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[Q] microSD cards: what sizntee /class for inded Data2SD/App2SD use?

Hey, I know that there's been some threads around but from searching through them it seems most haven't been commented on since last year, so I was hoping to see if there might be some change in opinions etc since then.
I'm in the process of buying a HTC Desire, and while I love the flexibility of Android, I can see myself getting annoyingly held back by low internal memory.
So my intended solution was to eventually root my phone when I have a spare moment, and flash the StarBurst ROM, since Data2SD seems to do a better job at forcing apps to install onto an SD card compared to App2SD (correct me if I'm wrong - newbie here) -- I know that I'd still have to install some widgets etc onto internal memory.
SO: my question is: What size of card would be good? And will I need to consider a Class 4 to be able to make use of Data2SD / App2SD functions?
There's an approximate $4-5 difference between a class 4 4GB + 8GB microSD card on eBay (and obviously, a class 2 of these two will be cheaper)
- I'm happy to pay for the larger card, provided that the extra 4GB are likely to be put to use (ie, I'm not entirely sure how much of a card I should reserve for apps to have room for a decent collection in the future)

Hi!
I am using a 16GB class 4 from SanDisk. I have 15GB fat32 and a 1GB ext partition with Oxygen 2.0 and Data2SD. Absolutely no lags at all, just fine. Class 4 is good enough. You won't set the best result in benchmarks, but I personally don't care about benchmarks. As long as everything is going smooth i'm happy.
Size is a choice you have to make yourself. 1GB for apps is enough for me. Music and stuff on the fat32 partition. It depends on what you want.
I hope this helps.

1 gb for ext partition (data2sd) is more than enough and rest for fat32 (sd card) so size is really up to you but 4 gb wasn't enough for me. You should be more concerned with the card speed. Maybe instead, of ebay pay little a bit more and get the genuine fast card. I'm happy owner of a-data 16 gb class 10 working smoothly on StarBurst. Be careful of chinese fakes on ebay.
Swyped via StarBurst Desire.

kl_arnet said:
1 gb for ext partition (data2sd) is more than enough and rest for fat32 (sd card) so size is really up to you but 4 gb wasn't enough for me. You should be more concerned with the card speed. Maybe instead, of ebay pay little a bit more and get the genuine fast card. I'm happy owner of a-data 16 gb class 10 working smoothly on StarBurst. Be careful of chinese fakes on ebay.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I heard about eBay fakes along the way. This is the type of card I found through ebay SanDisk 4GB Class 4 (can't link directly due to being a newbie on here, unfortunately), it says its coming from US from a "dz-tech" seller.
- So if I need to stay away from eBay, should a google search along the lines of "8GB class 6 microSD" suffice for finding a reputable dealer?
bart-n said:
Hi!
Absolutely no lags at all, just fine. Class 4 is good enough. You won't set the best result in benchmarks, but I personally don't care about benchmarks. As long as everything is going smooth i'm happy.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for that what exactly do you mean by setting best results in benchmarks? I mean, I don't mind if the card doesn't score the highest in speed ratings, but I'm assuming that you're referring more to the fact that a class 4 is fast enough to let me run apps from the card through the phone smoothly?

salxtai said:
.....
Thanks for that what exactly do you mean by setting best results in benchmarks? I mean, I don't mind if the card doesn't score the highest in speed ratings, but I'm assuming that you're referring more to the fact that a class 4 is fast enough to let me run apps from the card through the phone smoothly?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I mean that if you run a benchmark, you will probably get better results with cards that are rated with a higher class. So with a class 6 (or 8 or 10) you will get a better benchmark result. But, my point is, a class 4 card is good enough to use for data2sd and that stuff (as used in starburst rom) You don't need a very very fast card. Your phone will run smooth with an class 4 card, saw it with my own eyes.
Oh, I almost forgot: I think you should buy your card in a real (web)shop, not from ebay. No offense but if you buy on ebay you never know if you get a good card. Especially with this data2sd-thing it's important to have a good card. But that's just my point of view.
Anyway, good luck & have fun with your Desire
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App

hello
Having tried different SD card. (class 4 to 6 - 10) for the data2sd or D2EXT, I still recommend a class 10.
but a little attention as stated above, there are many bad card cheap on Ebay. Prefer to buy a card at a site known or a shop.

