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Crazy idea!? Run Lion on a 32GB SD card on 13" Air

H

HiFiGuy528

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jul 24, 2008
1,876
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I was thinking if you could run Lion on a SD card and have the entire 128gb or 256gb for media? Since the SD card sits flat on the side, it would be okay to leave in perminately?
 
If you find a fast enough SD card, as SD cards are slower than HDDs, many much slower. And you don't need the speed of the SSD for media, for that the speed of an SD card would more than suffice.
 
DjAmTraX said:
I was thinking if you could run Lion on a SD card and have the entire 128gb or 256gb for media? Since the SD card sits flat on the side, it would be okay to leave in perminately?
Click to expand...

Since the card sticks out halfway you are just a disaster waiting to happen ;)
 
jomo25 said:
How about running it from a Class 10 32Gb MicroSD card in one of these things: http://www.amazon.com/SIIG-JU-MR0612-S1-Ultra-microSD-Reader/dp/B0032ANCIC
Click to expand...

Class 10 are only rated for 10MB/sec sequential write. HDDs (2.5" 7200RPM) are 5x better on average, and SSDs can be nearly 20x better. Sequential read is going to be much much better as well. That completely ignores the absolutely terrible random write of SD cards. An HDD's random write beats a Class 10 card's sequential write! Yikes.

It'll do in a pinch (I use a flash drive for diagnostics), but you will lose a ton of perf, especially if you also have the SSD. The SD card is a good standby as a portable diagnostics drive, or to use with the ol' sneaker net.
 
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Krevnik said:
Class 10 are only rated for 10MB/sec sequential write. HDDs (2.5" 7200RPM) are 5x better on average, and SSDs can be nearly 20x better. Sequential read is going to be much much better as well. That completely ignores the absolutely terrible random write of SD cards. An HDD's random write beats a Class 10 card's sequential write! Yikes.

It'll do in a pinch (I use a flash drive for diagnostics), but you will lose a ton of perf, especially if you also have the SSD. The SD card is a good standby as a portable diagnostics drive, or to use with the ol' sneaker net.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the informative post.
 
THis is not-a-good idea as the SD cards I have are dog slow.

I've run off FW800, which is pretty good (USB works, but is kinda slow)

Thunderbolt will be really good eh? :D
 
Yeahhh, you said it yourself - CRAZY STUPID MORONIC IDEA :)

SD card readers are very slow, even slow compared to faster HDD and most certainly slower than SSD - even the slower 1.st generation SSD drives.

OS always needs to be placed on the fastest drive possible, so Yeahhh your idea is pretty lame and naive ;)
 
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