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iTunes on large SD Card, any tips?

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bigsciota

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 13, 2012
3
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I've used all but 30gb of my 2012 Air's storage, of which 50gb is music on iTunes. I'm thinking about getting an SD card and essentially using it as an expansion, keeping it in most of the time and keeping my iTunes library on it, in which case I'll have as much free space as I need. I've seen 128gb cards available, so I might go for those; does anyone have any tips as to how fast the card should be or which brands/types to avoid?

Also, If I wait another few months or so, is the price on one of those going to drop enough to make it worth the wait? I'd like to go for the 128gb card since I'd obviously like not to have to do everything over again once I surpass 64gb.
 
bigsciota said:
I've used all but 30gb of my 2012 Air's storage, of which 50gb is music on iTunes. I'm thinking about getting an SD card and essentially using it as an expansion, keeping it in most of the time and keeping my iTunes library on it, in which case I'll have as much free space as I need. I've seen 128gb cards available, so I might go for those; does anyone have any tips as to how fast the card should be or which brands/types to avoid?

Also, If I wait another few months or so, is the price on one of those going to drop enough to make it worth the wait? I'd like to go for the 128gb card since I'd obviously like not to have to do everything over again once I surpass 64gb.
Click to expand...

Wait for this to be released:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1342319572/the-nifty-minidrive

You can thank me later.
 
Right now B&H has a sale on 64GB Sandisk SDXC cards. I've used this same model before (though for things like photography and video recording) and have been very happy with it. Generally, SanDisk, Lexar and Kingston are pretty good brands. Avoid brands that look obviously cheap.

Also, it's generally not a good idea to get your cards from no-name vendors, and even some eBay sellers are questionable. This is because there are a LOT of people selling knock-off memory cards at these outlets: basically cheap, unreliable cards that have fake SanDisk or other big-name labels on them.

As far as speed goes: you'll probably be fine with a Class 4 for music, but if you intend of storing and directly playing back video, you might want to go faster, like a Class 6 or better.

Lastly, just the practical things: you're going to run into (likely minor) problems if for any reason you launch iTunes without the card inserted. The fact that the SD card sticks out at the edge ight be an issue when transporting your MacBook. And, definitely make a backup copy of your iTunes library on an external hard drive, or at least another SD card, and store that in a safe spot.
 
mattferg said:
Wait for this to be released:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1342319572/the-nifty-minidrive

You can thank me later.
Click to expand...

Thank you? He still needs a MicroSD card and would still want to know what is optimal for his needs. I wouldn't bother if I needed the storage today. He can get a micro to SD adapter and then when the Nifty Mini Drive is out, he can pick that up. Again, the Nifty doesn't come with a card so he'll still need the microSD card.

I would get the largest possible card. I think the fastest would be best as well. I prefer SanDisc. Here is a 30/MBs model but they do have a 40MBs model, I think. This comes with the adapter. This is the assumption that you want a Nifty drive and if not, get a fast SD card.
 
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I'm think about getting a SD card for my new MBA too. What is the maximum speed of the SD card slot on the MBA itself? And what is the corresponding class of SD cards which just meets that limit?

Thanks.
 
If the music as it is played will be read from the SD, you may want to look to the higher end of SD cards, meaning, for photography and video, usually 95Mbps and up.

I am no expert, but you may have to consider the way the music will travel and the limitation of the SD port about speed and the bus speed of the logic card itself.

I am the kind of person that takes this into consideration, but I never do the math. So I may end up a little on the overkill side, but honestly is better to have more than getting short and have a bad experience with it.

Just my personal point of view.
 
gloryunited said:
I'm think about getting a SD card for my new MBA too. What is the maximum speed of the SD card slot on the MBA itself? And what is the corresponding class of SD cards which just meets that limit?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

No SD card can match the speed of the port. It's either connected to the USB 3.0 bus or is 1X PCIE. In either case, the fastest SD cards can't match the speed.

EDIT: As a follow up, the SD Card reader is hooked to the USB 3.0 bus so it has a theoretical maximum transfer of 5 Gb/s. The SD Card will be the bottleneck and not the bus/port speed.
 
Last edited:
The slot supports SDXC cards, which have a theoretical 2TB maximum.

128GB seems to be the upper limit of what's being sold right now though.
 
It's reasonable to assume, then, that commercia movies stored on one of these cards will play properly? Most of mine are in *.avi format and I use VLC as my player.
 
I've been running a SanDisk Ultra Micro SDXC 64GB UHS-1 card with the Apotop SmartSuit adapter (newegg.com). Works great for an iTunes library with no issues at all.
 
bigsciota said:
...

Also, If I wait another few months or so, is the price on one of those going to drop enough to make it worth the wait? I'd like to go for the 128gb card since I'd obviously like not to have to do everything over again once I surpass 64gb.
Click to expand...
Prices fluctuate all the time and Amazon seems to have a Sandisk sale every few weeks. Here's a link to the Sandisk 128GB 45MB/sec card at Amazon. You can select other sizes there as well.
 
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I've got one of the earlier Nifty Minidrives and run half of my itunes library on a micro SDXC card.

I used Tunespan to split my library onto different drives - useful if you want to keep some items on the mac's ssd.

Works great - never did work out how to get time machine to back it up though, so as it's contents are fairly stable, I just copied them to another external hard drive.
 
paulrbeers said:
No SD card can match the speed of the port. It's either connected to the USB 3.0 bus or is 1X PCIE. In either case, the fastest SD cards can't match the speed.

EDIT: As a follow up, the SD Card reader is hooked to the USB 3.0 bus so it has a theoretical maximum transfer of 5 Gb/s. The SD Card will be the bottleneck and not the bus/port speed.
Click to expand...

Cool, thanks.

If we are to mainly store our iTunes music library on the SD card, then anything from 6MB/s to 10MB/s (Class 6 to 10) should be enough right? even 4MB/s would be good enough I guess coz music files are small anyway.
 
luisito said:
If the music as it is played will be read from the SD, you may want to look to the higher end of SD cards, meaning, for photography and video, usually 95Mbps and up.
Click to expand...

Not really needed. With a slow card, moving the library to the card will take its time, but for music playback and even video playback you don't need much speed at all. Obviously look at the cost. If you get a slow card for £40 and a fast card for £45, get the fast card. If the fast card is £80, get the slow one.

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gloryunited said:
If we are to mainly store our iTunes music library on the SD card, then anything from 6MB/s to 10MB/s (Class 6 to 10) should be enough right? even 4MB/s would be good enough I guess coz music files are small anyway.
Click to expand...

Music is usually encoded at 256 Kbit/second = 32 KB / second = 0.032 MB/s.
 
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