bart-n said:
I mean that if you run a benchmark, you will probably get better results with cards that are rated with a higher class. So with a class 6 (or 8 or 10) you will get a better benchmark result. But, my point is, a class 4 card is good enough to use for data2sd and that stuff (as used in starburst rom) You don't need a very very fast card. Your phone will run smooth with an class 4 card, saw it with my own eyes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
After a lot of heartache in actually getting the original Desire I bought (original sale is still being disputed in paypal), I ended up buying a 2nd one that had a 4GB Class 4 included with it. Win!
I got an unbranded one, so so far I haven't run out of room (its day 2, give me a week. haha), but its good to know its at least one less thing to worry about if I do go ahead with the ROM

I understand where your coming from about Ebay with the dodgey chinese imports but take a look under the 16GB card on the accessories forum. I cant post a link because im still classed as a Noob lol
A comment the accessories forum on this SD was........
"I used h2test 1.4 with a micro sd adapter to test the speed with the test reading and writing 1GB of data
The test yielded results of 15.5 MB/s write and 16.8 MB/s read."
Ive ordered mine because the 720p is laggy when recording and i was a class 10 for best performance. and for £18 you cant go wrong for a 16GB class 10 Micro SD! Seriously i know where you coming from with Ebay but this is 100% genuine. Good cards and shipped from the UK!!!

bart-n said:
Hi!
I am using a 16GB class 4 from SanDisk. I have 15GB fat32 and a 1GB ext partition with Oxygen 2.0 and Data2SD. Absolutely no lags at all, just fine. Class 4 is good enough. You won't set the best result in benchmarks, but I personally don't care about benchmarks. As long as everything is going smooth i'm happy.
Size is a choice you have to make yourself. 1GB for apps is enough for me. Music and stuff on the fat32 partition. It depends on what you want.
I hope this helps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow, I thought Data2SD only worked with Sense ROMs (and not even all Sense ROMs). Oxygen 2.0 is AOSP right?

I have been running a 16gb class 10 cheap sd card from lowpricememory for a few weeks with data2sd (Starburst and cool Z), the card was tested with write speeds of around 15MB/s and worked ok for a couple of weeks.
However I then started to get errors, with the card mounting as read only and also the odd crash.
I have since swapped to a Sandisk 8GB mobile ultra class 4 card, although the sequential write speed of the Sandisk is only about 6MB/s, the random write speed of small blocks of data is way higher than my original class 10 card.
The Sandisk card makes the phone seem faster, also the quadrant score has improved from 1600 to 2000.
I have formatted and tested the card from lowpricememory for errors since I removed it from my phone, none were detected, so I think that the card is fine, just not suited to running in a phone with data2sd.
It does seem to be that its not all about card class, you need to look into how fast a card can random write smaller blocks of data.
Tests of both cards are below.
Sandisk Ultra mobile 8Gb class 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]
Sequential Read : 18.715 MB/s
Sequential Write : 6.166 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 18.236 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 1.150 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 2.767 MB/s [ 675.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 1.584 MB/s [ 386.6 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 2.712 MB/s [ 662.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 1.301 MB/s [ 317.7 IOPS]
Test : 100 MB [I: 0.8% (63.8/7572.0 MB)] (x5)
Date : 2011/04/20 20:09:44
OS : Windows Vista Business Edition SP2 [6.0 Build 6002] (x64)
Lowprice memory 16GB class 10
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]
Sequential Read : 18.265 MB/s
Sequential Write : 15.832 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 18.213 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 1.428 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 3.521 MB/s [ 859.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.011 MB/s [ 2.6 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 3.575 MB/s [ 872.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.019 MB/s [ 4.7 IOPS]
Test : 100 MB [I: 0.0% (0.0/14.9 GB)] (x9)
Date : 2011/04/23 23:05:10
OS : Windows Vista Business Edition SP2 [6.0 Build 6002] (x64)

well, with class 10 cards and Data2sd type of scripts, I always had LOTS of lag, it was horrible.
in the mean time i decided to try an 8gb sandisk mobile ultra as well and I'm really happy. My experience is about the same as mps711.
A few weeks ago I posted this: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=12861248#post12861248

microSDHC Measured Speeds

Lots of grumbling about the microSDHC that Samsung is shipping with the GS4G, which does carry a "Class 2" stamp on it, but just how fast is it?
Tests were performed using a Lenovo T410s, Windows 7, ChkFlsh v1.16.1, and an Elago microSDHC Nano II USB reader. Tests were against the raw device.
Tested were
Samsung OEM 16 GB -- 14.9 MB/s read, 7.5 MB/s write
Transcend 8 GB, Class 6 -- 14.8 MB/s read, 11.1 MB/s write
AData 8 GB, Class 6 -- 14.9 MB/s read, 11.1 MB/s write
Given these results, I'm finding the all the bashing and reported "slowness" of the card a little harder to give a lot of weight to.
Even if the write speed is a little slower (or even a lot slower), that the read speed is comparable suggests to me that most things (like launching an app from /media/) wouldn't be significantly sped up by a Class 6 or Class 10 card. Maybe I'm missing something because of potential read bottlenecks in the reader or host USB controller that wouldn't be present in the physical device, but jeeze -- all of Angry Birds can be read off the card in a second.

