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Joined: Oct 13, 2004 Posts: 43 Location: Suffolk, UK
Posted: Sat Nov 20, 2004 2:28 pm Post subject:
It isn't the make of card that is important it's the speed.
For what it's worth use a "Japanese" card is misleading advice! as most of the cards are made in Taiwan and China and made by the same factory - irrespective the brand name on the label.
What actually happens is the cards that pass the higher performance tests are branded as the "better" makes.
SANDISK is in fact a very well respected brand - I have been using thier CF and SD cards for years in digital photography along with Lexar.
The problem associated with TomTom and SD cards is that it needs to read the map data at a high rate and if you use a slower (usually older) SD card it cannot transfer the data at a fast enough rate.
Contrary to some advive given SANDISK are in fact very high quality and will last a long time - they may however not be FAST enough for the task they are used for.
The SANDISK cards to use are thier EXTREME and ULTRA II versions
these can be as fast as 60x or approx 9Mb/second transfer rate.
CF and SD speed ratings are based on the same system as used by PC Compact Disc readers eg The first CD units were 1x speed and very soon after things improved to2x, 4x 8x, 12x etc until today even cheap CD units can be 52x.
If you do an Internet search on SD cards you will get wildly differing prices for the same size of card eg 256/512Mb or 1Gb but they are NOT all the same - the cheaper ones will usually be 12x speed.
In terms of quality cards ones I can reccomend (in no particular order) are : Lexar, Sandisk, Kingston, Panasonic, Sony
BUT CHECK THE SPEED RATING!!!!! _________________ Silva MultiNavigator
GSAK V4.2.2
MemoryMap OS 2004 & V5 Navigator
Navman Pin(Mitac Mio 168)
Navman SmartST Pro V2 & V3
Mitac Mio 558
Joined: Nov 16, 2004 Posts: 112 Location: Liverpool, UK
Posted: Sat Nov 20, 2004 5:07 pm Post subject:
I just bought a 512MB Kingston SD card from Ebuyer and it works great (I have TomTom GB map installed on it) and was less than £30 including VAT + free delivery. Now that is what I call a bargain!
Joined: 17/05/2003 02:26:21 Posts: 3747 Location: Bedfordshire, UK
Posted: Sat Nov 20, 2004 5:58 pm Post subject:
UKHABU - I have to disagree with you on Sandisk SD cards, and the make of card is important, as not all cards are equal.
It's not true that all the SD cards are made in Taiwan or China in the same few factories. It is true, though, that there are far fewer manufacturers than brands - many brands (including some major memory card brands like Lexar) tend to relabel SD cards made by one of the big manufacturers. Lexar have been known to change underlying brand in the past.
Sandisk make most of their cards in Taiwan and China, but there are other manufacturers who make cards to totally different designs in other parts of the world.
The "Made in Japan" cards tend to be Toshiba or Panasonic, who both have their own designs, particularly of the crucial SD card controller - the advice to search for a "Made in Japan" card is effectively a way of finding a card made by Toshiba or Panasonic.
Toshiba, Panasonic and Sandisk were, together, responsible for the design of the SD standard. There's other companies making SD cards to their own design - these include Infineon, who also are a major manufacturer of SD cards.
Sandisk's other lines are fine, and they're probably fine in digital cameras, but for use in devices like Pocket PCs, Sandisk SD cards started out as garbage and have improved but still aren't necessarily at the level of other brands.
The absolute worst combination is an old pre 'N' technology code Sandisk SD card and a Dell Axim X5 - see http://sdprob.aximsite.com for details of just how wrong that combination can go. However, there's reports of the later Sandisk series cards and even the Ultra II cards going wrong or at least performing poorly in Pocket PCs and other PDAs - search the forums and you'll almost certainly find some examples. A recent example is this thread - there are many more.
Digital cameras use memory cards in a fairly linear sort of way - they write a chunk of data, then, when you take another picture, write another chunk of data. In recall mode, you recall a chunk of data, then another, and so on. Pocket PCs and other PDAs can seek around all over the place - so you can get cards that perform just fine in cameras that perform abysmally in Pocket PCs.
There are plenty of other good cards available for around the same price as Sandisk, so my advice remains to forget about Sandisk SD cards (and rebadges thereof) for Pocket PC usage. Whilst other brands of Pocket PC don't tend to corrupt Sandisk SD cards like Dell Axim X5s do, there have been more than a few performance problems (especially in TomTom Navigator 3, which works memory cards hard) fixed by people switching away from Sandisk SD cards.
I did some of the original work with Jon 'Happycheesecake' C, who produced the web site I mentioned earlier, and I know much of the information that Jon isn't allowed to release publicly.
