[Q] MicroSD format for performance ? - Epic 4G Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

OK, I got a class10 micro SD....tried some speed checks after formatting in Windows 7 64bit, using the SD card formatter, and using the phone.
For consistency, I formatted to fat32 and set the block size from default to the largest 64KB size.
Was copying files in Windows from the hard drive (7200speed 16mb cache drive) to the SD card and it never got over 4mb/sec, and usually stuck at 3mb a sec. I have a second class 10 card, but havent messed with it yet to see if it was a bad card or not. I ran a sd card test using the J card test app on the market and when I set it to the 8k size test, I saw 13mb/sec test, but the app said every time it couldnt write to cache, so I didnt know if it could be trusted.
I was just wondering how people were formatting their cards - via phone, windows, etc - and what level they found was the best for performance for class 6+ cards.

Mee too,i read that 32kb allocation is best.Would formating sdcard using Ext4 be faster then fat32/nfs?

I didnt know if I should be smaller (instead of 64 of 32k) since most of the files that we run are smaller ?? maybe it would run faster, I dunno....
also from what i read, ntfs isnt supported in android....right ?

I would be interested in this as well. I have a 16GB class 6 card in my Epic, and depending on the CPU clock speed governor I use I sometime get errors recording HD video ay 720p saying my card doesn't support it. If I put the governor to ondemand it works well though.
I'll try some testing with the Jcard app to see what I'm getting speed wise. I formatted my chip on Win7 default settings. When I was copying my files to it in Win7 I was getting 7 - 9 MB/s speeds. That was with the integrated SD card reader on my laptop.

I did some testing on my Team 16GB Micro SDHC I bought on newegg a while back, its a class 6 chip. I think it matters a lot what program you use to test. I did not find a j card app on the market but I used two that I found called "SD Tools" and "SDCardTester". Wildly divergent results below:
SD Tools:
Write Speed: 13.6 MB/s
Read Speed: 17.4 MB/s
SDCardTester:
Write Speed: 6.32 MB/s
Read Speed: 6.14 MB/s
This card is formatted with the standard 32 KB sectors.
---------- Post added at 11:48 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:41 PM ----------
By the way, in general larger sectors should make for better performance, but the trade off is that you lose some storage. This is because the smallest amount of storage that can be allocated is going to be one sector. So if your sectors are 64 KB and you write a 8KB file, it will take the whole sector and even though there is only 8KB of data 64KB of space on the chip is used. In Windows, when you look at the properties for a folder, this is why there is a difference between "Size:" and "Size on Disk:" values.
Larger block sizes are generally better because there are fewer reads and writes to the device when saving a large file. For instance if you save a 1MB file on a 64 KB sector FS it needs to write to 16 different sectors, if you save the same file in a 8KB sector file system it needs to write to 128 different sectors.

Related

8gb sd card actual size?

I partitioned my 8gb card before so I could use apsd and I don't use it anymore so I formatted my card and it still only tells me there's 6700 mb available.. I know some of the card will be taken up with software to make the card work but I didn't think it would be a gig.. did I format the card wrong?
if not the whole reason, most of the reason is that when the manufacturer makes their claim of 8GB, they are using the formula of 1000B being 1KB, 1000KB being 1MB, 1000MB being 1 GB, then when systems read the card, 1024B is 1KB, 1024KB is 1MB, 1024MB is 1GB...
so if the card is 8000000 Bytes claimed by the manuf. then 8000000/1024/1024 should be 7.6 gigs
my 8gig card shows 7.39 in my phone, so maybe the OS reserved 200MB for something?
maddmatt02 said:
if not the whole reason, most of the reason is that when the manufacturer makes their claim of 8GB, they are using the formula of 1000B being 1KB, 1000KB being 1MB, 1000MB being 1 GB, then when systems read the card, 1024B is 1KB, 1024KB is 1MB, 1024MB is 1GB...
so if the card is 8000000 Bytes claimed by the manuf. then 8000000/1024/1024 should be 7.6 gigs
my 8gig card shows 7.39 in my phone, so maybe the OS reserved 200MB for something?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you partitioned your SD card for a2sd reformatting won't give you back the whole card. You need to repartition and select 0 for swap, 0 for ext and 'the rest' for FAT. That will repartition it into something your phone (and Windows/Mac/etc) can see and give you back the full available space.