My class 10 will be here Friday, I can let you know how that compares to the class 2 that came with it.

I benchmarked both of my cards in CrystalDiskMark (64-bit) in Windows 7 64bit. The cards were both placed into a Micro->Mini adapter. Here's what I came up with. Left side is Samsung 16GB, right side is my Transcend card.
As you can see, for random 4K block performance, the Trasncend beats out the Samsung by a good amount. Not sure how often the phone actually encounters that type of usage. Also, I don't believe the numbers on the bottom row matter for the phone. That's with a Queue depth. I think it only matters on a PC using NCQ (Native Command Queuing).
Random write performance is pretty horrendous for both cards.

The card that came with it keeps giving errors when I try to copy the partitions to my new c6. Might be my reader but this card doesn't seem very good. This could jave been the best phone on the market if it had a flash and a few gigs of internal storage. Not sure what theu were thinking.
Sent from my SGH-T959V using XDA App

better late than never, here are my results:
Class 2 card that came with my SGS4G -
Write: 3.3 MB/s
Read: 13.0 MB/s
Class 10 Wintec 16GB:
Write: 13.0 MB/s
Read: 14.2 MB/s
Although, on the Wintec class 10, I did see write speeds above 15 MB/s at one point.

A-DATA 16GB Class 10

Today I bought a new SD card for my DHD and so far it seems to be good. For it's price (30 euro from a local shop) it delivers just as expected. I tested it with SD Tools from the market and the speeds are 11 MB/s write and 19 MB/s read. Tomorrow I'll try to make a video and hopefully it won't shutter. Also the card came with 'lifetime guarantee' but that's something I hope I'll never have to use. And knowing the customer service in our shops, I won't be able to use even if I have to.
Being made in China I had my reservations about A-data but it seemed real (nice packaging, no spelling mistakes on 'A-DATA' ) so I decided for 30 euros it's worth the risk.
Writing this I now realize I didn't format it, so maybe it will increase the performance once I do. Any thoughts on that?
Update: I just made a video in very poor lighting conditions and it doesn't shutter at all! Had lots of exposure changes (pointing at the lamp and away) and still could not make it shutter!
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA App

tkolev said:
Writing this I now realize I didn't format it, so maybe it will increase the performance once I do. Any thoughts on that?
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
have the same for a couple of months now, works ok, formating will not gain you speed.
mb

marleyb said:
have the same for a couple of months now, works ok, formating will not gain you speed.
mb
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've read somewhere around here that formating with 32kb clusters will make it faster, but who knows...

tkolev said:
I've read somewhere around here that formating with 32kb clusters will make it faster, but who knows...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That depends on what you are doing. If you read or write large files, larger clusters will finish the job quicker - and vice versa. That's what I've heard anyway

stekarson said:
That depends on what you are doing. If you read or write large files, larger clusters will finish the job quicker - and vice versa. That's what I've heard anyway
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It seems that it's true. Not for the write speed, but using 64k clusters (why test 32k when there is bigger option available ), I'm constantly reaching 100+ MB/s read speeds on SD Tools. I don't know if it's true though (is the interface capable of 100+ Mb/s ). Anyway, I think that the only need for a faster card is the video recording/transfer, so larger files are presumed to have a priority in choosing the format of your card. From what I remember from the good old days (10 MB HDDs, 4.77 MHz processors, 5.25" floppies, etc.) the downside in bigger clusters was that smaller files took a whole cluster and there was much space wasted (when you had 10 MB HDD every kB counted). With a 16 GB card, it's needles to say that I don't care if a few hundred MB get wasted (and for that you need to have 32 000+ files), so I think with the clusters it's the bigger - the better.

tkolev said:
I tested it with SD Tools from the market and the speeds are 11 MB/s write and 19 MB/s read.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I get 10.7 / 15.7 on a Transcend class 6 card. Not too much of a difference as it seems..
http://img405.imageshack.us/i/htcdesirehd201103162352.png/