Things have moved on somewhat, and Sandisk SD cards aren't as poor as they once were. Of course, you have a choice - but I maintain that Sandisk SD cards are better avoided for PDA usage, and I think there's several other people here who will back me up on that. If you ask ValueFlash what SD card they recommend for TomTom Navigator 3 usage on a Pocket PC, I very much doubt the answer will be Sandisk.
The speed thing is indirectly to do with it - "High Speed" cards tend to be better quality designs, but it's not actually the card's rated speed (which, as PDAs tend to use memory cards in a non-linear fashion, is not a measure of performance when the card is used in a PDA) that is the determinant of how well or otherwise a SD card will work in a PDA. Most PDAs tend to have fairly slow SD slots - what matters far more is the quality of a memory card than its headline "times" speed.
Joined: Oct 13, 2004 Posts: 43 Location: Suffolk, UK
Posted: Sat Nov 20, 2004 8:34 pm Post subject:
Well David/VidW I have to disagree again with you! ;-)
The vast majority of SD cards ARE made in Taiwan and China - I DIDN'T say ALL cards are made there (pleased check the wording carefully on my post!)
The cards cannot be made "to a different design" they are made to the same standard - and I don't mean the same QUALITY standard - there ARE rubbish brands about - MOST of these are actually below quality standard rejects from other manufacturers.
I must take issue with this passage in your post :
"The absolute worst combination is an old pre 'N' technology code Sandisk SD card and a Dell Axim X5 - see http://sdprob.aximsite.com for details of just how wrong that combination can go. However, there's reports of the later Sandisk series cards and even the Ultra II cards going wrong or at least performing poorly in Pocket PCs and other PDAs - search the forums and you'll almost certainly find some examples. A recent example is this thread - there are many more. "
I looked at that site earlier and to be honest the level of info provided hardly proves the point - there are approx 80 entries under PDA + SANDISK with approx - 58 entries with an adverse comment against SANDISK - considering the MILLIONS of both PDA's and SD cards in use thats hardly conclusive proof!
Quoting directly from the site : (I am under the impression that certain Axim X3 devices won't work with any SD card-if this is the case with your X3 then I suggest you contact Dell before contacting your SD card supplier.)
It seems there is more a problem with Dell's than the actual make of card.
You cite this thread as "proof" that the latest SANDISK ULTRA II cards are also causing problems. I'm sorry but in that thread the actual person with the problem with the SD card NEVER mentions the make of card he has trouble with - one of the responders - NEJ - mentions unconnectadly that SANDISK are notoriously bad - even NEJ DOESN'T mention ULTRA II cards.
I agree that PDA's and cameras use SD cards differently - to a certain extent with a digital camera it matters not how long it takes to read/write to a card but that was the whole premise of my post IE : PDA's are reading and writing to the cards and processing the data IN REAL TIME and using it in this case as map navigation data.
However your idea that PDA's and digital cameras use them differently is incorrect in both the cards are formatted to a MS Windows standard ie FAT16 or FAT32 - ie thats why your PC can actually still read the files/data on them!
You CAN organise the data diretories on the SD card in an inefficient manner causing the device to have to seek data in differing areas causing delays in that respect but the actual reading and writing is exactly the same - it has to be as they are usually FAT32 devices. How the efficiently internal cache memory on the PDA uses this data is another thing entirely.
I dare say there is much information unreleased from that site due to it's sensitivity but it is hardly a over whelming body of evidence given the amount of data on it and the size of the PDA/SD card population - but given the innaccurracies in your (possibly libellous!) post I think I will rely on my direct 28 years experience in the computer industry thanks! _________________ Silva MultiNavigator
GSAK V4.2.2
MemoryMap OS 2004 & V5 Navigator
Navman Pin(Mitac Mio 168)
Navman SmartST Pro V2 & V3
Mitac Mio 558
Joined: 17/05/2003 02:26:21 Posts: 3747 Location: Bedfordshire, UK
Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 1:28 pm Post subject:
If you're going to rail up at my wording, I respectfully suggest that you read what I wrote again.
DavidW wrote:
It's not true that all the SD cards are made in Taiwan or China in the same few factories.
and later
DavidW wrote:
Sandisk make most of their cards in Taiwan and China, but there are other manufacturers who make cards to totally different designs in other parts of the world.
I did not say that all SD cards are made in Taiwan or China. I said such a statement would not be true - and later qualified that by saying there are other manufacturers, such as Toshiba and Panasonic, who manufacture predominantly or even totally in other countries.
Meanwhile, you wrote:
UKHABU wrote:
For what it's worth use a "Japanese" card is misleading advice! as most of the cards are made in Taiwan and China and made by the same factory - irrespective the brand name on the label.
