MicroSD Card for Expanding Chromebook Storage

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  meeowth on 19/01/2021 - 14:00

  Ultra has decent read speeds (so good for storing and playing games like on the Switch), but relatively bad write speeds (so bad as a system drive or as a sneakernet data carrier).

  For good write speeds you would want an Extreme at least (or a Lexar professional etc.).

  If you are just using the SD card to hold downloaded files, Ultra is probably fine. Silicon Power is similar performance to an Ultra.

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    sam buster on 19/01/2021 - 15:49

    Thanks for the reply.
    'Sneakernet' is a new term for me! Probably won't use it as a portable / interchangeable storage - I have plenty of USB sticks for that. Just something to hold the docs created and downloaded files (I wouldn't expect anything more than photos and small videos) to keep the internal memory as free as possible for the system and apps.

    I'll look at SanDisk Extreme, just to be safe. Does a Samsung Evo equate to SanDIsk Extreme?

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      meeowth on 19/01/2021 - 16:33

      Ultras and Extremes can have roughly the same read speed, but the Ultra will write at about 10mb a second and the Extreme will write at a speed close to but not quite the same as the read speed. Some devices actually don't write faster than 10mb/s, so an Extreme would be overkill in one of those. Can't be sure about the write speed of the Lenovo, but since it's not old it can probably write faster than that.

      People are usually most concerned about write speeds on cameras, especially video cameras, since you need to keep up with the cameras video file as it's being made. 4k videos need a lot of write speed.

      A Samsung Evo SSD reads and writes a few hundred times faster than most SD cards, and 10 times faster than the fastest expensive SD cards, so not really comparable ;P

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        macrocephalic on 19/01/2021 - 17:27

        +1

        I have a 64GB extreme sitting on my desk right now - in the packaging. The advertised speeds are [up to] 160MB/s read, 60MB/s write.

        If you're talking SATA SSD's then they're limited by the interface, so you're only going to get 500MB/s no matter what. A half decent memory card should do 50MB/s plus. Class 10 is old and outdated and that's 10MB/s. If you're talking NVMe drives then sure, you can get a few GB/s through - but that's kind of cheating because it's going to DRAM on the drive and will slow down to a tenth of that once the DRAM is full.

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          meeowth on 19/01/2021 - 19:53

          @macrocephalic: I momentary forgot that Evo was also the name of an SD card line in addition to the SSDs. I was going off NVMe Evo speeds since it would be the funniest one to compare SD card speeds to.

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      meeowth on 19/01/2021 - 19:51

      I just realized you might have been talking about the Evo SD cards which I often forget exist. They are alright but not up to the Extreme in terms of write speed.

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        meeowth on 19/01/2021 - 21:37

        Actually some of the Evo models are Extreme speeds, just check the description

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          sam buster on 19/01/2021 - 21:55

          @meeowth: Yeeah, I was talking about SD cards.
          Thanks for the advice, meeowth.

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  macrocephalic on 19/01/2021 - 17:28

  The Samsung evo select are normally the best value. They are Amazon exclusive so you're less likely to get a counterfeit, and they're priced well for what they are.

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    sam buster on 19/01/2021 - 21:56

    Thanks, macrocephalic.

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  YRT on 19/01/2021 - 18:27

  Your use case is probably comparable to Raspberry Pi. If the Lenovo has USB3 based SD slot, speed can be quite good with a decent SD card.

  https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2019/raspberry-pi-microsd-…
  https://www.tomshardware.com/best-picks/raspberry-pi-microsd…

  I'm using Londisk. Longevity is not known, speed wise I'm getting 90R/70W:
  https://www.amazon.com.au/LONDISK-128GB-Memory-Camera-Adapte…

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    sam buster on 19/01/2021 - 22:17

    Thanks, YRT, I don't know what the bus is inside. It has two USB-C 3.2 (Gen 1) ports, a USB-A (Gen 1), so would it be likely it's a USB3 bus throughout?

    But I don't need the fastest I'd prefer to save money and spend it on a pen perhap. I'm trying to work things out on a budget and learn a bit along the way. As long as it will perform smoothly for the typical, modest tasks I think I'll be happy. It depends how much a faster card will improve the performance and how much such a faster card would cost.

    I use an Ultra in my phone and that's alright for sideloading docs, and taking photos. There's often a stutter with recording 1080p video, and deleting photos one at a time can be painfully slow. But it is inadeqaute for running apps when used in formatted to work as "internal memory".
    I'm new to Chromebooks so I don't really know how much writing to memory they do, and how fast they need to be. Thinking of how slow my phone is with deleting photos, I suppose I need more than an Ultra.

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      YRT on 20/01/2021 - 06:40

      USB2 bus tends to cap speed to 31-35mbps, and there are PCs that oddly use USB2 for SD card while other ports are USB3. I'm afraid you'll have to find out yourself through testing.

      Something cheap and readily available would be Samsung Evo, as suggested in the links. These are usually TLC based

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        sam buster on 20/01/2021 - 09:23

        Thanks YRT.