0gopogo

Minlas,

Regarding FAT16 vs Fat32, I'm convinced the effects can be ignored when using a card in a PDA. I have no numbers to back that up, only subjective observations.

FAT16 vs Fat32 plays a role when benchmarking is a card reader. Consider an empty Ridata 2GB 150x SD card. The columns are for sequential read, write then random access read, write speeds, in kB/s:

Code:

FAT16 -------------------------------- FAT32 -------------------------------- 17290 15845 17323 3537 Y:\1MB 17825 11211 17323 2844 Y:\1MB 18395 15845 17290 3537 Y:\1MB 17860 11232 17290 2844 Y:\1MB 18686 15845 17685 3271 Y:\2MB 17685 3737 17685 2618 Y:\2MB 18674 15398 17860 3117 Y:\4MB 17834 5454 17860 2496 Y:\4MB 18703 15398 17750 3047 Y:\8MB 18044 7080 17770 2519 Y:\8MB 18686 15215 18156 3047 Y:\10MB 17685 7523 18188 2559 Y:\10MB 18823 13882 17902 3005 Y:\50MB 18611 8902 17802 2539 Y:\50MB 18882 13708 17805 3006 Y:\100MB 18723 8903 17756 2525 Y:\100MB

At larger file sizes the difference in write speed is dramatic. I have yet to confirm this in a real-world test. My gut feeling says that the speed difference won't be anywhere near the synthetic results.

By comparison, a 1GB Extreme III SD:

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FAT16 -------------------------------- FAT32 -------------------------------- 17825 10219 16817 3842 Y:\1MB 17323 13080 16817 4458 Y:\1MB 17860 10593 16817 3737 Y:\1MB 17323 12709 16817 4668 Y:\1MB 18686 11548 16759 3631 Y:\2MB 18686 10326 17210 4087 Y:\2MB 19629 12780 17090 3740 Y:\4MB 19140 10908 17090 4027 Y:\4MB 19389 13086 17174 3742 Y:\8MB 17750 11636 17174 3882 Y:\8MB 19806 13931 17210 3830 Y:\10MB 19248 12337 17210 3970 Y:\10MB 19497 15023 17060 3886 Y:\50MB 19047 15094 17060 4015 Y:\50MB 19560 15238 16976 3907 Y:\100MB 19441 14927 17018 4028 Y:\100MB

The EIII, in this card reader, actually likes FAT32 better.

I have checked the other thread. For your application i.e. a video player I would not worry about read speed on the PDA. It'll be fine. Write performance in a card reader and/or capacity/dollar has more relevance. If you are serious about capacity you need more than 2GB i.e. FAT16 is out of the question so don't worry about the file system issue in that case.

Since your application is more stationary than mobile and near a power supply I suggest to check out the high-capacity MicroDrives. Transfering video to a MicroDrive will take longer than copying it to a fast CF card:

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FAT32 -------------------------------- 9088 2535 2921 1460 Y:\100MB

Comparing these numbers to the Ridata and SanDisk is not fair because those cards utilize the latest SD specification. To put the results into perspective consider a 1GB 60x Lexar Pro card in the same reader/writer:

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FAT32 -------------------------------- 9360 5728 9124 1257 Y:\100MB

This shows that (in a card reader) the MD reads large files fast but is slow to write large files or reading smaller files at random. Only the large file write speed is of concern when tranfering video files.

So the MD is slow as a target for large video files in a card reader. On an absolute scale it is cheap, though. An Ultra II SD (and probably CF, too) writes large files over three times faster. The UII CF costs about twice per GB of storage than the 6GB MD. So, surprisingly, if speed is factored in, you get better value from an Ultra II. But still, the 6GB MD is $240, the 8GB CF UII is > $650. On an absolute scale the MicroDrive wins.