microSD/SD benchmarks on Galaxy S

Trying to figure out some facts about the internal/external SD cards speed, I came up to some conclusions.
First the benchmarks I've used:
For write speed:
Code:
rm /sdcard/sd/empty.file
echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
time dd if=/dev/zero of=/sdcard/sd/empty.file bs=100000 count=2000
For read speed:
Code:
echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
time dd of=/dev/null if=/sdcard/sd/empty.file bs=100000
Results:
Galaxy_S_internal_sd_card:
7.84MB/s write
10.49MB/s read
-------------------------------------
some Noname Silicon Power 2GB, no class specified (FAT with 32kilobytes) - the fastest microSD I own
8.51MB/s write
15.86MB/s read
-------------------------------------
Verbatim 4GB, class 4 (FAT with 32kilobytes)
5.14MB/s write
16.70MB/s read
-------------------------------------
A real SD card, not a microSD
SanDisk Ultra II class 4 (FAT32 with 4 kilobytes)
6.52MB/s write
11.47MB/s read
-------------------------------------
Again the same real SD card, not a microSD
SanDisk Ultra II class 4 (FAT32 but with 64 kilobytes)
16.81MB/s write
13.37MB/s read
-------------------------------------
Conclusions so far:
The microSD is faster at reading than my SD card. Including on Windows when tested with CrystalDiskMark.
When writing comes into play, the cluster size (4kb vs. 64kb) really makes a difference on Android. It is a huge difference when writing on the SD card. On Windows in CrystalDiskMark it doesn't matter.
Graph attached.
Can't figure out why writing on the SD card is faster than reading. Also can't figure out why reading is so slow comparing to the microSD cards.
P.S. I really want to test one of those Sandisk Ultra III class 10 with 30MB/s sustained write speed.
Also, would be great to know stats for the Sandisk microSD class 6 8GB with part number: SDSDQY-8192-E11M
For me (JPM Universal lagfix 0.3 full ext4) :
Internal NAND i9000 8GB
fat 32 :
4.561835 MB/s Write no cache
6.676458 MB/s Write with cache
10.782833 MB/s Read no cache
11.609682 MB/s Read with cache
3C_Pro 16 GB Class 6.
fat 32 :
5.397527 MB/s Write
6.002400 MB/s Write with cache
10.413954 MB/s Read
11.194447 MB/s Read with cache
speedmod-kernel-vC1-500hz-O2-ui
turn on the all tweak in clockwork recovery
/data
ext4
12.80 MB/s
11.01 MB/s
/system
rfs
5.75 MB/s
17.58 MB/s
/cache
rfs
7.25 MB/s
17.60 MB/s
internal SD
fat32
10.74 MB/s
11.24 MB/s
external SD : Kingston 8GB C4
fat32 with 32k block
7.56 MB/s
11.10 MB/s
@arise:
how on earth did u get a non-microSD into the phone ???
Contiguous file transfer speeds don't matter.
andrew_vi said:
/data
/system
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How do you benchmarked those partitions? What is the free space available on those?
lemmz said:
how on earth did u get a non-microSD into the phone ???
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
With a SD to microSD adapter, obvious.
SetiroN said:
Contiguous file transfer speeds don't matter.
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Click to collapse
I can agree with this one. But what truly matters?
i have 30M+ free spaces in /system and 1.5GB+ in /data
so in /system, i take the test with a 20MB empty file by creat and write
and /data is same as you do, 200MB
though the write speed is not important in /system.
i think the r/w speed in /cache and /dbdata is more important than others
Arise said:
With a SD to microSD adapter, obvious.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why would someone make this?
Because SD has few advantages over the microSD, like capacity size, price and speed. The only downside is the size of the card itself.
You can use such a thing vor various mods (it's up to you to find a way cramming the giant SD card inside your phone) or you can use your phone for backup/view the pictures taken with a REAL photo/video camera.
During some googling I came across this article:
http://windowsphonesecrets.com/2010...micro-sd-and-windows-phone-storage-expansion/
It seems that Microsoft has a bad attitude regarding using microSD cards.
“Even with high end cards, we have seen wild differences in IO and performance,” he said. “There is just no standardization there.” Put simply, if you expand the storage in a compatible Windows Phone device, it may work, and it may not.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't understand if the stance is regarding microSD cards or also the standard SDHC card. I somewhat believe it is related only to microSD cards. This is one of the reason I would also like to use a normal SD card in my phone.
Also, I found this article:
http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=918
The article, tells us couple of things:
1. it seems that some microSD cards are plain fakes. (it's not something we don't know)
2. it seems that Kingston is buying the controllers from Toshiba, and the controllers are the same as the ones used by Sandisk. So, when you compare Kingston vs Sandisk, you know who is the king.