You didn't say all cards - but you certainly implied that the vast majority of cards are made in Taiwan or China. Again, my explanation that Sandisk predominantly manufacture in those two countries and other companies manufacture elsewhere is a clarification.
It's nonsense to suggest that SD cards can't be made to different designs. There's not one single design for the controller side of an SD memory card. There is one SD standard to which cards should comply, but not a single design for the card controller. It's likely that 'high speed' cards have different controller designs as well as faster flash memory.
So far as http://sdprob.aximsite.com goes, searching the forums here will give examples of people having problems with Sandisk SD cards in Pocket PCs. A lot of people will have found the same problem but not reported specific details to the webmaster of that site. Certainly most people seemed in agreement with the generic rules found, particularly when it came to the Dell Axim X5, and to an extent with other PDAs - that memory cards with codes signifying Sandisk manufacture tended to perform worse in PDAs that memory cards with codes signifying other manufacturers.
I do know how far the webmaster went in investigating this. Out of respect to everyone involved, he has only made public what he discovered himself and discovered with the help of people who agreed that their results could be made public.
Further, Sandisk themselves have admitted that there are problems with some of their older cards in some devices - as they have exchanged cards for owners of certain Dell Pocket PCs and certain Palm machines. The problem was not just with Dell Axims.
I did say, quite truthfully, that things have got better since those days, and I don't believe anyone is getting severe card corruption problems these days with Sandisk or any other brand. Sandisk have most certainly addressed the serious problems that their pre 'N' technology code cards had in some devices.
I quoted just one recent post where someone found that his navigation software's performance improved greatly when he changed away from Sandisk - a thread in which I was not involved, nor did I PM the poster. His conclusion was unprompted by me. There are many other threads about Sandisk cards - search the forums for Sandisk and see what you find. There are a few threads with people reporting positive or at least neutral experiences with Sandisk SD cards - but many more with people who are disappointed.
One single result is always empirical, and not proof. Indeed, a collection of empirical results is not proof either. Proof requires access to detailed standards and the kind of test gear that is not readily available.
Meanwhile, with the experience in the industry that you have, you will know that sometimes a problem with one combination is not where it appears to be. A networking product I worked on failed in a certain way when our competitor's products did not. The different performance of our product compared to those of our competitors had excited a bug in the Operating System's network stack (I can't remember the specifics, but it could well have been a race condition). In the end, we had to go to the offices of the OS vendor and demonstrate the bug to them. They fixed the affected OS library, released it to us and gave us permission to ship it to our customers.
Many of our customers were, quite understandably, blaming us for the problem as it only happened on sites using our network technology. However, the real bug was in code we did not control and didn't have source code for. Often bugs are not necessarily where they appear to be.
Further, the maxim so far as standards go should always be "be conservative in what you carry out and liberal in what you accept" - a version of that appears amongst the RFCs somewhere.
It is possible for different people to interpret standards differently. I have come across cases, though, where - somewhat similar to the network stack problem mentioned above - the seemingly blameworthy product was actually not being liberal enough! This happened last night with my own mail server - I was getting a problem with incoming mail, which turned out to be a 'spam' message with grossly malformed headers which upset the mail server's state machine. Blocking that type of message before it got to the DATA phase sorted the problem out.
Meanwhile, particularly when hardware goes, there are cases where both devices are standards compliant, but with one at one end of the tolerance band, and one at the other, things just aren't reliable. Of particular note here are people that just can't get two wireless networking devices to work reliably with each other.
If you hadn't already realised, my professional background is in networking and datacomms.
The only other post I wish to mention is this post quoting TomTom Support - scroll down for the post by 'jammer' if you're not taken there directly.
The Ultra II reference was somewhere else in the forums - it was of disappointing performance in a PDA, and I can't find it now - sorry.
Like in so many of these things, "your mileage may vary". I cannot argue if Sandisk SD cards are working for you. My experience as a participant in these forums is that many people have problems with SD cards made by Sandisk, and I therefore recommend that people buy SD cards made by another manufacturer for use with PDAs, simply because I believe that other manufacturer's designs are more suited to PDA usage.
If you have any evidence - empirical or otherwise - that what I say is incorrect and you can post it publicly, please do so for the sake of the community. I'm not interested in winning an argument, but in giving accurate advice.
Sandisk SD cards seem fine for digital camera usage; what reports I've seen is that Sandisk SD cards work extremely well in digital cameras.
Sandisk are also, as you say, a well respected brand - their memory cards in other formats are, in my experience, universally good.
Joined: Oct 13, 2004 Posts: 43 Location: Suffolk, UK
Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 5:44 pm Post subject:
That's fair enough David I'm not in a "win an argument" mode either.
It's just that there seemed to be consistant advice that SANDISK are crap period - and this is (A) not true and (B) Contrary to 10 years experience I have personally had.
