SD cards: How fast is fast enough?


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Lethargy

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Mar 24, 2011
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Well, the deed is done. Ordered my Pandora yesterday, I even managed to persuade my wife to buy it for me as a 40th birthday present :)


Anyway, a question for those of you who've used various different speeds of SD cards in your Pandoras: what speed of SD card are you happy to use? I can't really justify the cost of a Class 10, as I'm planning on getting a 32GB card. Do you see an appreciable difference with the faster cards? If it makes a huge difference, I may consider dropping to a 16GB card so I can get a faster one.


Thanks!
 
I have a class 10 and a class 4 my class 4 read faster than my class 10 by quite a way but the 10 writes a bit quicker than the class 4 but its not really noticeable I boot from my class 4.


class 10 = r/w 13/10


class 4 = r/w 19/6


Its good to have fast cards for when writing files to it like transferring a 700mb iso using a sd card adapter but I doubt you will see a bottle neck on the pandora if thats what your worried about, I always get the best I can afford for future if I get a nice hd recording video camera.
 
Thanks guys, I'll go for a class 4 then. I just hope the Pandora arrives on schedule, as I haven't had an order confirmation email (though Google says my credit card has been charged).
 
I bought class 6 SD cards, I'm not sure if they're the best of both worlds or not worth the price above the class 4.. I never tried to speed test them.
 
Lethargy said:
I haven't had an order confirmation email (though Google says my credit card has been charged).
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Just to set your expectations, I received my confirmation email the following day and my Pandora took 7 days from then. That last day is a killer!
 
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Sugarfix said:
Just to set your expectations, I received my confirmation email the following day and my Pandora took 7 days from then. That last day is a killer!
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I won't be allowed to play with it until my birthday anyway (although of course I will have to make sure everything all works properly when it arrives - ahem) :D


Roll on July!
 
Lethargy said:
...I even managed to persuade my wife to buy it for me as a 40th birthday present :) ...
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Congrats. I managed my wife 3 Years ago, but be 40th tomorrow :)


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Anyway, IIRC MWeston mentioned that bus theoretically can transfer up to 25 24 MB/s. Other thing is, if overall horsepower is enough. But it seems reasonable to try cards up to 20 MB/s.


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EDIT: According to this MWeston post it really worth to have Class 10 SDHC card. Higher rates could be reasonable, but it depends on circumstances. I think - due to pricing - better concern on IOPS then transfer rates over 10 MB/s
 
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just 2 warning :


SDcard class only note write speed, read speed is not part of the equation : the card have to be fast to write all those 12M raw photos, but then who cares how fast it is to dump it on the desktop. At worst peeps will blame MS for the shitty OS ;) meandu229 stats are rather representative. When the card maker produce an SDcard he focus on the write speed tro get the highest mark and he is ready to drop the read speed to "optimize" the write speed, so class 4 faster than a class 10 isnt surprising.


there are more fake cards out than genuite one, be realy carefull
 
What everyone above said, and also don't buy on eBay. If you're US-based, I've always used Newegg.com with great success. Their prices are competitive - maybe not the rock-bottom pricing you'll find in some places, but their customer service is unbelievably good. They've bent written rules for me simply because I asked nicely.


Also, welcome and congratulations!
 
David Bowman said:
What everyone above said, and also don't buy on eBay. If you're US-based, I've always used Newegg.com with great success. Their prices are competitive - maybe not the rock-bottom pricing you'll find in some places, but their customer service is unbelievably good. They've bent written rules for me simply because I asked nicely.


Also, welcome and congratulations!
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Thanks - I can't wait to get hold of my shiny new gadget :)


I'm in the UK - I had been planning on buying from Amazon or Dabs. I always buy SanDisk, as I've never had any problems with them in the past. I didn't know fake cards were so common!
 
Lethargy said:
David Bowman said:
What everyone above said, and also don't buy on eBay. If you're US-based, I've always used Newegg.com with great success. Their prices are competitive - maybe not the rock-bottom pricing you'll find in some places, but their customer service is unbelievably good. They've bent written rules for me simply because I asked nicely.


Also, welcome and congratulations!
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Thanks - I can't wait to get hold of my shiny new gadget :)


I'm in the UK - I had been planning on buying from Amazon or Dabs. I always buy SanDisk, as I've never had any problems with them in the past. I didn't know fake cards were so common!
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Watch out for amazon sellers, play.com usually has good offers and free shipping
 
meandu229 said:
Watch out for amazon sellers, play.com usually has good offers and free shipping
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I'd forgotten about Play - just looked now and I need to update my details as it is so long since I used them. However they now require my landline number (which I don't remember as I never use it!) and my date of birth, which I refuse to give to any website. Call me Mr. Paranoid :) (Getting letters to my home address saying my application for store credit has been declined, when I have never applied for store credit in my life is enough to make anyone paranoid)


Shame really, as their prices are good.
 
sebt3 said:
just 2 warning :


SDcard class only note write speed, read speed is not part of the equation : the card have to be fast to write all those 12M raw photos, but then who cares how fast it is to dump it on the desktop.
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Ahh, that's very helpful to know. I was under the assumption that it was both write and read speed, hence why I (foolishly) went for the highest 32gig speed I could afford. Silly me, huh? ;) Well, at least I know now for when I eventually buy a second 32gig card.
 
To be fair, if the average read speed isn't at least as fast as the average write speed, there's probably something very wrong with the card.


That being said, the class isn't necessarily a good indicator of average speed anyway, read or write. A class 6 can very easily outpace a class 10 on average, the difference being that a class 6 may occasionally drop to only 6MB per second for a short period while a class 10 will not drop below 10MB per second so long as there is data to write. Class 10 is very useful for devices that can't afford even a single second of slowdown, such as HD video and audio recordings.
 
MarioPandio said:
As your UK based, you may wish to wait for a re-stock (could be different batch) on these http://www.7dayshop.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=777_6&products_id=111247 32gb class10 cards. Mr_Loon discovered the offer and he's had no issue and I now run 2 without issue from the cards themselves.
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Even though that card worked fine for me (& you), I've heard that other people have had problems using some of these cards with Pandora. There was another thread where the buyer bought 3 cards, all worked fine under desktop linux but 2 of the 3 would not work with Pandora.
 
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Oh I didn't hear about that, I shall refrain from advertising them. I did get one issue but it also affected my other cards of different brands, in that my whole OS partitions got wiped out when using PNDstore under HF5. No idea why as yet as I must replicate it some more and try and get some outputs for more diagnosis. Otherwise they've been great.
 
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