Fastest and largest SD Card supported by hardware

Discussion in 'Accessories' started by Setola, Nov 18, 2013.

  1. Setola

    Setola New Member

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    Hello guys,

    does anyone knows the maximum transfer rate supported by our awesome Udoo?
    Does it makes sense to buy a class 10 or even a UHS-I sd card to speed up disk I\O?

    Also regarding the SD Card, is the 8Gb limit given by the documentation an hardware limit or only a matter of partition / allocated space by default system images on the device?


    Cheers!
     
  2. Lifeboat_Jim

    Lifeboat_Jim New Member

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    I don't recall anyone doing any benchmarking on the UDOO of the SD possibilities but people are using UHS-I 30Mbs cards - at what throughput I don't know.

    The 8GB 'limit' isn't a limit - it's a side effect of the UDOO supplied images being 8GB in size. Therefore putting an 8GB image on a 16GB card is fine, but only half the capacity would be used.

    It is well documented on these forums how to put an 8GB image on a larger card, and then resize it to take advantage of the extra room. Of course those who want/need/desire extra room would probably use the SATA capabilities.
     
  3. Setola

    Setola New Member

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    Thank you very much!

    I'll search for a good deal and make some speed test.

    Meanwhile a sata hdd from an old laptop is waiting for the power cable on my desk :)
     
  4. Setola

    Setola New Member

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    Here's some benchmark I've done:
    • board: Udoo Quad
    • o.s.: Ubuntu 13.10 fresh install
    • sd card: Kingston 4gb class 4 (cheap 3-5€)

    Code:
    udoo-quad setola # lsb_release -a
    No LSB modules are available.
    Distributor ID: Ubuntu
    Description:    Ubuntu 13.10
    Release:        13.10
    Codename:       saucy
    
    udoo-quad setola # uname -a
    Linux udoo-quad 3.0.35 #5 SMP PREEMPT Mon Nov 11 14:45:12 CET 2013 armv7l armv7l armv7l GNU/Linux
    
    Code:
    udoo-quad setola # hdparm -Tt /dev/mmcblk0
    
    /dev/mmcblk0:
     Timing cached reads:   724 MB in  2.00 seconds = 361.88 MB/sec
     Timing buffered disk reads:  58 MB in  3.04 seconds =  19.08 MB/sec
    
    Code:
    udoo-quad setola # dd count=1k bs=1M if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/asd
    1024+0 records in
    1024+0 records out
    1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 405.912 s, 2.6 MB/s
    
    I normally trust only dd, so the real write speed for me is 2.6MB/s,
    which should be half of the maximum declared by the manufacturer.

    This SD is cheap and can be found on every tech shop, but, for example, when I had to install some packages, it took a very long time to unpack it.
     
  5. Lifeboat_Jim

    Lifeboat_Jim New Member

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    Very useful info, thank you.

    At that price, cheap though it is, worth going for a branded Class 10 UHS-I (rated for 30 MB/s sequential read) as they are only £4.45 (inc delivery from Hong Kong) which is just over €5/$7.50 (those were Toshiba's).
     
  6. Setola

    Setola New Member

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    Another SD: Sony UHS-I 8GB, something around 13€

    Code:
    udoo-quad setola # lsb_release -a
    No LSB modules are available.
    Distributor ID: Ubuntu
    Description:    Ubuntu 13.10
    Release:        13.10
    Codename:       saucy
    Code:
    udoo-quad setola # hdparm -Tt /dev/mmcblk0
    
    /dev/mmcblk0:
     Timing cached reads:   718 MB in  2.00 seconds = 359.01 MB/sec
     Timing buffered disk reads:  58 MB in  3.10 seconds =  18.68 MB/sec

    Code:
    udoo-quad setola # dd count=1k bs=1M if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/asd
    1024+0 records in
    1024+0 records out
    1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 146.359 s, 7.3 MB/s
    I think thouse 10€ were a good deal to improve the performances.
    The feeling with apt-get install is really better than the cheap kingston.
     
  7. Setola

    Setola New Member

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    Finally I've got an old hdd up and ready:
    Hitachi 500GB SATA 3.0Gb\s

    Code:
    udoo-quad ~ # lsb_release -a
    No LSB modules are available.
    Distributor ID: Ubuntu
    Description:    Ubuntu 13.10
    Release:        13.10
    Codename:       saucy
    Code:
    udoo-quad ~ # hdparm -Tt /dev/sda1
    
    /dev/sda1:
     Timing cached reads:   734 MB in  2.00 seconds = 366.46 MB/sec
     Timing buffered disk reads: 238 MB in  3.02 seconds =  78.71 MB/sec
    Code:
    udoo-quad ~ # dd count=1k bs=1M if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/asd
    1024+0 records in
    1024+0 records out
    1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 29.562 s, 36.3 MB/s
    
    Obviously an hdd overcome the sd by far
     

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