Qestion About Class/speed Of 32 Gb Sd Cards At Gbax

[Morpheus384]

Hi All,

Well the title pretty much says it all. I was tempted to buy one when I saw the unit price while pre-ordering my Pandora last week; but the card pictured had no class distinction on it. At present I know where to get PNY 32 gb Class 4 cards@119.00 US. I'm currently using one in my Palm TX. However if these were the same class or even better (Class 6) I'd definitely be getting at least one. Does anyone know? :huh: Thanx in advance for any information.

 

[kloplop321]

most likely class 4, as that is what sandisk makes for stable and long-lasting cards right now

 

[Morpheus384]

most likely class 4, as that is what sandisk makes for stable and long-lasting cards right now

Thanks for the quick response, if that is the case I'll most likely be picking up at least one for the new unit. Do we have any confirmation that GBAX is actually shipping Sandisk Cards? I know it was one shown on the site, but It looked like stock photo (e.g. Generic SD).

 

[maddis]

http://www.lowpricememory.co.uk/sdhc-memory-cards.html

Will be getting my card from here.

Integral 8GB SDHC Memory Card Class 4 £13.50

Transcend 8GB Class 6 SDHC Memory Card £16.50

Transcend 16GB SD HC Memory Card Class 6 £26.50

At present there are no 32Gb cards being sold, but i am sure they are not to far around the corner

 

[(naw)mcx]

http://www.lowpricememory.co.uk/sdhc-memory-cards.html

Will be getting my card from here.

Integral 8GB SDHC Memory Card Class 4 £13.50

Transcend 8GB Class 6 SDHC Memory Card £16.50

Transcend 16GB SD HC Memory Card Class 6 £26.50

At present there are no 32Gb cards being sold, but i am sure they are not to far around the corner



http://www.amazon.co.uk/Transcend-16GB-SDH...7261&sr=8-3

Transcend 16GB Class 6 SDHC Memory Card £26.50 £19.89
Free shipping too.

 

[j.pickens]

I plan to wait until I get the Pandora.
I have some 2 and 4GB SDHC cards laying around to use until I upgrade.
The prices are dropping so fast that waiting the month (or two) until the Pandora arrives will result in much lower SDHC prices.

 

[maddis]

http://www.lowpricememory.co.uk/sdhc-memory-cards.html

Will be getting my card from here.

Integral 8GB SDHC Memory Card Class 4 £13.50

Transcend 8GB Class 6 SDHC Memory Card £16.50

Transcend 16GB SD HC Memory Card Class 6 £26.50

At present there are no 32Gb cards being sold, but i am sure they are not to far around the corner



http://www.amazon.co.uk/Transcend-16GB-SDH...7261&sr=8-3

Transcend 16GB Class 6 SDHC Memory Card £26.50 £19.89
Free shipping too.

Thanks for the info, looks like i wont be going to low price memory now. I just hope the cost is even lower nearer the release of the pandora at the end on november

 

[LordFu]

Just FYI, 32GB is the addressing limit of FAT32. Drives larger than that are formating by addressing them as seperate drives, internally, so it can be worked-around. But, that's why SDHC technically has a 32GB ceiling.

 

[cosam]

Just FYI, 32GB is the addressing limit of FAT32. ... But, that's why SDHC technically has a 32GB ceiling.

The 32GB limit has nothing to do with the FAT32 filesystem, but with the addressing of blocks on the card. The standard allows you to use 16 bits to identify a particular block, and each block is 512 KiB (2^16 * 512KiB = 32GiB). Not that anyone asked...

 

[Squidge]

Just FYI, 32GB is the addressing limit of FAT32. Drives larger than that are formating by addressing them as seperate drives, internally, so it can be worked-around. But, that's why SDHC technically has a 32GB ceiling.

No, FAT32 (actually, its more like FAT28, as there are reserved bits of the cluster id for internal use) maximum size is 8 terabytes (8 TB) - 268,435,445 (0xFFFFFF5) * 32KB. You can hack FAT32 into storing 16 TB by using 64KB clusters, but this is not recommended (and not supported by some fat32 drivers). WindowsXP will refuse to format a FAT32 volume larger than 32 gigabytes (GB), but it can use them if you use an alternative tool (such as the format tool from Win98) to bypass this limitation.

The 32GB limit has nothing to do with the FAT32 filesystem, but with the addressing of blocks on the card. The standard allows you to use 16 bits to identify a particular block, and each block is 512 KiB (2^16 * 512KiB = 32GiB). Not that anyone asked...

Correct, to be full however, it should really be explained as the C_SIZE field is 22 bits, but the upmost 6 bits are reserved for future use so, in the current specification, they must be zero (Before anyone else jumps in and says the spec allows more).

 

[canguy247]

This is Linux so why not use ext3?

 

[Squidge]

This is Linux so why not use ext3?

Probably due to the fact that people may want to connect it to PCs which do not run Linux, such as MacOS and Windows?

 

[canguy247]

This is Linux so why not use ext3?

Probably due to the fact that people may want to connect it to PCs which do not run Linux, such as MacOS and Windows?



Why?

 

[kloplop321]

Well if it isn't too hard this was the first thing that came up on google.
http://www.fs-driver.org/
QUOTE
It provides Windows NT4.0/2000/XP/2003/Vista with full access to Linux Ext2 volumes (read access and write access). This may be useful if you have installed both Windows and Linux as a dual boot environment on your computer.

