1.5TB CD Card Bad Performance Inquiry

[Sisee]

I've been asking this question in a few places, in the hope of coming across some useful information.

I have upgraded my Switch with a 1.5TB microSD card.
To my knowledge it is genuine, as I purchased the Sandisk Ultra microSD card directly from Western Digital themselves... as that was the lowest price for that particular product at the time.

I know such an almost ridiculously high capacity for a tiny little component is a luxury... a novelty at best.
However, I am a little disappointed by the performance hit my console has taken since the upgrade.

I have some understanding of formatting and cluster sizes, but nothing extensive.
My question is:

If I were to re-format the card with a different cluster size than the 512 kilobyte option the Switch applied when I formatted it using the console... will I gain or loose any performance?

Currently my loading times have increased quite significantly, far beyond the rated speed differences between this 1.5TB card and the 1TB I was using before.
I don't recall any performance between the 1TB and 512GB I have before that.

I accept that the 1.5TB card has really low write speeds.
But, the read speeds are supposed to be similar to the 1TB.

If the low performance is an unfortunate side effect of the insanely compact storage of the 1.5TB card then I'll accept that.
But, if there is something I can do to improve things; I'd like to know.

I just don't want to have wasted the literal days of downloading when I got the card set up in my console if reformatting won't do anything productive.
After all; I trusted the Switch to automatically configure the card when I formatted it using the consoles menu.

Any input will be apreciated.

For the record:
My console isn't modified, running the official system software and no other software or hardware mods at all.
Just a ridiculously mindbogglingly high capacity memory card.

Thanks in advance.

PS:
Sorry, I meant 'SD' not "CD" in the title.

 

[BigOnYa]

Test the card with H2testw to see if it is real and has no errors.

 

[ScarletDreamz]

This usually happens if you manipulate the SD card a lot, meaning you install and uninstall quite the amount of games.

This happens to me from time to time, and I'm obligated to format the card and start over (512gb SD card here).

But as mentioned before, please check with
H2Testw
ChipGenius

In order to confirm that the SD card is indeed genuine.

 

[Hexenhammer]

I've been asking this question in a few places, in the hope of coming across some useful information.

I have upgraded my Switch with a 1.5TB microSD card.
To my knowledge it is genuine, as I purchased the Sandisk Ultra microSD card directly from Western Digital themselves... as that was the lowest price for that particular product at the time.

I know such an almost ridiculously high capacity for a tiny little component is a luxury... a novelty at best.
However, I am a little disappointed by the performance hit my console has taken since the upgrade.

I have some understanding of formatting and cluster sizes, but nothing extensive.
My question is:

If I were to re-format the card with a different cluster size than the 512 kilobyte option the Switch applied when I formatted it using the console... will I gain or loose any performance?

Currently my loading times have increased quite significantly, far beyond the rated speed differences between this 1.5TB card and the 1TB I was using before.
I don't recall any performance between the 1TB and 512GB I have before that.

I accept that the 1.5TB card has really low write speeds.
But, the read speeds are supposed to be similar to the 1TB.

If the low performance is an unfortunate side effect of the insanely compact storage of the 1.5TB card then I'll accept that.
But, if there is something I can do to improve things; I'd like to know.

I just don't want to have wasted the literal days of downloading when I got the card set up in my console if reformatting won't do anything productive.
After all; I trusted the Switch to automatically configure the card when I formatted it using the consoles menu.

Any input will be apreciated.

For the record:
My console isn't modified, running the official system software and no other software or hardware mods at all.
Just a ridiculously mindbogglingly high capacity memory card.

Thanks in advance.

PS:
Sorry, I meant 'SD' not "CD" in the title.

You will gain performance set the cluster size to 32 or 64
if you have modded switch, then format with FAT32 and 32 clusters

 

[Jayinem]

You didn't even mention if you have a hacked Switch but since we're on GBATemp I'll take some liberty and assume you do, if so backup your backups and saves. Then it's easy if you need to format the sd card you have those ready to go. Use Checkpoint to back them up.

 

[Sisee]

Firstly; no disrespect to Jayinem but;
Stating my Switch is not modded was in the last paragraph.
I knew someone would ask that, so that's why I included that info.

And to Hexenhammer:
It's a 1.5TB card, so FAT32 isn't really an option on a capacity that high.
And even though I know it's possible; given the performance issues I'm having with default settings; I only predict more if I try and force a FAT32 format on it.

I've decided to bite the bullet and run some tests using CrystalDiskMark and different format settings.

