, when you want to do something, the drive has to spin up first.. it can make you go crazy. No wonder lots of people have sent their Lifedrives off to this company which surgically replaces the HD with flash memory.

And then there's the problem that if you move you spinning HD around it will, sooner or later, be damaged due to the gyro effects. There's a lot of force there and it's hard to avoid the head hitting the disk surface.

When all that has been said, people have connected 160GB USB disks to their Nokia N8x0. There are some threads about that over on InternetTabletTalk.com

 

[hch]

hi tobs,

i am not reallz an expert on this, so if i am wrong i hope someone will correct me. but afaik, you got it really backwards. sd cards have much less throughput - cass 6 (the best) refers i think to the fact that the maximum write speed is 6MB/s. a good HD has in the range of 50. read is typically faster on SD cards, but tops at about 20MB/s afaik. you could boost that by almost a factor of 2 with raid, but that's it.

on the other hand, sd cards are the clear winners on the reliability front. their mtbf is now about 100.000 writes as compared to about 1000.000 for harddisks, but that is purey theoretical. you will never reach that limit due to wear levlling algorithms that are built into the sd cards controller. on the other hand, sd cards don't have mechanical components, so they are much more resistant to mechanical failure and this is what counts in practice.

 

[Tobs]

@hch; I thought that too after reading Wikipedia, but it says there that is the minimum speed of the card; actual speed can be much faster.

I've decided to go with an 8GB SDHC card for now, and using a computer as an SMB whilst at home. I just checked the size of some roms and they're smaller than I remember so 8GB should be fine for on the go, with a 200GB drive to backup files to, and copy them over when needed.
Thanks for your input =]

Tobs

 

[magicman5421]

Guys.
For around the house, sshfs. set up an ssh server on your main computer and go wild.

 

[Svartalf]

hi tobs,

i am not reallz an expert on this, so if i am wrong i hope someone will correct me. but afaik, you got it really backwards. sd cards have much less throughput - cass 6 (the best) refers i think to the fact that the maximum write speed is 6MB/s. a good HD has in the range of 50. read is typically faster on SD cards, but tops at about 20MB/s afaik. you could boost that by almost a factor of 2 with raid, but that's it.

It can be higher, but a Class 6 device only guarantees 6Mbits/sec- it's the stated worst-case performance of the device and can be higher than that depending on the quality of the device (A SanDisk or Lexar Class6 will do ~10-20Mbits write in many cases, whereas a Patriot will do good to do 8-ish...). RAID's a waste of time speed-wise because it won't be robust and you don't gain enough for the trouble you're going through (We've went through this discussion several times on the forums...trust the guy who's been at RAID, etc. for decades when he tells ya it's not worth it on this machine... ). Realistically, you're going to be doing read-mostly and the practical performance of the SDHC cards will suffice for most applications without penalizing you on battery life. A HD will actually seriously curtail your battery life as the thing will consume as many if not more watt-hours off the battery than the SOC and backlight will on the base machine.

QUOTE

on the other hand, sd cards are the clear winners on the reliability front. their mtbf is now about 100.000 writes as compared to about 1000.000 for harddisks, but that is purey theoretical. you will never reach that limit due to wear levlling algorithms that are built into the sd cards controller. on the other hand, sd cards don't have mechanical components, so they are much more resistant to mechanical failure and this is what counts in practice.


Indeed. Moreover, you can be assured of pretty much seeing about 6 hours of use under normal operation of the Pandora with just SDHCs as opposed to lower with the USB powered HD. This doesn't get into one being able to pack more capacity into SDHC's per volume of stuff carried (yeah, I know, more expensive...I can relate there...but...)- and being able to hold onto the unit while the stuff's going. With a USB HD, you're going to have to either velcro the drive to the Pandora or leave it on a flat surface while playing.