ZedeN said:
I get 10.7 / 15.7 on a Transcend class 6 card. Not too much of a difference as it seems..
http://img405.imageshack.us/i/htcdesirehd201103162352.png/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, the class gives you the minimum write speed of the card. Anything above that is due to the manufacturing process and the higher standards some manufacturers have. The thing that impresses me with this card is the fact that for 30 Euro, I got a real 16GB class 10 card and video recording doesn't shutter. Hopefully it will last a couple of years .

hey guys can u all teach me how to upgrade my sd card?
i just bought a class 4 16gb and i dun noe how to get round to migrating my hp's sd to the new 1

shadower555 said:
hey guys can u all teach me how to upgrade my sd card?
i just bought a class 4 16gb and i dun noe how to get round to migrating my hp's sd to the new 1
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know if it's the same with your hp, but I just copied everything from my old card to the new one, turned off the phone, removed the old card and inserted the new one.

1 qns, is ur DHD rooted?

shadower555 said:
1 qns, is ur DHD rooted?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes it is rooted.

I have several A-DATA SD cards and so far all work very well.
Despite its Chinese origin I think D-DATA have very reliable products.

tkolev said:
Well, the class gives you the minimum write speed of the card. Anything above that is due to the manufacturing process and the higher standards some manufacturers have. The thing that impresses me with this card is the fact that for 30 Euro, I got a real 16GB class 10 card and video recording doesn't shutter. Hopefully it will last a couple of years .
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yea I know, by any chance do you know of any software that can test the minimum write/read speeds? I guess it will have to try to write a large number of small files.
And you are right, 30 euros is a bargain.

Just found a software that allows you to do that, could you possibly run a test with CrystalDiskMark? Here are my results:
minimum write speed 0.022MB/s with a card formated 32k cluster size :S

Once I get to my computer I'll make the test and post the results here. But as I said, the faster SD card is mainly for video recording/transfer, so being faster or slower with smaller files has no impact on real life situations.
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA App
EDIT: I just downloaded the application you used from the official site (I think), but my antivirus (NOD32) warned against Adware, so I couldn't install it and test the card.

ZedeN said:
I get 10.7 / 15.7 on a Transcend class 6 card. Not too much of a difference as it seems..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Also have a Transcend Class 6 - 13.1 / 18.1
Almost bought a Kingston Class 10, glad i made the choice I did.

I've been playing around with SD booster today, and I've found that it makes no difference. I thought that changing the cache size or whatever it does would help but i dont think it does

I want to buy a memory card. This card is really good?

fipec said:
I want to buy a memory card. This card is really good?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm happy with it. It says 16GB class 10 and it is 16GB class 10. No more, no less. After a couple of years we'll see if it will last a couple of years .

ZedeN said:
Yea I know, by any chance do you know of any software that can test the minimum write/read speeds? I guess it will have to try to write a large number of small files.
And you are right, 30 euros is a bargain.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I use h2testw, I am not saying it is the best but if other know better they can always say so, here is a short bit and description about it, test-and-detect-fake....h2testw you can also so can Google about it.
Take Care
TheQuest

[Q] How to check micro sd card speed capability on a phone beforehand

I am going to buy myself a 64GB micro sd card. I guess I will go with sandisk. But as there are certain sd types there come certain speeds. Such as UHS-ll, UHS-I ,and microSDXC. Now I want to make sure that my phone (SM-G3858) Galaxy Beam 2 is able to do r/w at certain speed levels. But how can I determine that? How can I check if the sd card slot takes UHS-I? I can do a micro sd card speed check when I already bought the sd card (with some apps). But is there any way to check the speed compability BEFORE you even buy the sd card?
I did 3 speeds test on my kingston 18GB MicroSDHC/SDHC Class 10 and the sd benchmark tests were ranging from (max): Read 401,31MB/s Write 10,45MB/s (400 seemed a lot to me, but thats what it said) So that would mean my phone supports at least UHS-l?
I was thinking to buy either the Sandisk Extreme at 45r/45w, the Sandisk Ultra Plus at 40r/lower write or the Sandisk Ultra at 30r/lower write. Or should I go with another brand? Any help is appreciated
thanks
:good:
EDIT: After searching for several hours to find the best 64GB micro sd card I decided to go for the Samsung Evo 64GB. It has full 5 star reviews on amazon and the price was way better than the Sandisk extreme plus. (I paid 37 euros including shipping) This is the best review I found:
"This is a very fast card, particularly suited to not only transferring files quickly but also running as a phone or tablet card for applications as well.
In phones and tablets one of the most important things is not just the transfer speed but also the IOPs that the card can deliver. Many class 10 cards have great transfer speeds but terrible and I mean terrible IOPs, often a 5 year old card easily out performs them in IOPs.
This card delivers in both areas, fast class 10 transfer speeds 23mb read, 15mb write but also 482 write IOPs and 1668 read IOPs.
That's IOP speeds that are slower than an SSD but way faster than a hard disk. Bare in mind that some class 10 cards give 4 write IOPs and you can see why I'm impressed. The only card I have seen outperform it in IOPs it the SanDisk Extreme Pro and they are seriously expensive and not available in 64gb. Testing against the third SanDisk I have, a 32gb ultra, is almost funny as the ultra only gives 15 write IOPs under the same conditions, making this card 30 times faster.
What does this mean for normal use, well it translates into an excellent general purpose card, that even if it doesn't have the official fastest transfer speeds will actually perform much better in the real world. Which is why its getting such rave reviews on here for speed (so long as you get a genuine one!)
This was tested in my Dell Venue 8 tablet using the built in card reader. For the techies (if you've got this far then I assume you are)I am actually using it to run Server 2012 virtual machines in VMWare workstation and the performance is surprisingly good, I would even call it snappy!
Full Crystalmark disk scores below.
Sequential read 23.66mbs write 16.03 mbps
512kb random read 23.25mbs write 15.67 mbps
4k random read 6.40mbps write 1.850 mbps
4k random qd32 6.65mbs write 1.92 mbps
Parameters 5 iterations 1000mb sample size.
Tested on the 64gb Samsung Evo microsdhc."
So anyways..At one point I´ll wait until the price of the Sandisk 128 GB Ultra plus card drops, then check for benchmarks and try out that one. Enjoy the info, im off

