Crucial SD and CF?

[Axim-Rob]

Are they any good? My BIL holds a VAR account with them which gives some STEEP discounts of the large capacities and he'd be willing to give me his cost. Anyone have any opinions of their flash media? Usage will be in an X51v.

[0gopogo]

Crucial PC memory has a good reputation. That is probably why their SD cards tend to be priced quite a bit above average. I have not seen any reviews of these cards anywhere.

Newegg.com carry a 2GB model for US$141. That card has no advertised speed rating. One would assume that they'd brag about "120x" or "150x" speed if the could. So I assume these cards are not that fast in a card reader and OK in the Axim. Considering that fast 2GB SD cards start at $115 this Crucial card you mentioned should be cheaper than that.

[Axim-Rob]

Ogopogo,

Thanks for the insight! I also learned by emailing them that Crucial is wishy-washy on the speed subject. They claim I should be more concerned with the speed at which my device operates above all else... To that, I say sure, right, I'll remember that when say transferring a 1 gb file on my high-speed reader to your at least 12X media --> NOT!

Aside, found a pretty good local deal on 2 and 4 gb A-Data Turbo 150x SD cards. $109 and $252, respectively. Going to pick up a 2 gb tomorrow I think.

[0gopogo]

Rob,

Those are good prices indeed. I think the 2GB A-Data would be a nice card, and have seen positive feedback on it. Expect current 4GB cards (i.e. either the A-Data or the Transcend) to write slower than their 2GB siblings in a card reader.

EngrPaul started a thread in this forum which has more info on the 2GB and 4GB A-Data cards. He also has results for the 4GB Transcend card. Search this forum for his name and 'database'. That thread also has my results for the 2GB Ridata and 4GB Transcend. The 2GB cards achieve better performance in benchmarks than the 4GB cards. That is likely due to FAT32 vs FAT16 and black magic within the PocketMechanic benchmark software. In a high speed card header the 2GB Ridata writes noticably faster than the 4GB Transcend. You won't be surprised to read that both cards feel equally fast/slow in the Axim. As far as high speed card readers are concerned, I know of only one which supports v1.1 of the SD specification, the SanDisk 12-in-1 ImageMate with "ESP". That thread I mentioned has benchmarks results measured with this reader. Do you know of any other SD 1.1 compliant readers?

I attach the results of a real-world test copying stuff from the PC to the card, then back from the card to the PC, then deleting all files from the card. Test data were 1296 files in 32 folders ranging from many very small (kBs) files to some large (60M) files. This includes some dozen large MP3s (10MB) from three CDs; 871MB overall. EIII and Ridata were FAT16-formatted; the Transcend was FAT32-formatted, with a cluster size of 16k.

Copy from PC to Card

Extreme III    1GB   2:45 minutes
Ridata    150x 2GB   3:20
Transcend 150x 4GB   6:40

Copy from Card to PC

Extreme III    1GB   1:03 minutes
Ridata    150x 2GB   1:03
Transcend 150x 4GB   1:04

Delete from Card

Extreme III    1GB   1:07
Ridata    150x 2GB   0:55 minutes
Transcend 150x 4GB   2:03

All cards have pretty good read rates. The EIII writes fastest, the FAT32 4GB card slowest by a margin. The 2GB Ridata costs only 10 bucks more than the 1GB Extreme III and gets similar speed. The 2GB A-Data should be similar.

The Ridata's write speeds drop quite a bit when formatted to FAT32, so I would expect 4GB cards to be quite a bit slower at writing than 2GB cards. Again, ditto for A-Datas. The EIII, OTOH, almosts maintains its speed at FAT32. A 4GB of this brand would be nice.

[Axim-Rob]

Excellent Ogopogo! Thanks so much for funneling this my way. There's SOOOO much information on this site!!!

I thought "ESP" was part of the card technology and not so much the reader? Nonetheless, the darling wife and I have the newest Sandisk 12-in-1 for the laptops! Use it all the time with our digital cameras and my Magellan. My relatively new Dell Dimension 9100 is also equipped with the new 13-in-1 reader versus the former 9-in-1 that's supposed to be the latest too.

So much to learn and so much to tweak on my Ax!

[0gopogo]

Card speed is determined by both the memory and controller chips of the card. The latter needs a matching counterpart in the card reader in order to run at full speed. SanDisk label both their high speed cards and card readers with the ESP logo.

The EIII as well as the non-SanDisk 150x cards only run at about half speed in my older SanDisk 8-in-1 reader. Ditto in my SimpleTech card readers. Example:

EIII in old reader: 9594 kB/s read speed (large files)
EIII in new reader: 19560 kB/s read speed (large files)

150x Ridata: 9553 vs 18882 kB/s

Early SanDisk 12-in-1s without the ESP label do not support speeds beyond 66x according to an article I read on a photography web site. I do not have the link handy right now.

[jjj784]

i have a crucial cf card for my camera and have had no problems, but for my x51v, i plan to get the corsair 2gb sd.

[Axim-Rob]

Bought the 2 gb A-Data. Camera shop owner remembered me and offered a white box version, same specs and warranty, no bright pink and $12 bucks cheaper! I'll be pairing it with one of my Kingston Elite Pro CF cards retired from the digi when we bought the microdrive. I really like the idea I've read on the forum where it's suggested to use a CF card for more "permanent" storage since they're a PITA to remove from the Ax and the SD cards for "swappable" storage since you just click-n-lift them.

Thanks for the input all!