SD Cards as Storage

I know some people might snort at the idea, but there are now SD cards on the market that run about 45mb/sec of transfer (Sandisk Extreme & similar). For people on SSD-based laptops (especially proprietary SSD's on ultrabooks), it might even be economically feasible to use a 64GB or 128GB SD card to use for storage, or perhaps even to reduce wear on the SSD (I'm looking more at the first). I know that to some people the size/speed isn't worth the money, but for the rest of us, has anyone actually tried it? What have you thought? What do you guys in theory?

Thanks!

 

I use a 16GB SD card on my T500 to store my music library, as otherwise it'd take up a significant portion of the 80GB SSD. Works very well for storage of data that you aren't going to be moving around a whole lot, such as a music library. 32GB SD cards can be had for $20, so it's a very feasible and economic way to extend the amount of room you have on laptops with an SSD.

 

I won't "snort" at you if you don't snort at me. I use on my phone so even not the same platform the concept is not new. That said I think it is a fine idea for "storage". Here is the problem/issue. A complete lack of reliability. They do and will fail without notice or reason. That might be the worst form of backup currently around. So if as is recommended "back up" is not an issue or complete loss of data does not bother you? Then yes go for it. But does backing up help the SD work for you. I could see for mobility it is better than external HDD. But have an external HDD backing up the SD at home.

 

Same deal here, right down to the 80GB SSDs. Was using USB flash drives for the same purpose for the longest time, but the SDHC card is so much more convenient since you can keep it in the machine.

 

And the oblivious lead the blind?

I guess the greater rate of failure is not your issue? So be it. It is not a substitute for HDD or SSD it might at best push Optical drives. Do you kids support that? I did not think so but funny how you jump this. Really no joke and your green titles?

Failure rates excede all acceptable standardes vs the other two primary.

 

I mean, you should make backups of all your data, regardless of the storage medium. I triplicate the important stuff. I don't see what the problem is.

 

Convenience is all it is. You are also paying a horrific amount for meagre performance and capacity. Reliability isn't too flash unless you get a top end chip which maybe as much as $2 a gig with the performance of your garden variety laptop 5400rpm drive. I use the sdcard for data I frequently access but is also backed up on my external hdd.

 

Are you ripping from CD music discs to smaller/lossy .mp3 files, or larger lossless files (like .flac)?

I rip my CD music discs to larger lossless .flac files; put onto either the fastest current SD Card memory or USB 3.0 flash stick, the music playback gets occasional breaks in the sound playback.

Whereas the same files on an external 2.5" HDD (via USB 2.0 connector), or on a resident SSD, do not get any breaks in the sound playback.

So maybe I'll try the best (read largest) of the .mp3 formats and find out if that solves the occasional breaks in the sound playback problem that I get with high quality .flac music files.

Other than that, I like the convenience of the fastest current SD Card memory (see: Secure Digital - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) and/or USB 3.0 flash stick.

 

compressed works fine on SD cards, if a USB2.0 flash drive works well for lossless, then a better SD card should solve the problem since the readers are usually connected through internal USB or internal PCI-E if I recall correctly.