Slow SD Memory

[LeapinLew]

Anyone know why it takes so long to transfer files onto a SD card. I used a CF card in the past in my ax, and it was slow, but not this slow. I am transferring 1.2 megabytes worth of info and it took nearly 5 minutes. It was a bunch of small document. If I transfer just a 1.2 megabyte file it doesn't take that long, but if I transfer a bunch of small files it takes much longer.

Is this a common trait to PDA memory? I only had a palm before and didn't have the SD option. Slow is better than none, but I'm wondering if it could ever be faster.

[JakeRich]

I suspect it is the "bunch of small documents" that is the culprit. Every file has to be transferred, then the directory updated, then the next file, etc, etc, etc. So when you compare a transfer of 1 1.2 Meg file with "bunches" of small documents, the difference is more likely the overhead of doing the directory updating.

[Forge]

This holds true across across all storage media.

[ows]

I'm not so sure. I have a Konica digital camera with SD, and it only takes seconds to save a 2Mb foto. SD on the Ax is ridiculously slow - it takes ~2 minutes to transfer 1 mp3 file. It it the cradle or Activesync that's the problem ? Would a reader increase the speed ?

[Samim]

Yes a card reader is faster, but if your looking for 2 megs a second it aint gonna happen on a usb 1.1.

Sam

[pyro]

If you want put the files in a zip archive first and transfer it, then unpack on the axim.
Or a card reader, like Samim recommended, I'm also going to buy one next week :)

[wildcat]

Another possible explinations could be that you have convert files on. Some files that run well under the PC's os need to be reformated and coverted into a smaller less featured file for the AX. As there there are more programs more files to convert.

[peterbright]

How are you doing the transfer? I use drag & drop to both CF & SD and it seems fairly rapid to me.

[LeapinLew]

Imagine my surprise seeing a thread from 3 months ago.

I was transferring MP3 files - about 70 of them. I was dropping and dragging using My Computer - the Axim shows up there as a mobile device in XP. I would browse to where I wanted the MP3 files and paste them there.

I've since learned it doesn't seem to matter - sending data to a mobile device is just painfully slow. I have a HP 1910 now and it's just as slow as the Axim was. No biggie - I just deal with it - I don't have a clue as to why it's so slow though. USB1.1 is 10 much faster then the speeds we get sending data to our devices and if you use a wifi card to copy and paste data it's much faster then using the cradle currently and if you use a card reader the data can be transfered much more quickly. I can't figure out why it's so slow.

I hope they fix it

[Islanti]

I ran into a problem with my Axim which caused me to hard reset and install from scratch. I took the opportunity to play around with my 256 MB Dane-Elec (Panasonic OEM) SD card. I re-formatted it a few different ways to see what difference the formatting made to performance.

Originally, the card came formatted FAT16 with 16KB clusters. Whenever I was writing lots of data to the SD card, the Axim was barely responsive. If I had two writes going on (AvantGo sync and a game installation, for example), the Axim was totally unresponsive.

I re-formatted the card with FAT16 and 4KB clusters. This yielded some different results. The Axim is much faster during writes to the SD card. Large files or multiple writes still seem to slow things down, though.

Read performance was never terrible, but I do see somewhat of an improvement since re-formatting.

I'm not sure why SD card writes use so much of the Axim's resources. The disk cache in the Pocket PC OS could dramatically affect performance. Perhaps someone more familiar can comment on this.

[pyro]

Originally posted by LeapinLew
Imagine my surprise seeing a thread from 3 months ago.

And I'm surprised that you noticed it so quickly :)
I was just searching everything about SD cards as I'm going to buy a SD card and a reader soon, have a Toshiba CF card at the moment.
Tried it out in my laptop via pcmcia-compact flash adapter and noticed a MP3 took only 3 seconds to transfer and not 30 like with ActiveSync.

But I wonder what slows down the transfer so much? Is it like old serial cable with Hyperterminal:
A packet is send, then the acknowledgement comes. only then the next packet is send, instead of a parallel transfer like if you copy files over a LAN to a ftp server.
Must be the activeSync software I guess.

[LeapinLew]

I can transfer data directly to the device without using active sync software. And it's still slow as dirt... dunno.