Media Card reader performance in x220

Hi

I have tried to look around the net without much luck:

Can anyone please tell me how fast the media card reader can read/write SD cards in the x220?

I intend to buy a 32gb SDHC card and use it as secondary storage space. Do you think this is a silly idea? I realize I will not get top notch performance but think less could do for simple media storage for pictures, music, movies etc.

P.s. Anyone else constantly hitting the touchpad accidentially when typing as I do? It's the first laptop I really have had this problem. Expect for that I really like my x220.

Best regards
idless

 

I have an old Lexar Professional 133x 2GB card (133x is rated for around 20MBps).

Ran Crystal Disk Mark on it. Here are my results (too lazy to screencap it, so just text.. sorry)

2 pass, 50MB
Seq: 23.32 Read, 20.62 Write
512K: 23.28 Read, 5.966 Write
4K: 10.76 Read, 0.064 Write
4K QD32: 10.91 Read, 0.065 Write

I believe I'm maxing my card out, and not the reader though. Don't have a faster card to test with.

Sandisk doesn't provide speeds for their standard cards (the blue ones), however their extreme pro cards (the super expensive ones.. $300 MSRP for 32gb) only tout 45MB/s speeds..
On the other hand, lexar sells a Professional Brand (133x series) for $100ish for a 32gb (again MSRP). Those cards are rated at around 20MBps.

Edit: After checking out newegg and whatnot, it doesn't seem that there exists much performance above 20MBps for SD cards.. (SDHC and SDXC included). The fastest I've seen seem to cap out at 30MBps. I believe the real limiting factor here would be the card, as the card reader is directly connected to the USB 2.0 bus, so you have a theoretical 60MBps bandwidth on that bus.

One thing to note, I'm not sure what this card reader supports. It obviously supports SD, but I'm not sure about SDHC and SDXC. You shouldn't have a problem with it, but do note that SDHC and SDXC (the higher capacity cards) are of different spec, and the reader may or may not support them.

Edit 2: Actually I'm a complete liar. Reading the Wikipedia entry on SD cards, there are cards that have been released that support up to 60MB/s, however those are 64GB and 128GB cards, and their prices are costlier than buying an SSD of the same capacity.... so I think those are out of the running here.

Checking the 32GB SD card prices, you're looking at roughly $40-50 off of newegg. At this rate, might you consider the 40GB mSATA drive from intel? Its only $100 (yea double the price, but you could actually toss your OS onto this drive).

Also, there should be a palm check option somewhere in the drivers. I know that when I'm typing the touchpad completely ignores input.

 

Thank you for the comprehensive answer chaosphoenix! I think I will buy a moderately fast sandisk or lexar card 20mb read/write is quite ok for my need.

 

I can't remember where I found it at the moment, but I remember finding some tech piece that said it's a SD/SDHC/SDXC reader. So it should support all of them.

 

I've used a 16GB SD card to store my music in my T500 and X120e for over a year now--it works great, and saves space on my SSD.

 

does the x220 have a slot for sd cards or other cards, or do i have to get a card adapter-->usb

 

It has a built in slot for SD form factor cards, which should support SD, SDHC, and SDXC (as a previous poster mentioned above). Aside from that, there are no other physical card slots (unless you count the ExpressCard slot..).

It should be noted that when you put the SD card in, it fits flush (hence why its a good idea to use as a "storage" bay).