Im buying a 4gig sd card

[cms]

Ok, just because I needed more space, I am going to try "Again" to buy a 4gig SD card.


A year ago I had tried buying a 4gig card from amazon, but it turned out to be a sh*ty imposter 4 gig with a photoshoped "kingston" sticker on it. Had I not examined the card and tested its write speed, then I would have been scamed out of 80 bucks. Luckly, I returned it within the 12 day guarenty. Whew! :cool:

Well the only websites that I buy technology from now are from the actual companies that make the technology, and known retailers like bestbuy.

The only web based company that I trust, besides the ones stated above, is TigerDirect, because most of the florida school system buys equipment from them.

Just recently a 4 gig (Non SDHC) card appeared on the website for only 33 bucks! and as I read the reviews, one post said that they use the card in their palm TX!!!

I just purchased one as of 8/31/07 and im going to post my comments on it when it arrives.

Here is the card:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2734881&Sku=C261-2012

Wish me luck, I dont know the write speeds on it so im kinda taking a gamble

[cms]

Just for quick note, doesnt realy matter but...

I also only trust SanDisk cards to be the most stable and reliable cards, and untill I bought the 4 gig, I was using 2, 2gigs SanDisk and never had a single corruption.

Like I said this is just random stuff I would like others to know :D

[brandon-wan]

please post back your results! i'm really wanting a 4 gb card but i haven't had much luck with them either.

[dmccunney]

Ok, just because I needed more space, I am going to try "Again" to buy a 4gig SD card.

<...>

Just recently a 4 gig (Non SDHC) card appeared on the website for only 33 bucks! and as I read the reviews, one post said that they use the card in their palm TX!!!

I just purchased one as of 8/31/07 and im going to post my comments on it when it arrives.

Here is the card:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2734881&Sku=C261-2012
Connect3D is here: http://www.connect3d.com/

SD cards are apparently a minor sideline for them.

Write speeds will depend on the media. Essentially, there are three manufacturers of the flash memory used in cards: Panasonic, SanDisk, and Toshiba. Other card manufacturers buy flash from one of them and put it in their own packaging.

I have cards from Lexar Media, PNY, Patriot, and SanDisk. I've done benchmarks on all of them. The fastest of the bunch is a 512MB Lexar Media card, which uses Panasonic Media. (Faster, in fact, than my 2GB SanDisk Ultra card). The slowest of the lot is the PNY. The benchmarks are all in line with the other cards save for Write speeds, which are snail slow. When I benchmarked it, on test wrote a 1MB file as a write test, and took so long I thought my device had hung and was about to reset it. PNY uses Toshiba media. A correspondent elsewhere reported the same results with Kingston cards, which also use Toshiba media.

For my purposes, the slow write speeds on the PNY aren't a deal breaker. Data will be put on the card with a USB reader, and in the PDA, the card will mostly be read, not written to.

But it was a reminder: you get what you pay for, so if you see a really cheap deal on something like this, don't have high expectations.
______
Dennis

[Dick Tracy]

There have been fraudulent SanDisk cards around, so be careful.

I use Transcend 4GB High Speed SD card (150x) in my TX. Part No. TS4GSD150. I think I picked them up at buy.com.

[cms]

I bought my 2gig sandisks at best buy for $16 a peice, they were on sale

[cms]

Does anyone have a program that measures the read/write speed of a card?

I had one before I had to do a destructive recovery on my windows computer

>.< damit windows

[cms]

I found VFSmark for the palm on palmgear.com, its supposed to test read/write speeds, but I dont know if its stable on the palm tx so hold on a sec as I backup and stuff

[cms]

OK vfsmark works, Now im going to start a new tread so we dont dirty this one

[dmccunney]

OK vfsmark works, Now im going to start a new tread so we dont dirty this oneSee also VFSBench (http://sol.gfxile.net/files/vfsbench.zip), from Jari Kompa at http://iki.fi/sol
______
Dennis

[Harmony]

I happened to buy that same card (connect3D 4gb sd) last friday at my local tigerdirect and discovered an annoying issue. When I leave the card inserted in my TX and turn on the power button, I get the two beeps you would usually hear on removing an sd card and then a few seconds later I get the two beeps heard when inserting an sd card. The screen also flips to the card screen as if the card was physically inserted. My other sd cards do not exhibit this same behavior. I tried formatting the card and even did a hard reset of the TX to see if maybe some program was paging the sd slot but the behavior did not change. I would be interested when CMS gets his card if this is somehow related to this brand of card or if my particular card is defective. Of note, this card is also much slower than my 2gb PNY sd card but this may relate to Fat32 formatting of the 4gb cards.

