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SD card usage tips

johnspack

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Got myself a thumb drive sized sd/hc mini/micro card reader for 2 bucks, and can carry it around. Normally, sd cards are pretty slow, but there is a way to speed them up a bit. The creator of RMPrepUsb has initiated a formatting algorithm for fat32, and apparently ntfs, that will speed up access by 10% or better. http://www.rmprepusb.com/
Using an 8gb class 4 card:

Using an 8gb class 10 card:
 
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I thought that second image was the "after" test from the class 4 card. I was dissapointed when I realized it wasn't.
 

johnspack

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Heh, no, I wish. But you will still see at least a 10% increase on any sd or flash drive using this format.
 
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The creator of RMPrepUsb has initiated a formatting algorithm for fat32

I am not exactly sure what to do. Do I just use this program to repartition the drive to fat32, or are you supposed to checkmark one of the many settings?

I tried formatting with this program with default settings on fat32. I see no major difference on my class 10 8gb sd card using hdtune and the in program speed test.

Before:
I got 19.5 MB/sec read and 13.2 MB/sec write using the in program speed test.
Using hdtune I got a minimum of 16.7 MB/sec, average of 17 MB/sec, a maximum of 19.2 MB/sec, acces time of 0.7, and a burst rate(write?) of 13.9 MB/sec.

After:
I got 19.9 MB/sec read and 13 MB/sec write using the in program speed test.
Using hdtune I got a minimum of 16.6 MB/sec, average of 17 MB/sec, a maximum of 19.2 MB/sec, acces time of 0.7, and a burst rate(write?) of 13.9 MB/sec.
 
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actually i dont think it would boost much since between class 4 or class 10 limited by their spec, maybe you could optimize it but thats all you can do
 
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actually i dont think it would boost much since between class 4 or class 10 limited by their spec, maybe you could optimize it but thats all you can do

I figured I would try it at least. I am not even hitting the 20MB/sec I am rated at so I figured there was room to improve. Johnspack did seem pretty adamant.

Think it would help a usb flashdrive?
 
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I think before and afters are what we want. I have a plain jane formatted 8GB class 4 Sandisk which is faster than my Patriot class 10, ~25 read/~18 write vs ~15 read and ~12 write of the Patriot with the same card reader. The Patriot cards were such an epic fail, I wanted to hit my cameras buffer less often but it's worse (RAWs are 10MB @ 4.5fps) :\
 
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Hi
I am the author of RMPrepUSB.
RMPrepUSB can format flash drives as FAT32 and can improve file writes on those drives by approx 10%. Most difference will be seen writing smaller files (i.e. copying normal files to the drive/SD card). There will be no difference on file read access and no difference in sector read or write accesses.

This means copying files to a flash drive (if formatted by RMPrepUSB as FAT32) will be 10% faster than if formatted as FAT32 by most other methods. I say 'most' other methods, because now a fewe other software authors have modified their own format utilities after seeing the improvements that RMPrepUSB produces by aligning the clusters.

Most benchmark programs won't show any difference unless they write lots of files to the drive (i.e. write using the filesystem).
There is no improvement if formatted as NTFS. There will be no improvement on non-Flash memory drives (e.g. spinny things).

In normal use, people write small (i.e 0-200MB) files such as mp3, jpg and document files. You should also see an improvement on the picture save time when taking a picture on a digital camera or smartphone too if the SD card was first formatted as FAT32 by RMPrepUSB (i.e. don't use the cameras own format tool).

RMPrepUSB optimises the FAT32 cluster positions on the flash memory. For an explanation of how this works see here.
 
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