Sandisk is having quality issues with 64Gb cards, with many consumers reporting dead cards in a few months.
The Samsung you have choosen is awesome, along with transcend which are rock solid.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...transcend_64gb_microsd-_-20-208-927-_-Product
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et3gTrPUwC4

SD card read/write speed

I had a Sandisk Extreme Plus 64GB at hand from a year ago. The speed rated was 80mb/s read and 50 mb/s write. However, with the A1 SD Bench software, I can only get 34 mb/s read and 29 mb/s write at maximum in my new XZ.
I wonder if the speed is limited by the hardware of the phone. Are people getting much better results?

I think a lot of it has to do with degredation of SD cards. I'm using a samsung PRO+ 64gb that I bought in november 2015 along with my Moto X Pure, plus I have encryption on SD card enabled...so it goes super slow @ 18mb/s read and write.
If you want better confirmation I'd try to test the same card in a different device, perhaps.

maidguitar said:
I think a lot of it has to do with degredation of SD cards. I'm using a samsung PRO+ 64gb that I bought in november 2015 along with my Moto X Pure, plus I have encryption on SD card enabled...so it goes super slow @ 18mb/s read and write.
If you want better confirmation I'd try to test the same card in a different device, perhaps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks. Could u try it in ur xz or any sony phone?

Specially just for you, I did a test with my gf's HTC M9. I used SONY microsd-xc, 128gb, uhs-1 class10 advertised 70mb/s card. The M9 did 73mb/s read, 19mb/s write. My XZ, after I turned off SD decryption, did 29mb/s read and 19mb/s write. So yeah xperias probably have slower SD card implementations. But, I only keep music/photos/videos on the SD card and nothing else, so it doesn't really effect me.

energydidi said:
I had a Sandisk Extreme Plus 64GB at hand from a year ago. The speed rated was 80mb/s read and 50 mb/s write. However, with the A1 SD Bench software, I can only get 34 mb/s read and 29 mb/s write at maximum in my new XZ.
I wonder if the speed is limited by the hardware of the phone. Are people getting much better results?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Manufacturer-quoted SD card read and write speeds are usually burst speeds, not sustained speeds which are far, far lower. Are you sure you're testing the burst speed, and not the sustained speed?

Sony have since z3c implemented under par SD readers compared to competition. It's quite poor. I had hoped this top of the line Sony would be different. Unfortunately not

Android Snapdragon slow UHS SD interface is a joke
It's the junk Snapdragon SD reader interface bus, not even usb3 just backwards slow. compared to the in-house NVME Apple interfacebus. That destroys all CRAP dragon phones. APPLE has the resources to include a 1 GB a sec buss while crapdragon Android devices have junk for SD interface. Even Samsung's UHS bus is junk compared to Apple. Your encrypting and stuttering Android phone is crap always will be. People edit 4k seemlesly on the IPhone yet on Android it's like sucking pizza through a straw. Atrocious blame it on patents and royalties and guess who has all the best.? Hint =Mac...