[cms]

I happened to buy that same card (connect3D 4gb sd) last friday at my local tigerdirect and discovered an annoying issue. When I leave the card inserted in my TX and turn on the power button, I get the two beeps you would usually hear on removing an sd card and then a few seconds later I get the two beeps heard when inserting an sd card. The screen also flips to the card screen as if the card was physically inserted. My other sd cards do not exhibit this same behavior. I tried formatting the card and even did a hard reset of the TX to see if maybe some program was paging the sd slot but the behavior did not change. I would be interested when CMS gets his card if this is somehow related to this brand of card or if my particular card is defective. Of note, this card is also much slower than my 2gb PNY sd card but this may relate to Fat32 formatting of the 4gb cards.


well this will be interesting, Im sure if its a stock wide problem there will be away to fix it. ^-^

My card is still in their inventory and will be put into the mail system monday

Dont you wish there was mail on sundays?

[Bliss]

Btw I have the exact same behaviour Harmony has with the same brand and size SD card (got mine cheap from woot), I think it might be a power problem since low power SD readers (USB) wont read that card, only newer power hungry readers will read it on the pc... saddly this issue of the removal and insert at startup drives me SO mad that I have begun leaving my card out until I need it (another delay while reading it) and I'm thinking on selling it and getting two 2Gb cards or a sandisk or viking card.

[Zano2004]

I found VFSmark for the palm on palmgear.com, its supposed to test read/write speeds, but I dont know if its stable on the palm tx so hold on a sec as I backup and stuffVFSMArk does not do a proper job of telling you what Sandisk Extreme III read and write speed unlees ther has been a recent update to VFSMark. The Extreme is extremely fast: 20 Mbytes per seconds read and write.

[dmccunney]

VFSMArk does not do a proper job of telling you what Sandisk Extreme III read and write speed unlees ther has been a recent update to VFSMark. The Extreme is extremely fast: 20 Mbytes per seconds read and write.The question is whether a Palm device can actually take advantage of those speeds.

VFSMark uses standard Palm VFS APIs to do the testing, and will report the speeds it sees. It will use the same methods to access the card as any other VFS aware program will use, and should get the same results.

Do you actually see noticeable performance improvements using the Extreme III card over a standard card?
______
Dennis

[Zano2004]

The question is whether a Palm device can actually take advantage of those speeds.

VFSMark uses standard Palm VFS APIs to do the testing, and will report the speeds it sees. It will use the same methods to access the card as any other VFS aware program will use, and should get the same results.

Do you actually see noticeable performance improvements using the Extreme III card over a standard card?
______
DennisI use NVBackup and have used it on two different SD cards; a Sandisk Extreme III and a Sandisk Ulttra II. Sandsik advertizes them as having a 20 MByte and 10 Mbyte speed. I have timed both cards backing up the same TX with the same memory usage. The Extreme is twice as fast as the Ultra. So the answer is that yes the Tx does take advantage of that much speed.

[dmccunney]

I use NVBackup and have used it on two different SD cards; a Sandisk Extreme III and a Sandisk Ulttra II. Sandsik advertizes them as having a 20 MByte and 10 Mbyte speed. I have timed both cards backing up the same TX with the same memory usage. The Extreme is twice as fast as the Ultra. So the answer is that yes the Tx does take advantage of that much speed.Hmmm. Interesting.

If you can, run VFSMark and VFSBench on both cards, and post the results? VFSBench creates a 1MB file on a card, does read/write operations on it, and then removes it. I find it a useful supplement to VFSMark.

VFSBench is here: http://sol.gfxile.net/files/vfsbench.zip

Info about it is here: http://sol.gfxile.net/vfsbenchres.html
______
Dennis

[Zano2004]

Hmmm. Interesting.