I was very specific in pointing out that older SD cards may well be a problem and it was my opinion that this problem was related to the speed of the devices in particular in relation to TT3 and it's seemingly high demand on SD cards.
I was careful to point out that their later brands EXTEREME and ULTRA II were in fact very fast and you and I know that in the IT industry the faster kit is invariably built better and/or passes high quality thresholds.
You did say in your post specifically regarding ULTRA II that they were also causing trouble and then directed me to a post to illustrate your point that actual said no such thing - to be fair I can only react to what you have said and re-directed me too - particularily if it is contrary to my own personal experience.
I have looked at the post from Jammer that your last message refers and the direct quote from TomTom was citing the SPEED of the SANDISK cards not the quality and you have to be fair that was the entire tenant of my original post! It is likely the speed of the device that caused the problem and not the actual make.
But you have to ask yourself a question "Why is it that the problems are nearly entirely related to TT software and not others"? Could it be the way the software was written? Some crap driver interface? etc etc.
I recognise your industry experience - it'd pretty obvious to someone with 25+ years IT experience himself.
Given my experience and knowledge of the industry is one of the reasons why I (possibly wasted a lot of my time!) tried to point out that just looking for SANDISK LEXAR KINGSTON etc etc is not the whole answer as these are just brand names like FORD and that all things are not equal - a lt of the newer users are perplexed by these devices and media - just trying to help thats all!
I have what seems like decades of experience trying to prove to rival manufacturers that it's "your kit that is wrong" before they will actually help me!
btw I don't hold a candle or have any connection to SANDISK! just experience of using their products very happily for many years.
I just felt the advice given was misleading.
So lets leave it at that as you say "your mileage may vary". _________________ Silva MultiNavigator
GSAK V4.2.2
MemoryMap OS 2004 & V5 Navigator
Navman Pin(Mitac Mio 168)
Navman SmartST Pro V2 & V3
Mitac Mio 558
Joined: 17/05/2003 02:26:21 Posts: 3747 Location: Bedfordshire, UK
Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 9:00 pm Post subject:
Lexar have shipped Sandisk made cards as well as cards from other manufacturers. I had a Lexar 256MB SD card, which is now in my brother's digital camera, which is made by Toshiba. Shortly after that, Lexar switched to shipping Sandisk cards under the same product code.
Talking about brands can be misleading as what you get in the packet can change from batch to batch. The best thing usually is to ask people to post the codes from the back of their card, together with some indication of what they look like. Sometimes that will identify the manufacturer with some certainty - if not, it at least gives a starting point for comparison.
I'll let you all know how I get on with the High Speed 1GB SD card I just ordered from "play" for £70 for use with my X50v and tomtom3. If it's rubbish for tomtom, I'll just use it for storage of other stuff.
Cheers, William _________________ Dell Axim X50v
TomTom Nav 3 BT
1GB High Speed "Play" SD card
Nokia 6310i
Seidio x50 mount
I just wanted to let you know that the 1GB High Speed SD card from "play" (play branded) works fine with TomTom in my Axim X50v. No problems at all in a week of using it in/around the lake district. I'm quite happy as it seems like a bargain to me.
Cheers, William _________________ Dell Axim X50v
TomTom Nav 3 BT
1GB High Speed "Play" SD card
Nokia 6310i
Seidio x50 mount
Joined: 17/05/2003 02:26:21 Posts: 3747 Location: Bedfordshire, UK
Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2004 8:15 pm Post subject:
It would be helpful if you'd post any codes or markings from the back of the card. That way, I can match that to my list of markings I believe are suspect and see whether you're agreeing or disagreeing with the list.
David,
The code from the back of the Play 1GB HS SD card is:
S41004282912 _________________ Dell Axim X50v
TomTom Nav 3 BT
1GB High Speed "Play" SD card
Nokia 6310i
Seidio x50 mount
David,
Looking at your other post about SD card makers, it looks like the Play branded high speed SD card is aka Integral. This doesn't surprise me as Play also seems to rebrand the Integral USB memory sticks. Integral may not even be the OEM. who knows...
At least it works ok in the x50 with tomtom.
Cheers, William _________________ Dell Axim X50v
TomTom Nav 3 BT
1GB High Speed "Play" SD card
Nokia 6310i
Seidio x50 mount
Joined: 17/05/2003 02:26:21 Posts: 3747 Location: Bedfordshire, UK
Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2004 7:44 pm Post subject:
I'm a little surprised at a card with that style of markings being trouble free, as I can break it both in an iPAQ hx4700 and in a card reader (just try copying off two large files simultaneously; for me the card tended to stop responding).
With TomTom Navigator I found that Navigator would randomly crash when driving along. However, results can differ on different hardware and software.
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