 

[Hayato213]

The Switch can only use A1 speed, so you don't loose anything, using larger cluster you take up more space on the card, which 32kb cluster should be fine.

 

[BigOnYa]

You can format to fat32 on any size drive
https://github.com/0xbadfca11/fat32format

 

[ghjfdtg]

Format the card using SDFormatter. It does a much better job than any of the generic formatters including the one in the Switch system settings.

Side note: SDFormatter will format to exFAT. For unhacked Switches this is not as much of a problem as hacked ones.

 

[Sisee]

My results are inconclusive with speeds all over the range.
I ran the test 3 times for exFAT format with 128, 256 and 512 kilobyte cluster sizes separately, and there doesn't seem to be a clear winner.
The averages are too close to call a 'best' setting.

I did leave Task Manager open while running the tests though and saw the speeds as they were happening and I think there's an inconsistency in the layers, cells or whatever terminology is used to define the physical storage blocks that are used to build the memory card.
Sometimes I'd be seeing a steady more than 20MBP/S write speeds for a few seconds, and then it dropped to single digits around 2-3MBP/S... on both sequential and random.
The output results in CrystalDiskMark were just as erratic in some tests... that's why I did 3 each time I changed the cluster size.

I can only conclude that there is not a uniform speed for the entire 1.5TB of storage, and the speed is dependant on whatever sector is being accessed at any particular moment.

I am a little disappointed that I cannot squeeze a little bit of better performance from my 1.5TB card.
But, at least I have some results that show it isn't my Switch being the cause of the performance issues.
I just need to accept the limitations of such a dense memory card, and adjust my expectations accordingly.
I don't mind a little longer loading times to be honest, I just need to keep in mind that both downloading and playing games does cause both functions to slow down... as in longer loading and slower downloads, not how the games actually run.

I'm not pleased I need to redownload everything again...
But, I have answers to some of my questions.

 

[ghjfdtg]

Assuming your card reader is not the bottleneck 20 MB/s is really bad and just about any microSD you can find in random stores is twice as fast or more. Either it's your card reader or this microSD is bad.

To rule out the card reader you could boot hekate on your Switch if it's unpatched. hekate has a builtin benchmark that can reach speeds well over 90 MB/s.

 

[BigOnYa]

Yea that seems slow, I have a 1tb SanDisk Ultra and I get 40-60mbs. I still recommend you run it through H2Testw.
https://github.com/hotnix87/h2testw/blob/master/README.md

 

[Sisee]

My card reader is a UGreen USB 3 unit I got from Amazon some time last year, which I know is capable of much faster speeds than what tonight's tests gave me. Because I have used it on other memory cards before.
I actually got this reader because of it's decent speeds to be honest as I had been using the same little Sandisk USB 2 one I got free with an old microSD card I got in the early 200Xs, and although that little thing has been a reliable tool since the day I got it... that was back when SD card capacities were measured in MBs, and it just isn't fast enough to be efficient for transferring data to and from much larger modern memory cards.

 

[Nephiel]

I'd avoid exFAT with the Switch in any case and stick to FAT32, the switch exFAT driver is known to risk filesystem corruption. It probably won't help with performance though.

 

[linuxares]

Sadly you won't find that much extra speed between cluster size since the Switch reader itself isn't super fast.
you can actually format the SD card with Hekate so it's prepared properly.

 

[thesjaakspoiler]

Sometimes I'd be seeing a steady more than 20MBP/S write speeds for a few seconds, and then it dropped to single digits around 2-3MBP/S... on both sequential and random.

I would benchmark it on a PC to be sure.
Theoretically a Tegra can read up to about 80MB/s when running Linux.
Since Nintendo is in charge, it might be significantly lower than that.
I also see transfer rates of 15~20MB/s on my el-cheapo SD card.

You could to start that homebrew program that turns your Switch into an USB stick and just transfer a large file.

 

[notsu]

I have the 1TB and it gets ~90MiB/s in Hekate's test. XCI/NSP installations range from 5-40MB/s depending on the source [physical media, dump]. It's also exFAT [because I love problems].

I've had failing cards get slow, so you might want to get it replaced if it's under coverage.

 

[leonarduz]

1.5 TB is accepted by the Switch? Interesting!

 

[ghjfdtg]

There is no technical limitation up to 2 TB and beyond that ti's a matter of firmware/drivers.

 

[zxr750j]

I had a 200GB sandisk which was getting awfully slow. I contacted Sandisk and after giving some evidence I could send it back for a replacement. They were so nice and and I got a 400GB card in return