If you can, run VFSMark and VFSBench on both cards, and post the results? VFSBench creates a 1MB file on a card, does read/write operations on it, and then removes it. I find it a useful supplement to VFSMark.

VFSBench is here: http://sol.gfxile.net/files/vfsbench.zip

Info about it is here: http://sol.gfxile.net/vfsbenchres.html
______
DennisThat was the point of my first post in this thread. VFSMark DID NOT give accurate results. It said the Ultr was faster than the Extreme, which is backwards.

[Zano2004]

I tried VFSBenchmark and got the following on my TX:

Sandisk Ultra II : 16,878 KBps read, 1,650 KBps write
Sandisk Extreme III : 19,239 KBps read, 10,929 KBps write

I ran Card Speed Testing and got the following on my Tx:

Sandisk Ultra II : 32,564 bytes per second write, 1,872,457 bytes per second read
Sandisk Extreme III : 546,133 bytes per second write, 2,016,492 bytes per second read

Clearly the write speeds for the Extreme III are faster. The Extreme III was designed for digital photography. The results I got today with the two benchmark apps reflect the results I get with NVBackup to the extent that the Extreme card can be written to about twice as fast in a backup, but not to the speed difference shown by the test. Previous test with VFSMark were not consistent with the tests I did today.

My Tx uses 30 Mbytes of memory and it backsup in a little less than 2 minutes on the Extreme card and about twice as long using the Ultra card. This makes one think that the Tx can not take advantage of all the additional speed available with the Extreme cards.

p.s. VFSMark indicated previously that the Ultra was faster than the Extreme, which is not the case.

p.p.s. The Ultra and Extreme cards are SD cards, NOT SDHC.

[cms]

OK the 4 gig card has arrived


first thoughts-

Its packaging was easy to open :) , unlike the sandisk cards which require a chainsaw to get through the plastic >.<

The card has slightly more weight than my 2gig, but thats expected

The card is slightly thicker than the 2gig as well, but thin enough to fit in the palm

Its plastic feels durable, unlike the cards were you can snap the little plastic guiders ontop of the contacts.

[cms]

I am now transfering data to it so I will give results when its finished

[vovka1965]

Ok, just because I needed more space, I am going to try "Again" to buy a 4gig SD card.


A year ago I had tried buying a 4gig card from amazon, but it turned out to be a sh*ty imposter 4 gig with a photoshoped "kingston" sticker on it. Had I not examined the card and tested its write speed, then I would have been scamed out of 80 bucks. Luckly, I returned it within the 12 day guarenty. Whew! :cool:

Well the only websites that I buy technology from now are from the actual companies that make the technology, and known retailers like bestbuy.

The only web based company that I trust, besides the ones stated above, is TigerDirect, because most of the florida school system buys equipment from them.

Just recently a 4 gig (Non SDHC) card appeared on the website for only 33 bucks! and as I read the reviews, one post said that they use the card in their palm TX!!!

I just purchased one as of 8/31/07 and im going to post my comments on it when it arrives.

Here is the card:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2734881&Sku=C261-2012

Wish me luck, I dont know the write speeds on it so im kinda taking a gamble
Just realized how cheap this card is, having re-read your post closely! Mine was almost $70 bucks!

So what is the story with the card benchmarking tests? What is the most accurate program to use??

[cms]

Nope I even checked my recipt and my credit card, the overal shiping and handeling cost and tax cost about 40 bucks :)


Yes It is cheap thats why I bought it

Right now im shoving stuff into it untill I only have 500megs left of storage, then im going to run a magnet or two over it to see if it will corrupt like other ones Ive hade before.

