Fastest SD card

[happybot-4678]

Hey, i am looking for the fastest read/write SD card for my Braveheart (minimum size 128GB).

Where should i look taking under consideration the PinePhone's specs and limits?

[Tharadash]

Hi happybot-4678 and welcome to the pine64 forums!

I would advise purchasing a card classified as "A1" from a reputable brand such as Samsung, Sandisk, Toshiba etc.

The A1 specification is guaranteeing a minimum read/write IOPS of 1500/500 respecitvely.

I do not think that the speed class differences above Class 10 / U1 are relevant for "smartphone use", as they only refer to sustained transfer of bigger files and not the small operations performed by a computer/smartphone.

See this wonderful thread over at armbian forums:
https://forum.armbian.com/topic/954-sd-c...rformance/

[tllim]

Hi happybot-4678 and welcome to the pine64 forums!

I would advise purchasing a card classified as "A1" from a reputable brand such as Samsung, Sandisk, Toshiba etc.

The A1 specification is guaranteeing a minimum read/write IOPS of 1500/500 respecitvely.

I do not think that the speed class differences above Class 10 / U1 are relevant for "smartphone use", as they only refer to sustained transfer of bigger files and not the small operations performed by a computer/smartphone.

See this wonderful thread over at armbian forums:
https://forum.armbian.com/topic/954-sd-c...rformance/

Thanks on the good answer, just get "A1" class from reputable brand. DON'T get "A2" class which needs special command to activate.

[Alho]

The Pinephones max speed on SD card is 20MB/s , so you really don't need 'the fastest card' you can get.
That said, if you plan to test a lot of images, a SD card in a USB adapter on your PC can do a lot faster,
and that might be nice when testing (flashing) very large images.

[happybot-4678]

Thank you for the nice feedback, i will get an A1 one.

[pfeerick]

I find the Samsung EVO microSDs good value for money, with excellent read/write speeds, and have yet to have one fail due to excessive flash memory writes. But now the A1 spec is a thing, any old A1 card should do the trick.

[---]

Just bought two A2 SanDisk EXTREME 64GB sd cards. Then saw @tllim's warning "DON'T get "A2" class which needs special command to activate".
Are these cards going to be a waste of time?
What are the special commands issues?

[nas]

Just bought two A2 SanDisk EXTREME 64GB sd cards. Then saw @tllim's warning "DON'T get "A2" class which needs special command to activate".
Are these cards going to be a waste of time?

See this similar thread- the linked blog has tested various cards and says no to A2.

[camsonne]

I tried two Samsung Extreme Pro A2 256 GB SD and they both work directly without doing anything.
Maybe the pinephone is more up to date than other devices.

Speed is most likely still limited at 20 MB/s but flashing the card reaches at least 50 MB/s if you have the correct reader

[dsimic]

In a few words, all A2-rated Micro SD cards will work, but they will not work at their full random I/O speed without special software support on the host side.  AFAIK, no such software support is available in Linux yet.

By the way, I'm currently testing the performance of the F2FS filesystem on "old-style" Micro SD cards that are neither A1 nor A2 rated.  So far, the results seem very promising, compared with the ext4 performance, which is the default in all operating system images.