SD compatibility list
This is a compatibility list for SD, SDHC and SDXC cards. The cards listed in green work with any file system. The cards listed in yellow work well only with one file system (this still means they can be used on the Pandora). The cards listed in red do not work well with any file system.
Note: always measure read speed with this command:
- in left slot: dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=/dev/null bs=4MiB count=100
- in right slot: dd if=/dev/mmcblk1 of=/dev/null bs=4MiB count=100
If you can afford destroying all your data, you can test write speed. But be careful, you will need to create a new partition table, afterwards! You can use Gparted to make new partition table.
- in left slot: # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=4MiB count=100
- in right slot: # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mmcblk1 bs=4MiB count=100
SDHC card brand | Card size in GB | Card class | Full name | URL | fat32 is working? | ext2/3/4 are working? | read speed MB/sec | write speed MB/sec | actual capacity (1024byte blocks) | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Kingston | 1 | ? | Kingston 1GB (blue) | [1] (looks very similar to that one, except that I have 1GB) | yes | yes | 12.5 | ? | 1006080 | ok |
Kingston | 16 | 4 | Kingston 16 GB Class 4 SDHC | [2] | no | no | 15 | 9.5 | 15663104 | Bad controller chip, fails in the same manner as the 32GB card. |
Kingston | 32 | 4 | Kingston 32 GB Class 4 SDHC | [3] | no | no | 16 | 9.5 | 31539200 | Defective flash controller randomly loses writes regardless of filesystem. When attempting to write, blocks sometimes get erased but not written. |
Kingston | 32 | 10 | class 10, kingston 32GB (red) | [4] like this, but 32GB: [5] | yes | no | 15.2 | ? | ? | doesn't have badblocks, seems that "Flash Translation Layer" is not suitable for ext filesystems |
Lexar | 64 | 10 | Lexar Professional 64GB 133x | [6] | yes | yes | 19.6 | 15.1 | 62536704 | R/W speed in the pandora is limited to 16.1/11.3 MB/sec. High power consumption, may fail under load.[7] |
Patriot | 32 | 10 | Patriot LX 32GB SDHC Class 10 (PSF32GSDHC10) | [8] [9] | yes | no | 18.1 | 12.6 | ? | Formatting EXT2 and then running fsck right after finds errors. Seems to work well with fat32 |
Pretec | 4 | 10 | Class 10, Pretec 4GB, 233x (white/green) | [10] | yes | yes I had very few fsck problems, and after several tries running fsck, they eventually got corrected. | 14.0 | ? | 3883008 | It looks very similar to that broken 32GB pretec. Except that this one almost works good. |
Pretec | 32 | 10 | class 10, Pretec 32GB 233x (white/green) | [11] | yes | no | 14.1 | 12.4 | ? | doesn't have badblocks, seems that "Flash Translation Layer" is not suitable for ext filesystems |
SanDisk | 8 | 10 | SanDisk SDHC Extreme 30MB Edition | [12] | yes | yes | ? | ? | ? | Works nice. Installed Angstrom on it and copied some stuff onto it. Angstrom runs as fast as from NAND. Best thing was, where I ordered it it said class 6, but it is actually 10. :-D Still have to test its speed and actual size. Didn't test Fat a lot, but it seemed to work. |
SanDisk | 32 | 4 | SanDisk Ultra 32 GB Class 4 SDHC | [13] | yes | yes | 16.4 | 7.1 | 31166976 | OK. |
Sandisk | 64 | 4 | Sandisk 64GB SDXC Class 4 | [14] | yes | yes | 16.1 | 4.5 | 62367744 | Works fine |
Topram | 32 | 6 | TOPRAM 32GB CLASS 6 SDHC HIGH SPEED (TRSD32GSDHCR3) | [15] | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | Reported working here. |
Transcend | 32 | 10 | Transcend 32GB SDHC Class 10 | [16] | no | no | ? | ? | ? | Has serious issues [17] |
Transcend | 64 | 10 | Transcend SDXC Card 64GB ULTIMATE CLASS 10 (PN:TS64GSDXC10) | [18] | yes (needs more testing)
partly (needs more testing, I'll update it when I've used it another week) |
no
partly (would need more testing) |
16.1
still needs to be measured, at the beginning it was 16 too |
16.1
0.5 (~16 for the first 64GB) |
? | After some time the system gives read/write errors. Works fine on a pc with linux with ext2/ext3.
My Linux computer can't read it, but that is probably the computer. First formatted it to ext2 while leaving 16MiB free at the beginning because it was like that when I got it. Had 16MB/s r/w. Then started to have problems after writing about 64GB to it, couldn't mount it, reformatted it, no change, reformatted it as Fat32, still no change, reformatted again as fat32, no problems so far but r/w speed is 0.5MB/s. |
Zap | 32 | 4 | Zap Glider 32GB Class 4 | [19] | ? | yes | 16.6 | 4.6 | ? | Works fine |