[cms]

Palm: TX
clockspeed: __312_____Mhz
SD Card Brand: ___Ridata
SD Card Size: _4gb_______
Age of SD card: 1.5 years

molaassses, when it comes to writing, but I did not need VFS mark to tell me that!!
No softick Cache
File create 35
File delete 11
File write 11
File Read 521
File Seek 2950
DB Export 9
DB Import 180
Record Access 1064
Reasource Access 1037
Vfs Mark 646

With Softick Cache
File create 176
File delete 12
File write 11
File Read 504
File Seek 2360
DB Export 9
DB Import 323
Record Access 2011
Reasource Access 1920
Vfs Mark 814


For the 4gb connect 3d card:

File create 223
file delete 223
file write 91
file read 187
file seek 1966
Db export 50
Db import 107
record access 532
resource access 640

Im quite happy with the card so far :D

[vovka1965]

For the 4gb connect 3d card:

File create 223
file delete 223
file write 91
file read 187
file seek 1966
Db export 50
Db import 107
record access 532
resource access 640

Im quite happy with the card so far :D


So why is my File CREATE/DELETE so pathetic, whereas my other benchmarks are respectable compared to this one??

[cms]

So why is my File CREATE/DELETE so pathetic, whereas my other benchmarks are respectable compared to this one??


how much crap do you have in it

Ive noticed that when I first ran the test it was pathetic also, but when i only had about 500 mb left of room I got faster marks than the one I showed here

try puting somthing large like a movie or somthing on it

[dmccunney]

So why is my File CREATE/DELETE so pathetic, whereas my other benchmarks are respectable compared to this one??What brand of card it it?

There are three manufacturers of the actual flash memory used in SD cards: Panasonic, SanDisk, and Toshiba. Other vendors buy the media from one of those and put in in their own packaging, under their own label, in an OEM deal.

I have cards from Lexar Media, SanDisk, Patriot, and PNY. The Lexar Media card uses Panasonic media, and gets the overall best benchmarks. The PNY is Toshiba media. Overall benchmark scores are reasonable, but Write speeds are dead slow. (When I ran one benchmark on it that wrote a 1MB file, it took so long I thought my device had hung and was about to reset.) Kingston Technology cards also use Toshiba media, and suffer the same problem.
______
DEnnis

[vovka1965]

What brand of card it it?

There are three manufacturers of the actual flash memory used in SD cards: Panasonic, SanDisk, and Toshiba. Other vendors buy the media from one of those and put in in their own packaging, under their own label, in an OEM deal.

I have cards from Lexar Media, SanDisk, Patriot, and PNY. The Lexar Media card uses Panasonic media, and gets the overall best benchmarks. The PNY is Toshiba media. Overall benchmark scores are reasonable, but Write speeds are dead slow. (When I ran one benchmark on it that wrote a 1MB file, it took so long I thought my device had hung and was about to reset.) Kingston Technology cards also use Toshiba media, and suffer the same problem.
______
DEnnis
I have a card from Ridata. I don't hear much of that brand.. My card has about 150 Mb free space out of 4 Gb. I use it PREDOMINANTLY to listen to music. SO, there are all these WMA music files.. Now, it may be fragmented, etc. Would that make the write speed really slow? But then, how come, my Search speed and Read speed are still pretty fast, as you can see from the post above??

[cms]

I happened to buy that same card (connect3D 4gb sd) last friday at my local tigerdirect and discovered an annoying issue. When I leave the card inserted in my TX and turn on the power button, I get the two beeps you would usually hear on removing an sd card and then a few seconds later I get the two beeps heard when inserting an sd card. The screen also flips to the card screen as if the card was physically inserted. My other sd cards do not exhibit this same behavior. I tried formatting the card and even did a hard reset of the TX to see if maybe some program was paging the sd slot but the behavior did not change. I would be interested when CMS gets his card if this is somehow related to this brand of card or if my particular card is defective. Of note, this card is also much slower than my 2gb PNY sd card but this may relate to Fat32 formatting of the 4gb cards.


Yep, Ive noticed that my new connect 3d does the same exact thing, only in my case I actualy like the fact that it disconnects and reconnects. :D

I had instaled a program called "card autolaunch" which I believe was for the treo. What it does is that it prevents the launcher from launching when a card is inserted.

Because I use programs like cryptdrive to encrypt private data files (passwords, account data, and *other* private stuff) when I turn off my palm I somtimes forget to unmount the crypt drive.

This card makes it imposible for me to turn off the palm forgeting that the drive was still mounted, It unmounts it for me :D


With card autolaunch, I dont have any side effects to the card except for a 2 second lag on startup *not anoying at all, to me that is*

Ive left It on Drive mode overnight and the disconnecting issue never appeared when the palm was on or when its screen was turned off.

