1.5TB CD Card Bad Performance Inquiry

[Sisee]

Once again, I've taken irreversible action... wasting literal days of downloading.

My Switch is almost unusable while downloading with the 1.5TB card installed.
I already mentioned navigating the games menu is very slow and delayed.
But, playing games while downloading is really bad.
I got RAD while it was on sale and tried playing it and while downloading other things in the background the game freezes for a second or two randomly, the music keeps cutting out every few seconds also and loading times are very long.
Even though the write speeds of this 1.5TB card aren't really all that good on paper to begin with it seems to struggle really badly.

I've decided to clean the card and run H2testw, which, after settling into a steady ≈3.65 MByte/s according to the readout; is telling me that it's going to take 100+ hours to complete... so that's going to have to be left alone for a few days.

I'd like to take a look at ChipGenius too, although the version I downloaded from https://www.chipgenius.org/... specifically the 'English' option; the interface is all garbled characters. So, I don't know how I could use it, and even if I could the results wouldn't make any sense to me if I can't tell what the outputs are representing because of the messed up text.

I am open to the concept that this is normal behaviour for such a densely packed and compact storage device.
But, the performance is really bad if it is.
Admittedly I did purchase this card for the novelty of having a ridiculously high capacity storage device in my Switch, but given how slow this thing is; I have to wonder what use cases it was designed for if something as undemanding as a Switch... which another poster above pointed out isn't the most demanding device... can push it to the limit of it's abilities.

 

[Hayato213]

Once again, I've taken irreversible action... wasting literal days of downloading.

My Switch is almost unusable while downloading with the 1.5TB card installed.
I already mentioned navigating the games menu is very slow and delayed.
But, playing games while downloading is really bad.
I got RAD while it was on sale and tried playing it and while downloading other things in the background the game freezes for a second or two randomly, the music keeps cutting out every few seconds also and loading times are very long.
Even though the write speeds of this 1.5TB card aren't really all that good on paper to begin with it seems to struggle really badly.

I've decided to clean the card and run H2testw, which, after settling into a steady ≈3.65 MByte/s according to the readout; is telling me that it's going to take 100+ hours to complete... so that's going to have to be left alone for a few days.

I'd like to take a look at ChipGenius too, although the version I downloaded from https://www.chipgenius.org/... specifically the 'English' option; the interface is all garbled characters. So, I don't know how I could use it, and even if I could the results wouldn't make any sense to me if I can't tell what the outputs are representing because of the messed up text.

I am open to the concept that this is normal behaviour for such a densely packed and compact storage device.
But, the performance is really bad if it is.
Admittedly I did purchase this card for the novelty of having a ridiculously high capacity storage device in my Switch, but given how slow this thing is; I have to wonder what use cases it was designed for if something as undemanding as a Switch... which another poster above pointed out isn't the most demanding device... can push it to the limit of it's abilities.

Only way to find out is to fully test the card with no data on it.

 

[zxr750j]

Contact Sandisk, it can be that easy.

 

[Hayato213]

Depending on how much you paid for it you might have gotten a fake. Retail price right now is 110 usd.

 

[Sisee]

I actually paid £115, and ordered it from the Wester Digital website directly... SanDisk being a Western Digital owned brand now.
Unless they use third-party stockists for their own products, which is unlikely; I assume it is a genuine SanDisk/Western Digital manufactured product.

It definitely looks 'real' to me, with the defined black and very subtly raised rectangle on the underside... which I assume is the storage chip itself... similar to the 1TB version I have which also has that.
If it were a fake, I doubt they'd go so far as try to mimic that little detail.

Also, even though it's performance is so bad it takes an incredibly long time for things to happen; I have reliably written data to the card close to it's capacity and had no issues retrieving earlier written data... as is the tell-tale sign that the chip is not the advertised capacity and has been hacked to report a false capacity.
For example the first games I downloaded data for when I first installed the card into my Switch were still playable... even though the loading times were increased substantially... and so were the more recent downloads, with everything in-between working too.

As for contacting Western Digital;
I just did.
I sent them an email emphasising my concerns that the card is inconsistent in performance and borderline unusable in some instances because of that.
For now; until I know if this particular 1.5TB card is working as intended I have put my 1TB one back into my Switch... even though I'd cleared all of the Switch's data from it to repurpose it for another use... so I still have to redownload everything again.

