SD card for storage or prehistoric USB HDD?

[ivoruest]

Ok so I have this SD card of 8Gb and I was wondering if it actually is faster than a 4Gb USB 2.0 HDD which spins at 4200rpm. I know both solutions are not very good but I use them for keeping things like MacOS X recovery and Windows Bootcamp tools and such, things that I don't regularly use. The thing is, I was wondering which of the two is faster and most reliable. Of course compared to each other (because this is what I got).

 

[appleguy123]

The he'd is almost certainly faster, but you could run a disk speed test to be sure.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

It depends on what kind of SD card it is, meaning what class it belongs to, as there are fast SD cards and slow SD cards.

You can use the following applications to benchmark the speed of your 4,200 RPM HDD and 8 GB SD card:

• AJA System Test
• Blackmagic Disk Speed Test
• Xbench

 

[7even]

I'd use an SD card, if you're simply using it for storage and not needing to run apps from it.

 

[ivoruest]

Thank you all for the answers! I will run the benchmark and come back to you with some results later. I'm guessing the SD will be faster than the old HDD.

I guess the SD is a slow versión. It came with a camera I don't use anymore. I just use it for non-critical stuff. Otherwise I use a WD Passport drive (which I don't like that much but does the job).