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. Although it is not covered on this list, the Pandora can also read NTFS-formatted SD cards if the Community Codec Pack is installed.

Note: always measure read speed by opening a terminal window and typing this command:

• the first inserted SD Card: dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=/dev/null bs=4MiB count=100
• the second inserted SD Card: dd if=/dev/mmcblk1 of=/dev/null bs=4MiB count=100

Note: The first inserted SD Card will always be /dev/mmcblk0, regardless if you put it into the second or first SD Card slot, whereas the second will be /dev/mmcblk1

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.

• the first inserted SD Card: # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=4MiB count=100
• the second inserted SD Card: # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mmcblk1 bs=4MiB count=100

By default, the first partition starts at block 8192 (4096KB) for 32GB cards, and block 32768 (16384KB) for 64GB cards. 64GB cards may need to be reformatted before use.

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
32	10	Centon 32GB Class 10 SDHC	[1]	yes	?	17.3	23.9	?	ok so far, first few hours of use
1	?	Kingston 1GB (blue)	[2] (looks very similar to that one, except that I have 1GB)	yes	yes	12.5	?	1006080	ok
16	4	Kingston 16 GB Class 4 SDHC	[3]	no	no	15	9.5	15663104	Bad controller chip, fails in the same manner as the 32GB card.
32	4	Kingston 32 GB Class 4 SDHC	[4]	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.
32	10	Kingston 32GB (red) Class 10	[5] like this, but 32GB: [6]	yes	no	15.2	?	?	doesn't have badblocks, seems that "Flash Translation Layer" is not suitable for ext filesystems
32	4	Lexar Multi-Use 32GB	[7]	yes	yes	16.1	14.4	31267840	Much faster than would be expected for a class 4 card. Usual warning about high-speed cards being susceptible to power supply glitches applies.
64	10	Lexar Professional 64GB 133x	[8]	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.[9]
16	6	Maxflash 16GB Class 6 SDHC	[10]	?	yes	14.4	?	16186368	Works fine
32	10	Patriot LX 32GB SDHC Class 10 (PSF32GSDHC10)	[11] [12]	yes	no	18.1	12.6	?	Formatting EXT2 and then running fsck right after finds errors. Seems to work well with fat32
4	10	Pretec 4GB, Class 10, 233x (white/green)	[13]	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.
32	10	Pretec 32GB Class 10, 233x (white/green)	[14]	yes	no	14.1	12.4	?	doesn't have badblocks, seems that "Flash Translation Layer" is not suitable for ext filesystems
32	10	PNY 32GB (P-SDHC32G10)	[15]	yes	?	17.1	?	?	Works fine. EXT untested.
8	10	SanDisk SDHC 8GB Extreme 30MB/s Edition	[16]	yes	yes	16.6	?	?	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.
32	4	SanDisk Ultra 32 GB Class 4 SDHC	[17]	yes	yes	16.4	7.1	31166976	OK.
64	4	Sandisk 64GB SDXC Class 4	[18]	yes	yes	16.1	4.5	62367744	Works fine
32	6	TOPRAM 32GB CLASS 6 SDHC HIGH SPEED (TRSD32GSDHCR3)	[19]	?	?	?	?	?	Reported working here.
8	10	Transcend 8GB SDHC Class 10	[20]	yes	yes	13.3	10.1	?
32	10	Transcend 32GB SDHC Class 10	[21]	no	no	?	?	?	Has serious issues [22]
64	10	Transcend SDXC Card 64GB ULTIMATE CLASS 10 (PN:TS64GSDXC10)	[23]	yes (needs more testing) yesbut look at the notes, not good	no ?Might work but didn't really test it long enough	16.1 <=16	16.1 <=16	?	After some time the system gives read/write errors. Works fine on a pc with linux with ext2/ext3. Serious issuesMy 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 write speed is 0.5MB/s and read speed 14.76MB/s. I let F3 run over it, the speed was measured using it too. --A few weeks later-- It has got variable w/r speed, it drops after a few seconds of writing data to it. Sometimes it gives other errors, stops working until I reboot, etc. It's useable, but I wouldn't buy it again.
32	6	Verbatim Class 6 Premium HD Video 32GB SDHC	[24]	no	no	?	?	?	Behaviour similar to Kingston 32GB Class 4 -[25]
32	4	Zap Glider 32GB Class 4	[26]	?	yes	16.6	4.6	?	Works fine