And before anyone suggests I'd have copied the already downloaded data on the 1.5TB to the 1TB...
I did consider that, and started the process... but the copy speed I was looking at would have taken longer than just redownloading it.

 

[Sisee]

Just a quick little update...

Western Digital support responded pretty quickly, and after running CrystalDiskMark a dozen times as the asked and saving the results to send to them...
They have offered to replace the 1.5TB card.

I guess I was just unlucky and got a bad unit.
I don't mind that, as these things happen.

I was more uncomfortable with the concept that these 1.5TB cards are supposed to perform in the way I was experiencing, as that would make them useless for daily running in anything other than archiving data.
But with an average write speed of 1 or 2 MBp/s; there are far better products available for that purpose... sending data to and from my home NAS remotely while away from home transfers data faster than that, even using my phone's 4G connection as the internet access. Even dedicated server 'cloud' storage is a better option than the what I was experiencing with this 1.5TB card... although for the application I wanted it for; my Switch, 'cloud' servers or even my own NAS aren't options.

I haven't actually sent the 1.5TB card I have been having issues with back yet, as they only emailed me to offer the replacement today.
But, hopefully the replacement will be better and not make my Switch run like I'm trying to drag it through cold custard.

 

[Hayato213]

Just a quick little update...

Western Digital support responded pretty quickly, and after running CrystalDiskMark a dozen times as the asked and saving the results to send to them...
They have offered to replace the 1.5TB card.

I guess I was just unlucky and got a bad unit.
I don't mind that, as these things happen.

I was more uncomfortable with the concept that these 1.5TB cards are supposed to perform in the way I was experiencing, as that would make them useless for daily running in anything other than archiving data.
But with an average write speed of 1 or 2 MBp/s; there are far better products available for that purpose... sending data to and from my home NAS remotely while away from home transfers data faster than that, even using my phone's 4G connection as the internet access. Even dedicated server 'cloud' storage is a better option than the what I was experiencing with this 1.5TB card... although for the application I wanted it for; my Switch, 'cloud' servers or even my own NAS aren't options.

I haven't actually sent the 1.5TB card I have been having issues with back yet, as they only emailed me to offer the replacement today.
But, hopefully the replacement will be better and not make my Switch run like I'm trying to drag it through cold custard.

Why crystaldiskmark when you suppose to use h2testw.

 

[randy_w]

I had a similar case before, sold a modded oled with sandisk ultra 512gb from amazon. Everything works fine at first, a few months later the switch was brought back to me as emunand now takes minutes to boot up and game loading speed is very slow. Took out the sd card and plugged to my pc with a usb 3.0 reader, speed test gives 90MB/s r/w, card is fat32 formatted and everything seems fine. Testing the sd card in hekate shows it now only has a read speed of 5-10MB/s. Formatting it with sd card formatter and guiformat fat32 does nothing, still painfully slow on switch. Swapped the sd card out with a samsung one and everything's back to normal.

I've modded close to 100 consoles and this is the only time I have compatibility issues with sd card. Again it's not a fake card, I even tried the sandisk sd card in my camera and it can handle 4k video recording without any issue. So i guess replacing it is your last resort.

 

[lusomods]

Just a quick little update...

Western Digital support responded pretty quickly, and after running CrystalDiskMark a dozen times as the asked and saving the results to send to them...
They have offered to replace the 1.5TB card.

I guess I was just unlucky and got a bad unit.
I don't mind that, as these things happen.

I was more uncomfortable with the concept that these 1.5TB cards are supposed to perform in the way I was experiencing, as that would make them useless for daily running in anything other than archiving data.
But with an average write speed of 1 or 2 MBp/s; there are far better products available for that purpose... sending data to and from my home NAS remotely while away from home transfers data faster than that, even using my phone's 4G connection as the internet access. Even dedicated server 'cloud' storage is a better option than the what I was experiencing with this 1.5TB card... although for the application I wanted it for; my Switch, 'cloud' servers or even my own NAS aren't options.

I haven't actually sent the 1.5TB card I have been having issues with back yet, as they only emailed me to offer the replacement today.
But, hopefully the replacement will be better and not make my Switch run like I'm trying to drag it through cold custard.

So how is the new card?
Was the old one defective?