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SDXC - Extra storage?

Ohrstrom

Ohrstrom

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 18, 2012
312
0
Sweden
Is the SDXC fast enough to work as a reasonable extra storage drive? Compared to USB/FW/etc how fast/slow is it?
 
you can get some pretty fasd SD cards not, but I don't know if any of the current macs support the UHS-1 speed (the fastest cards atm are about 95MB/s)
 
PAPO said:
you can get some pretty fasd SD cards not, but I don't know if any of the current macs support the UHS-1 speed (the fastest cards atm are about 95MB/s)
Click to expand...

abot fw 800 teoretical then.. which is reasonable for stuff you dont have to access constantly I guess. :)
 
if you don't need to keep it with you go with a FW external, or even Thunderbolt if you have a newer MBP (but they tend to be a bit pricey) but FW should do the job, much faster than USB
 
Whilst 95mb/sec might not seem any faster than a firewire drive, don't forget that flash memory has zero seek time.

it will be able to do close to that 95mb/sec whether or not it is streaming one big file, or seeking all over the disk for multiple concurrent disk accesses by several apps at the same time.

absolute worst case (under random 4k reads), a mechanical 7200rpm SATA disk may only get 300 kilobytes per second or so due to waiting for the head to reposition.

real world usage on a multi-tasking OS is generally somewhere between the two cases above.
 
PAPO said:
if you don't need to keep it with you go with a FW external, or even Thunderbolt if you have a newer MBP (but they tend to be a bit pricey) but FW should do the job, much faster than USB
Click to expand...

I have a 500Gb FW800 drive, Im looking for a max storage option that sticks to the computer without wires and other things that make it a disturbance.

throAU said:
Whilst 95mb/sec might not seem any faster than a firewire drive, don't forget that flash memory has zero seek time.

it will be able to do close to that 95mb/sec whether or not it is streaming one big file, or seeking all over the disk for multiple concurrent disk accesses by several apps at the same time.

absolute worst case (under random 4k reads), a mechanical 7200rpm SATA disk may only get 300 kilobytes per second or so due to waiting for the head to reposition.

real world usage on a multi-tasking OS is generally somewhere between the two cases above.
Click to expand...

Thanks :)
 
SD cards are really slow...if you go up the ladder to the fastest ones, they are fairly expensive. Also reliability is an issue as well.

Your best bet is another drive in the DVD slot.
 
SDAVE said:
SD cards are really slow...if you go up the ladder to the fastest ones, they are fairly expensive. Also reliability is an issue as well.

Your best bet is another drive in the DVD slot.
Click to expand...

If there will be one ;)
 
I just ran a fast test with a SanDisk Extreme Pro UHS-1 95MB/s card in my Macbook Pro 15" mid 2009 and it does around 20MB/s read and 18.5MB/s write.

Think my cardreader integrated in the macbook is the bottleneck...
 
pposthoorn said:
I just ran a fast test with a SanDisk Extreme Pro UHS-1 95MB/s card in my Macbook Pro 15" mid 2009 and it does around 20MB/s read and 18.5MB/s write.

Think my cardreader integrated in the macbook is the bottleneck...
Click to expand...

that's what I was worried about before, I didn't think that the MBPs supported the UHS-1 speeds
 
SD storage would be nice but since it sticks out so far and if I use an SD card I want it in 24/7 it makes it difficult. Would be a good idea if this wasnt an issue.
 
Would be nice if a few more people with experience weighed in on this. I want to get a MBA 13 when the new ones come out but 128 gb is a little small and 256 gb is expensive and I don't need that much space. An SDXC card from eBay like this costs C$45.95 and gives 64 gb storage. Enough to put all my music and some movies on and leave the SSD plenty of space for apps/documents etc. Unfortunately there's no transfer speeds posted but I assume for stuff like that it would be quick enough. Again though it would be nice to hear from someone who had done this successfully.

I do have an external desktop HDD to house backups and most of my videos but I would like the SD card for all my music/some videos and to be able to take it anywhere.
 
I use a Lexar 128GB SDXC card to house my iTunes library and I've never had any stuttering or reading problems. TBH it's pretty freaking awesome! That and I can take my library elsewhere :D.
 
I've got a pair of daisy chained FW800 drives which I use for additional storage. I run VMs off of them and the performance is quite good.
 
edk99 said:
If you are waiting for the NEW 2012 MBP 15" then odds are it will have USB 3. If so then get a USB 3 flash drive. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233274

Way faster then any SD cards
Click to expand...

but if USB3 is anything like USB2 it won't achieve anywhere near the speed it promises, if your going to use an cutting edge technology for an external just get Thunderbolt and be done with it, in fact I think my Little big disk is faster than my internal HDD (I really need an SSD but they don't make anything bigger than 512 GB yet)
 
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