[Q] SD card alignement

I have recently bought a 16GB class 10 SD card (Kingston).
I follow a guide to align the partitions to the the "erase blocks" and "pages" of the nand in the sd. This was done using gpareted with "align to MB" and leaving 16 MB in front, and rounding down all partitions sizes to 16MB.
The problem is, that write speed is only about 2-3 MB/s (card reader or phone).
I attached some pictures from Gparted. Can someone with more knowledge and experience look at them and tell me if I aligned the partitions correctly?
Thanks!

Galaxy S III memory card problems

This is a cross post of a thread in the Q & A section because I think it is more appropriate here. Please forgive me if you disagree.
I have encountered a problem using SDXC cards in the Galaxy S III. It appears, to me, to be a bug in the exFAT drivers which are only used in the 64 GB SDXC card, 32GB cards and less are formatted as FAT32.
Please see thread http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1805743 for further information.
ChitownWingMan said:
This is a cross post of a thread in the Q & A section because I think it is more appropriate here. Please forgive me if you disagree.
I have encountered a problem using SDXC cards in the Galaxy S III. It appears, to me, to be a bug in the exFAT drivers which are only used in the 64 GB SDXC card, 32GB cards and less are formatted as FAT32.
Please see thread http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1805743 for further information.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I heard you might need to format the card as FAT32
Zephyron said:
I heard you might need to format the card as FAT32
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can't use FAT32 on a 64GB card. The phone formats 32GB or smaller as FAT32 and the 64GB at exFAT.
Some platforms support FAT32 on greater than 32GB cards/drives but it is not very compatible.
Thanks for your help
ChitownWingMan said:
You can't use FAT32 on a 64GB card. The phone formats 32GB or smaller as FAT32 and the 64GB at exFAT.
Some platforms support FAT32 on greater than 32GB cards/drives but it is not very compatible.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't confuse FAT32 and FAT16. FAT32 supports up to 2 TB, though I believe Windows makes it difficult to format anything larger than 32 GB.
tamasrepus said:
Don't confuse FAT32 and FAT16. FAT32 supports up to 2 TB, though I believe Windows makes it difficult to format anything larger than 32 GB.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You are correct the theoretical maximum size of FAT32 is 2TB. However, since Microsoft in their infinite wisdom decided only to support FAT32 up to 32GB (most likely to force people to use NTFS) support for FAT32 above 32GB is spotty and unreliable.
This being said if you format a 32GB card or smaller in the Galaxy S III, it will be formatted FAT32. If you format a 64GB (or greater I presume) in the Galaxy S III, it will be formatted exFAT.
ChitownWingMan said:
You are correct the theoretical maximum size of FAT32 is 2TB. However, since Microsoft in their infinite wisdom decided only to support FAT32 up to 32GB (most likely to force people to use NTFS) support for FAT32 above 32GB is spotty and unreliable.
This being said if you format a 32GB card or smaller in the Galaxy S III, it will be formatted FAT32. If you format a 64GB (or greater I presume) in the Galaxy S III, it will be formatted exFAT.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
exFat format will not read correctly on SGSIII. I just had this issue with my 64 GB SD card. I formatted it in FAT32 and all was fine. I did use a Mac with disk utility to do the formatting though. Windows 7 was trying to force exFAT to format.
ChitownWingMan said:
You are correct the theoretical maximum size of FAT32 is 2TB. However, since Microsoft in their infinite wisdom decided only to support FAT32 up to 32GB (most likely to force people to use NTFS) support for FAT32 above 32GB is spotty and unreliable.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Windows Vista and above don't let you format volumes larger than 32 GB as FAT32. It's an artificial limitation on their part.
Other than that, FAT32 has been around a long time, and works fine with 32+ GB volumes. It's not great but doesn't really become spotty and unreliable till you go beyond 100 GB or so.
I'd get a Linux LiveCD and format your SD card FAT32 with that.
Partition Wizard Home Edition (win) is free and will format all your fat32 needs http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html
hauniii said:
exFat format will not read correctly on SGSIII. I just had this issue with my 64 GB SD card. I formatted it in FAT32 and all was fine. I did use a Mac with disk utility to do the formatting though. Windows 7 was trying to force exFAT to format.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for confirming my research. I am currently in communication with Samsung, T-Mobile and SanDisk. With any luck with potential sales in the millions they will fix it. The man at Samsung commented "We sell that card on our website we had better get it working"
Further Update
ChitownWingMan said:
Thank you for confirming my research. I am currently in communication with Samsung, T-Mobile and SanDisk. With any luck with potential sales in the millions they will fix it. The man at Samsung commented "We sell that card on our website we had better get it working"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I spoke with someone at Sandisk and they have heard of the problem and are researching it. T-Mobile and Samsung are also "investigating" it.
I formatted my 64GB card FAT32 and I am using it like that for now.
One problem with using FAT32 is that there is a directory size limit of 65,535 bytes total for the directory itself (not the files in the directory). I have a Titanium Backup directory with almost 12,000 files in it, all with long names. That easily exceeds the 64K directory size limit and this directory is "full" and trying to write to it generates errors.
If you have a directory with 5,000 files with an average file name length of 12 characters (rather short in this day and age) that makes the directory 60,000 bytes. If the average file name length is 13 characters the directory size will be 65,000 bytes and if the average file name length is 14 bytes the directory size is now 70,000 bytes and this exceeds the maximum directory size.
If you keep your file names to the old DOS 8.3 (11 characters) format then a directory can handle approx. 5,957 files. The actual number is less because there are other bytes in each entry used by the system (permissions, file size, starting segment, etc.).
For programs like Titanium Backup this can become a problem. Titanium backup uses long file names (longer than 20 characters) that include the date in them. I always backup my entire phone downloaded apps & data, system apps & data and system data. This is about 470 different items being backed up. Titanium Backup uses 2 and sometimes 3 files for each item backed up. I also maintain a 7 day backup history. This creates a total of 8,225 (approx) files, if each has a file name length of 20 characters that would be a directory size of 164,500 bytes.
This far exceeds what FAT32 can handle. And this is a somewhat reasonable scenario.
So, let's put pressure on T-Mobile and Samsung to get the exFAT problem fixed.

