What is better, big SD cards or several small ones?

[danielo515]

Hello,

I was thinking about buying another SD card to my pandy (currently I only have one and a micro-sd for Android). I though about buying a 128 GB SD, but then I stopped and though: maybe it's better to have several smaller cards for the same price?

I want to know how do you manage this and your experiences so far. I am very bad at making decisions like this and I want to hear pros and cons from people that currently has several SD cards.

I have a cool pandora case, so carrying several SD cards should  not be a problem.

Another question: Any brand recommended ?  Of course class 10, but from any specific vendor? It is ok to use micro-sd cards with adapter? I have some unused micro-sd cards that I would like to put in good use.

Many thanks.

 

[TrashyMG]

If you are looking for large but affordable, 64GB seems to be the best for the price paid. It seems that all manufactures have a huge jump in price from 64GB to 128GB. 

I've picked this up recently PNY Class 10 90MB/s:  http://www.amazon.com/PNY-Elite-Performance-Speed-Class/dp/B00HIKBW1G/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1438777800&sr=8-3&keywords=Class+10+SD+card
 

 

[lukey]

This 128 Gb one is pretty cheap: http://www.mindfactory.de/product_info.php/128-GB-V7-SDXC-UHS-I-Retail_967758.html

 

[danielo515]

This 128 Gb one is pretty cheap: http://www.mindfactory.de/product_info.php/128-GB-V7-SDXC-UHS-I-Retail_967758.html

Yes, it is cheap but it's read speed is half of the one @TrashyMG, has posted.

I am asking because I am not only worried about what is most convenient but to know if there is any limitation on pandora that forces you to use any specific vendor and/or card characteristics. 

 

[ingoreis]

I had tried many SD Cards on the Pandora but no SD Cards i tried where faster as this:

I cannot exactly explain why but the copying Speed is not so Important like the SD Card Responsing Time to read and write little Things.

This Card is PERFECTLY for using Operating Systems or compiling Things in the Pandora.

Even the bigger SD Cards i bought from Sandisk are not so fast than this 16GB Card with Operating Systems and DD System Image Copiers.

My feeling say: This is and stay the best SD Card i bought for Slackware,Pandora Zaxxon experiments,Compiling Things,Exagear and and and. ^_^

 

[_wb_]

I bought these ones recently:

http://www.amazon.de/128GB-Secure-Digital-Speicherkarte-HighSpeed/dp/B00JAXVUSO/ref=sr_1_2?s=ce-accessories&ie=UTF8&qid=1438786292&sr=1-2

128GB for 37.92 EUR, claims 40MB/s write, 80MB/s read.

http://www.amazon.de/Komputerbay-Extended-Capacity-Ultra-Hochgeschwindigkeits-Flash-schreiben/dp/B00CX8SJDM/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1438786242&sr=1-1&keywords=komputerbay+128gb

128GB for 39 EUR, claims 60MB/s write, 90MB/s read.

Both work perfectly fine on my Pandora. I didn't verify the speed claims in detail, since they can both max out the Pandora SD bus, which is limited at something like 15MB/s or so. The size seems to be as advertized (haven't checked that in detail either, but at least the repartitioning and reformatting to nicer filesystems worked fine).

 

[danielo515]

since they can both max out the Pandora SD bus, which is limited at something like 15MB/s or so.

That is exactly one of the things I was asking about. So it makes no sense to build an expensib card wih 100MB read because pandora's maximun speed is going to be 15, so everything over 15 will be fine. 

@ingoreis, I trust you, but I think that I will miss capacity very soon using so small cards.

Thanks to everyone who has shared their experience.

 

[Nintendo]

Beware of fakes.

 

[rygD]

Hello,

I was thinking about buying another SD card to my pandy (currently I only have one and a micro-sd for Android). I though about buying a 128 GB SD, but then I stopped and though: maybe it's better to have several smaller cards for the same price?

I want to know how do you manage this and your experiences so far. I am very bad at making decisions like this and I want to hear pros and cons from people that currently has several SD cards.

I have a cool pandora case, so carrying several SD cards should  not be a problem.

Another question: Any brand recommended ?  Of course class 10, but from any specific vendor? It is ok to use micro-sd cards with adapter? I have some unused micro-sd cards that I would like to put in good use.

Many thanks.

Rather than offer suggestions I will tell you what I use.  I have a pair of 32GB cards for my Pandora.  The left one nearly always stays in the slot. I do not currently run an OS from it, but I do have all of the software and files I use somewhat regularly on it.  For a while I kept the right one full of music and less used stuff, and would swap it out with the lower capacity microSD cards in adapters from my Everdrives, and run the emulators that were stored on the left one.  

Recently I changed my approach, and have deleted everything I don't use often from both of my dedicated Pandora cards.  The left one still has my most used stuff, as well as some important documents.  The right one now has all my emus and whatever games I am currently playing, with just my most frequently listened to mainstream music (most of my music is rather obscure stuff, and my entire collection is probably well over 500GB, so I just have stuff from a few bands on the SD card).  My reason for the change is I got tired of constantly swapping cards because I decided to play a game for 5 minutes.  I would sometimes misplace them.  For me it is better just to have what I need stay in the slots, but this means my total capacity is rather limited.  What it really comes down to is sometimes I want to listen to or play something else.  I ended up carrying a music player to have access to more of my music.

