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

[levi]

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

True, although CD is a 650MB format, and I'd guess most games don't use up all that space, so I'd estimate you could fit something like 200 games on each card. That covers all Sega CD games easily I suspect, and probably all the PSX games I want to play on the move, but if you want more maybe that's justification for 128GB cards I guess

 

[ZXDunny]

I convert all my PSX ISOs to EBOOT format - saves a huge amount of space, especially when they only occupy between 120 and 200MB.

D.

 

[danielo515]

I convert all my PSX ISOs to EBOOT format - saves a huge amount of space, especially when they only occupy between 120 and 200MB.D.

Do you use any particular software?

 

[ZXDunny]

Yeah, it was PSX2PSP - works a treat.

D.

 

[Grench]

I'm using a 256GB PNY card in the left slot now and shuttling media to/from cameras and tablets in the right slot (many times with a microSD adapter).

Having a high capacity card as the 'main' has proven VERY handy.

We still need someone to write a program for the Pandora (and Pyra) that gives a reliable 'card performance' metrics set with the option to upload the results to a central data repository.

After most cards in general all became faster than the Pandora's ports, the speed question became less important for the Pandora, but I'm betting with the Pyra's ports being 5X faster than the Pandora's, the question will be back.

 

[levi]

Can you reflash from that?  I.e. is uboot able to boot from it; I've heard of problems with big cards on that front before.

Most of the time, doing a live upgrade will get you everything you need, but for 1.92 a full reflash brought one or two extra features.  Probably no more big updates with the Pandora OS only expecting a few patches from now on mind you.

 

[_wb_]

The only problem with big cards is that they usually come preformatted as exFAT, which is a crappy filesystem. Just format it to a decent filesystem (ext2/3/4, or if you don't care about permissions and symlinks and all that, ntfs or fat32), and everything works just fine.

 

[rygD]

The only problem with big cards is that they usually come preformatted as exFAT

I was trying to look into this yesterday.  At what capacity do they usually start doing this?

 

[levi]

Wiki says 'larger than 32GiB'.  It's not clear whether that includes 32G(i)B or only cards actually larger, e.g. 64GB cards.  IIRC most 32GB cards were SDHC at the time, and those were all Fat32, FWIW.

 

[Grench]

The SD association's name system seemed to be mostly centered around marketing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Digital

mmc What existed prior to 'SD'  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MultiMediaCard

SD:  <= 4 GB (Though true 4GB SD cards were/are rare, I have a few that I used with my TW Zodiac - they existed).  Generally FAT formatted.

4 GB-32 GB SDHC  Generally FAT32 formatted

8 GB - 512 GB SDXC (theoretical 2TB max).  Generally fat formatted up to 32GB.  Some 32GB and most larger cards come exFat formatted.

Now there are SDXC UHS-II cards that use a whole new pin layout - though the same physical card size.

https://www.sdcard.org/developers/overview/bus_speed/

The Pyra's SoC and thus it's SD card ports are UHS-I speed which means that they top out at 104MB/s theoretical.  How close it will come to that in reality?  No idea.

The new UHS-II cards with the additional row of pins could theoretically reach 312MB/s, but good luck finding something to plug them into that can keep up with that at this stage.

In all of this, though, keep in mind that the stated MB/s rating on most cards is 'burst' only and they're generally unable to sustain those speeds.  That's why it would be good to have a program that benchmarks cards and can load them up to a centrally maintained database (with permission) so that we can quickly build a listing of how cards perform.

 

[rygD]

Wiki says 'larger than 32GiB'.  It's not clear whether that includes 32G(i)B or only cards actually larger, e.g. 64GB cards.  IIRC most 32GB cards were SDHC at the time, and those were all Fat32, FWIW.

Mine (32GB) were FAT32.  I was wondering since I plan on picking up at least one that is 64GB or larger for more music and ROMs.

 

[_wb_]

Wiki says 'larger than 32GiB'.  It's not clear whether that includes 32G(i)B or only cards actually larger, e.g. 64GB cards.  IIRC most 32GB cards were SDHC at the time, and those were all Fat32, FWIW.

Mine (32GB) were FAT32.  I was wondering since I plan on picking up at least one that is 64GB or larger for more music and ROMs.

Just reformat them. On the Pandora (or any GNU/Linux system) you can use GParted if you like a nice user-friendly tool.

 

[rygD]

Wiki says 'larger than 32GiB'.  It's not clear whether that includes 32G(i)B or only cards actually larger, e.g. 64GB cards.  IIRC most 32GB cards were SDHC at the time, and those were all Fat32, FWIW.

Mine (32GB) were FAT32.  I was wondering since I plan on picking up at least one that is 64GB or larger for more music and ROMs.

Just reformat them. On the Pandora (or any GNU/Linux system) you can use GParted if you like a nice user-friendly tool.

ok.  I don't usually try to format as FAT32. 

 

[atari_afternoon]

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.

+1

The only problem with big cards is that they usually come preformatted as exFAT, which is a crappy filesystem. Just format it to a decent filesystem (ext2/3/4, or if you don't care about permissions and symlinks and all that, ntfs or fat32), and everything works just fine

.+1