Qaddafi

Greetings folks! I've been doing lots of research on these forums, but my specific questions were not answered. It's time I give my share and contribute!

First, there have been many users complaining about SD Card incompatibility issues. For example, Dell Axim support for SD cards greater than 2GB (Dell says currently 2GB is the max, I will later explain why). Now, given my experience with a KingMax M-Series 100x 4GB card, the dell Axim will not have any problems READING data from this card. WRITING on your axim is another issue. This reply will focus primarily on SD cards greater than 2 GB.

1. Dell tech support says 2 GB is the limit, but they don't say why and when you ask them, they're like "that's simply what we recommend." Well, the reason is that the only SD cards greater than 2GB are supposed to be SDHC compliant, as this is the new SecureDigital standard (2.0) supporting card storage greater than 2GB. The previous standards, SD1.0/1.1, support cards up to 2GB. Nevertheless, some makers, especially "generic brands" have violated the standard and managed to squeeze in a couple more gigabytes. This introduces new problems; but for now, reading and copying relatively small files won't be an issue. This is akin to making CDs with 900MB capacity. If you go to SanDisk's website for instance, you'll notice they don't sell non-SDHC 4GB *SD* cards. If you got a SanDisk one off eBay, it's very likely a fake. Dell Axims currently don't support SDHC SD cards, as well as many cameras, but there are newer products implementing them. We'll have to wait for firmware updates.

2. File systems. Users complaining of slow read/write performance (even if the card is 150x) have been recommended to format their cards to FAT16. (This could have been placed on another thread, but there are so many on this site; I felt it was relevant to post everything here...) You CANNOT format a 4GB SD card to FAT16 (or simply FAT, same thing). If you manage to do so, i.e. thru your camera, you will have noticed that the card size is reduced to 2GB! The reason for this is that FAT is supported up to 2GB. FAT formatting is recommended because of increase in performance due to larger cluster sizes; having said that, this file system does have its disadvantages. The good thing is that access is faster, and you'll notice that writing to the SD card within your axim will be fast using FAT. However, with these 4GB cards, you MUST use FAT32 (see 3). There have been users wondering about RAW "file system" support, and wondering if this can be used instead, especially to store large files like movies on 4GB SD cards. You cannot format into RAW. RAW is NOT a file system. RAW is NO file system; i.e., you're writing "raw" data to an unformatted card. There are no clusters, so it would be useful for storing a few large files like movies. But how do we get the movies onto the card (see 4) without RAW? You'll be prompted to FORMAT the card.

3. Use a non-compliant SD Card introduces reading/writing limitations. There have been users complaining that copying files within the Axim (e.g. x51v) to 4GB SD cards is really SLOW. This is because there could be issues with the axim copying to 4GB SD Cards with the FAT32 file system. I used a digital camera to format my card using FAT, producing a 2GB capacity. Copying files to it was then FAST. But the card was supposed to be 4GB! Copying to a 1GB FAT32 CompactFlash card (SanDisk Ultra II) showed no problems (it was FAST). In general, FAT32 is slower than FAT due to smaller cluster sizes, which will cause delays in your system navigating thru the clusters. It takes more time counting $100 in pennies than in $5 bills... Some applications like PocketMechanic allow you to modify the cluster sizes, but this should be done only if you know what you're doing...

4. Large files. I, like many users on this forum experienced I/O or "incorrect parameter" errors when trying to copy large files to the 4GB SD card, such as movies, or folders containing batches of mp3 files (constituting 1 large unit of data upload). Forget using the agonizingly slow ActiveSync; but this may be the only way... if you have the patience. This depends on the card reader's ability to support your card's capacity. My reader doesn't seem to. However, copying files one at a time (e.g. 5MB mp3) was FAST and no issues. You need to have a card reader than can support writing to your particular SD Card size. Not all readers are universally made in this sense. Most are made to support up to 2GB cards. The best thing to do is purchase one made by the same brand as your SD Card. like the Transcend models for instance. It would be nice if someone suggest a quality reader that worked writing large files to a non-SDHC 4GB SD Card.

Overall, if you're going to use an SD card to frequently read and write files, stick to the ones 2GB or less, until there is firmware support for SDHC cards. Make sure you get a card reader support your non-SDHC 4GB card or get one the WILL support SDHC cards. This new standard will support cards up to 32GB. The Dell Axim may still have trouble writing to FAT32-based non-SDHC 4GB cards, but reading will not be much of an issue. And lastly, format the card using FAT16 and not FAT32. You should then be happy as data will be written faster to the card in your Axim!