To answer your question, you need to figure out what works best for you.  If you are fine swapping cards frequently, do that, especially if you already have some.  If you don't want to keep track of a bunch of cards, try to find a good balance between price and capacity.

I don't know the speed of my cards, but I never paid too much attention to that.  I think there is a page on the wiki with info about SD card compatibility, but I don't know if it is up to date.

If you are looking for large but affordable, 64GB seems to be the best for the price paid. It seems that all manufactures have a huge jump in price from 64GB to 128GB. 


I've picked this up recently PNY Class 10 90MB/s:  http://www.amazon.com/PNY-Elite-Performance-Speed-Class/dp/B00HIKBW1G/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1438777800&sr=8-3&keywords=Class+10+SD+card

Any problems with it?  Thanks for pointing this out.  I will probably be picking one up soon for reasons mentioned above.

 

[TrashyMG]

Any problems with it?  Thanks for pointing this out.  I will probably be picking one up soon for reasons mentioned above.

It's been running fine for the last 4 months on my Pandora... 

 

[rygD]

I bought these ones recently:

http://www.amazon.de/128GB-Secure-Digital-Speicherkarte-HighSpeed/dp/B00JAXVUSO/ref=sr_1_2?s=ce-accessories&ie=UTF8&qid=1438786292&sr=1-2

128GB for 37.92 EUR, claims 40MB/s write, 80MB/s read.

http://www.amazon.de/Komputerbay-Extended-Capacity-Ultra-Hochgeschwindigkeits-Flash-schreiben/dp/B00CX8SJDM/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1438786242&sr=1-1&keywords=komputerbay+128gb

128GB for 39 EUR, claims 60MB/s write, 90MB/s read.

Both work perfectly fine on my Pandora. I didn't verify the speed claims in detail, since they can both max out the Pandora SD bus, which is limited at something like 15MB/s or so. The size seems to be as advertized (haven't checked that in detail either, but at least the repartitioning and reformatting to nicer filesystems worked fine).

I was looking at some Komputerbay ones a couple months ago.  I wasn't willing to risk it.  I might give them a shot now.

Beware of fakes.

This is why I wasn't going for high capacity ones.  All of the local retailers only have low capacity (32GB and lower) at decent prices, with higher capacities at sometimes well over a dollar per GB.  Online retailers have them much cheaper, but I have read too many stories about people getting fakes even from reputable companies (Amazon first party sales being one of them).

 

[DaMummy]

You're much more likely to get Amazon to mess up the order and send you two SD cards for the price of one than to have them send you a fake one.

 

[Wally]

I've got 2 * 256GB Tiger Direct SD Cards They run great.

I find bigger cards allow you to store more but you're more at risk of losing a lot more. Suggested to make a full disk image backup and copy it somewhere else

 

[levi]

I only trust Sandisk and Samsung brands personally, as they're the only manufacturers I know of who make their own flash chips and flash controllers.

I would also suggest that even what I've got (twin 64GB cards) is probably excessive unless you want to take a lot of lossless music and (sd) videos with you. I haven't counted how many PNDs I have, but I've installed most new releases since I got my Pandora, and haven't got round to deleting anything yet, and my cards are still mostly empty.

 

[danielo515]

I only trust Sandisk and Samsung brands personally, as they're the only manufacturers I know of who make their own flash chips and flash controllers.


I would also suggest that even what I've got (twin 64GB cards) is probably excessive unless you want to take a lot of lossless music and (sd) videos with you. I haven't counted how many PNDs I have, but I've installed most new releases since I got my Pandora, and haven't got round to deleting anything yet, and my cards are still mostly empty.

What about roms? They could be pretty big. Specially sega CD and PSX

Rather than offer suggestions I will tell you what I use.  I have a pair of 32GB cards for my Pandora.  

 

I was asking for this kind of feedback also, so thank you.

 

[ZXDunny]

Two 64GB SD Cards here, but they were problematic to get working - Windows wouldn't format them in anything other than NTFS unless I partitioned them into smaller chunks - had to download a third party partitioning/formatting tool to get them to format. Also, the Pandora won't boot off an SD that big for firmware updates unless I partition them down to 32GB or less.

That said, once it's done there's no issues and all my boxes (Win7/64, XP/32 and Slackware) read and write to them no problems.

D.

 

[atari_afternoon]

Thank you especially to_wb_ for the tip.

After having had bad luck twice, I have been using two locally bought 32GB cards, worked well for over 3 years and still do but now got one 128.

 

[danielo515]

One thing I got problems with was permissions.

Make sure you add to cp a modifier to retain the same permissions.

 

[Binky]

^Or, in my case, because I have different UIDs on my pandora and my desktop, and use ext3 on my SD cards, I have to manually give my pandora account permission to modify files.

For most stuff, this can be simplified by setting write access for everyone (Pandoras are far more vulnerable to physical theft than covert, remote attacks)

 

[TrashyMG]

When dealing with just Pandora related things, I usually just stick to fat32 in most cases, saves me a bit of hassle with permissions and such.