Hi all,
What's the fastest media I can use in the BeagleBone micro SD slot? Class 10 microSD? Is there anything faster?
I'm using a 4GB microSD rated at 18 MB/s read speed - just wondering if there was anything even zippier available that would work with the BeagleBone.
- Mike
The subjectively fastest card I came across is a 32GB class 10 from Transcend, it beats the crap out of the stock kingston one.
There's lies, damn lies, and manufacturer provided ratings on SD cards.
A good choice is to buy a handful of promising looking cards and test
them. Find some promising cards from Arnd's big list [1] and then test
them using flashbench [2].
[1]: https://wiki.linaro.org/WorkingGroups/Kernel/Projects/FlashCardSurvey
[2]: http://git.linaro.org/gitweb?p=people/arnd/flashbench.git;a=summary
The Samsung Plus series rate well with flashbench but I've found the
SanDisk class 6 Mobile Ultra 4 GB cards to feel faster. The 8 GB
version is slower than the 4 GB version in my tests and real world feel
even though the newer version of the 8 GB card is rated class 10 (versus
only class 6 for the 4 GB version).
-Andrew
Special Computing has known-good microSD cards tested with the BeagleBone
Special Computing has known-good microSD cards tested with the BeagleBone
That lists the exact same transcend card that I mentioned 
Thanks everybody for the tips!
- Mike
Transcend SD cards do seem to be the best in my tests. Here are some benchmarks of readily available cards:
[root@xena flashbench]# ./flashbench -a /dev/sde
apacer AP-MSD04GCS4P-TM Class 10 industrial:
align 1073741824 pre 2.91ms on 3.6ms post 2.67ms diff 812�s
Kingston SDC10/32GBSP:
align 1073741824 pre 2.12ms on 2.37ms post 2.12ms diff 253�s
Kingston SDC4/4GB:
align 1073741824 pre 1.89ms on 2.15ms post 1.94ms diff 237�s
SanDisk Ultra 16 GB MicroSDHC Class 10 UHS-1, SDSDQUA-016G-U46A
align 1073741824 pre 1.46ms on 1.6ms post 1.39ms diff 178�s
Transcend 16 GB Class 10 microSDHC Flash Memory Card TS16GUSDHC10
align 1073741824 pre 1.42ms on 1.57ms post 1.31ms diff 198�s
Transcend 8 GB Class 10 microSDHC Flash Memory Card TS8GUSDHC10
align 1073741824 pre 1.37ms on 1.58ms post 1.37ms diff 214�s
- Mike
Can you run the full suite of tests to find the eraseblock size, open-au
linear, and open-au random? And then mail the output to the flashbench-
results mailing list for each of those cards?
If you look at some existing mails to that list, it should give you a
good overview of how to determine the values that matter. The simple -a
test only does a read timing test to help find the eraseblock size, it
doesn't show anything about the write performance.
The flashbench-results list is very friendly. Arnd's really helpful and
sometimes even I can know what I'm talking about 
As an example of a flashbench mail I sent earlier this year, see [1].
[1]:http://lists.linaro.org/pipermail/flashbench-results/2012-August/000322.html
-Andrew