[Q] microSD problem

Hello,
around 20th June i've bought a Kingston 32GB Class 10 microSD.
Everything was working correctly, and all my games were running like a charm.
Then suddenly all files became corrupted, and after reboot card became unreadable.
However i managed to read the microSD by formatting it to exFAT through CWM.
I also fixed filesystem errors through chkdsk.
And there's my problem: I'm experiencing frequent graphics freezing in nearly all games (mostly in GTA SA), where they weren't present before data corrupt.
Seems like the reading speed got slower or something.
Anybody experienced similar problems or know the solution?
ScarabeusIV said:
Hello,
around 20th June i've bought a Kingston 32GB Class 10 microSD.
Everything was working correctly, and all my games were running like a charm.
Then suddenly all files became corrupted, and after reboot card became unreadable.
However i managed to read the microSD by formatting it to exFAT through CWM.
I also fixed filesystem errors through chkdsk.
And there's my problem: I'm experiencing frequent graphics freezing in nearly all games (mostly in GTA SA), where they weren't present before data corrupt.
Seems like the reading speed got slower or something.
Anybody experienced similar problems or know the solution?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
May be the problem is from the sd card speed . did u put a higher speed to sd card ( default is 128 kb/s ) if not u can check an app called rom toolbox that has an option to higher up or slow down the speed and check if the speed is more than 1028 kb ( the safest maximum for class 10 sd card ) and if it is 128 kb higher it up to 512 kb or so . if it didn't work try to format sd card on pc with sd card reader not with the phone and if this didn't work ur sd card is dead ....
faroukovic3 said:
May be the problem is from the sd card speed . did u put a higher speed to sd card ( default is 128 kb/s ) if not u can check an app called rom toolbox that has an option to higher up or slow down the speed and check if the speed is more than 1028 kb ( the safest maximum for class 10 sd card ) and if it is 128 kb higher it up to 512 kb or so . if it didn't work try to format sd card on pc with sd card reader not with the phone and if this didn't work ur sd card is dead ....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It was 512kb. Boosting to 1024kb gave nothing.

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