The "Ext2 Installable File System for Windows" software is freeware.
QUOTE
What features are supported?
* Complete reading and writing access to files and directories of volumes with the Ext2 or Ext3 file system.
QUOTE
# Supports Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003 and Windows Vista [new].
# Supports both the 32 bit x86 and the 64 bit x64 platform [new].
# Includes drivers with a digital signature for Windows Vista x64 [new].
# All operations you would expect: Reading and writing files, listing directories, creating, renaming, moving and deleting files or directories, querying and modifying the volume's label.
# UTF-8 encoding [new].
# Files larger than 2 GBytes. (Please read the FAQ section, too.)
# Supports hash indexed (htree) directories (utilizes the so-called dir_index feature of Ext3) [new].
# Full plug-n-play functionality. When a drive is removed, the corresponding drive letter is deleted [new].

I like the last one.
It understands both Ext2 and Ext3, so I don't think this is an issue really. Plus Ext* is more stable than FAT when it comes to undesirable power issues or when they are taken out without being unstrapped from the system digitally

EDIT
found some more info
QUOTE
Does the Ext2 driver access Ext3 volumes, too?

The Ext3 file system is the Ext2 file system which has been extended by journaling. Ext3 is backward-compatible to Ext2 - an Ext3 volume can be mounted and used as an Ext2 volume. Just as older Linux Kernels which do not know the Ext3 file system can mount Ext3 volumes (as Ext2 volumes), the Ext2 file system driver ext2fs.sys for Windows incorporated in this software package can do it without any problems, too. Of course you do not take advantage of the journaling of the Ext3 file system if you mount it as an Ext2 file system.
If you mount an Ext3 file system as an Ext2 file system and the file system is not cleanly dismounted, (e.g. due to a system crash), you have to run the e2fsck tool. (Linux does it automatically.) Running e2fsck can take several hours on large volumes. You do not benefit from journaling the Ext3 file system, because you have to run e2fsck.

If you mount an Ext3 file system as an Ext3 file system (journaling) and the file system is not cleanly dismounted due to a system crash, things are much better: When the volume is mounted next time as an Ext3 file system, a replay of the journal will be done, after which the file system will be consistent. You need not run e2fsck. (If you run e2fsck nevertheless, it won't find any errors of the Ext3 file system, because there will not be any errors after replaying the journal.)

If a volume is mounted as Ext3 file system, any new data is first completely written into the journal, and then into the file system. This is also called a transaction. Finally, the data is removed from the journal. So a journal only contains data when you are writing to the file system. After a clean dismount of the Ext3 file system, the journal is empty.

YAY for how wonderful Linux is!

 

[Chip]

The FAT file system is the defacto standard for SD cards. As soon as you switch to something different, you loose compatibility with other operating systems and pretty much all standalone devices. The benefits from alternative file systems are negligible, and the cost of broken compatibility is very high.

Stick with FAT32.

 

[Etinin]

But if someone uses an SD card for an OS, I'd recommend that person to use a journaled FS like ReiserFS or ext3.

IDC about compatibility so I'll probably just throw a full blown JFS in my SD cards.

 

[javaJake]

Besides, can't the Pandora act as a USB flash drive? That eliminates quite a few incompatibilities right off,

 

[Etinin]

Well, IDK if the Pandora will support that by default, but it's possible.
Anyways, it won't be hard to configure SAMBA or NFS.

 

[hedwards]

Ultimately, you're not likely to really want to go with a 32gb card or larger at this point, as the device has 2 slots and it's almost always cheaper to get several smaller ones for that capacity. Add to that the reduced likelihood of losing all the data.

As far as filesystems go really the only choices should be either fat32 or NTFS. NTFS at this point is practically as well supported as fat32 is and it sucks a lot less in almost every way. I've had few problem with the ntfs-3g drivers and those problems were just in how it was unmounted.

Ext3fs is a bad choice, unless things have changed the Linux developers have a history of changing their formats fairly frequently and it's far less commonly used than either fat32 or NTFS. You'd be better off with something like zfs if you're going to go that route.

 

[Tor]

FAT is actually a very bad filesystem for a Linux installation since it doesn't have support for the 'exec' attribute bit. Thus, when mounting the filesystem, you must choose between 'everything is executable' or 'nothing is executable'. The latter prevents anything except scripts to run (and then only if you execute it as 'sh scriptname', or 'perl scriptname', and sh/perl are on another, exec-compatible filesystem). The former makes [beverything[/b] look executable, and when you try, you get error messages, and it messes up the 'tab' completion in the shell. File managers may also look at the exec bit.

That's the reason why those in the Nokia 770/N8x0 community usually set up an ext2 partition on a card when they chose to 'clone' the operating system from NAND flash to SD card (to have dual-boot, or just to make room for more applications).

Ext3fs is a bad choice, unless things have changed the Linux developers have a history of changing their formats fairly frequently[...]

??? Where did you get that from? I have followed the development of ext2 and ext3 since the beginning, and it's been compatible all the way except for a tiny change many many years ago which was easily handled. I have ext2 filesystems more than a decade old and they are 100% functional on the newest systems I have.

Ext3 is basically just ext2 with journaling slapped on, and there's been discussion of if this just adds unneccessary wear&tear for a card. Don't know the reality of that, but I think the consensus is that it's better to just go with ext2.