I guess its just a power issue. And I also think it can be made so that you dont have that issue.

[cms]

For 33 bucks the disconnect issue is the least of my worrys compared to other cheap 4gig cards that I had to turn back due to things like corrupting constantly, extreamly slow speeds, or not even working at all :)

[cms]

Yes the connect 3d card passed CMS's "Put a magnet to it and see if it corrupts"


It also passed the drop from standing height test :D




.

[BrentDC]

Why on gods green earth would you put a magnet to it?

[cms]

Why on gods green earth would you put a magnet to it?

To see if it corrupts or not, why else :D


I have found that SanDisk cards are the best at "not corrupting due to magnetic fields"

[BrentDC]

But that's like putting a magnet to a TV, your just lucky, if it doesn't mess something up.

[Gregte]

I have found that SanDisk cards are the best at "not corrupting due to magnetic fields"

Do you mean to say that you have found that a magnet actually will corrupt an SD card? Also, are you talking about a permanent magnet or an electromagnet with alternating current powering it?

[Zano2004]

I just downloaded and ran VFSDisk on my Tx for a Sandisk Ultra II 2 GByte SD Card and a Sandisk Extreme III 2GByte SD Card. Since they are different from what I remembered and wrote about earlier in this thread, I figured I should post the new results:


VFSMark Results Ultra II
File Create: 187%
File Delete: 386%
File Write: 85%
File Read: 533%
File Seek: 3933%
DB Export: 47%
DB Import: 280%
Record Access: 1096%
Resource Access: 1129%
VFSMark: 852

VFSMark Results Extreme III
File Create: 359%
File Delete: 1446%
File Write: 342%
File Read: 539%
File Seek: 3933%
DB Export: 209%
DB Import: 293%
Record Access: 1167%
Resource Access: 1238%
VFSMark: 1058

They seem consistent with my NVBackup "test". The write difference is huge.

[brandon-wan]

ok, i just ordered the 4 gb card you bought, cms. if it doesn't work, i'm blaming you! xD

[cms]

ok, i just ordered the 4 gb card you bought, cms. if it doesn't work, i'm blaming you! xD

dont I feel special....


tips brandon:

1 you can use either of these programs to make that disconnect problem that that card has from anoying you.

http://mytreo.net/downloads/details-1055.html

http://programmerbygrace.com/eventlauncher.html

2 DO NOT install softick cache, It goes crazy because of the disconnect issue and also doesnt realy help at all.

3 If you dont have drivemode or card reader or card exporter..... get one

4 If you are in contact with multiple computers and want to carry your computer programs with you, use this program

http://portableapps.com/



If you do all that, you will be a happy camper :D

[brandon-wan]

awesome, cms. thanks for your advice!

[cms]

awesome, cms. thanks for your advice!


It took a week for my card to get to my house, so dont think it will come in 3 days ;)

[brandon-wan]

the tigerdirect ship page said it would be here tuesday. not like i'm going anywhere... :rolleyes:

[cms]

You should have seen me get my hopes up every day for 4 days and then be disapointed when I got home and found that it hadn't arrived lol

[ply3908]

Connect 3D 4GB available on Ebay for $20 free ship. I just brought one.

[tom_farr]

Hello all,
I've perused the various threads on 4 and 8 gb sd cards and couldn't find a straight answer to the following 2 questions:

Will the TX handle an 8 gb SDHC without any hacks? Or should I stick with a 4 gb SD?

Is there a significant extra power drain with any of the SDs?

OK, 3 questions...

Thanks for all the great info- I've learned a lot about my old TX...

Tom Farr

[scottl]

Will the TX handle an 8 gb SDHC without any hacks?No, can't do any size SDHC on a TX and there are no hacks at this time - don't think the hardware will support them anyway.

Or should I stick with a 4 gb SD?That's the maximum capacity the TX will handle (again, not SDHC, only standard SD), but... some say that a few of the 4GB cards are either unreliable or slow, so search around this site for some of the long running threads discussing this.

Is there a significant extra power drain with any of the SDs?In my experience, no. Obviously, the more you access the SD, the more juice you will use, but I doubt there is much variance in power draw among the available cards.