Hacking Large folders and loading times on 4GB and 8GB cards

[carterman]

OK, so I have a very large NDS folder full of games and saves, about 2.66 GB last I checked. Now, the card loads them rather slowly, about 12-14 seconds to load the folder on my 8 GB cards (tried on Sandisk and A-data cards), but about 3-4 seconds on my A-data 4GB. Anyone else run into this kind of problem?

 

[Vague Rant]

So far as I'm aware, the only solution to this is to split your games into folders, i.e. A-F, G-L, etc.

 

[VatoLoco]

Try using the Panasonic SD formatter .

or/and try this from the AKAIO wiki:

If your game folder has lots of games it may take a while to load. To speed things up you can separate the games into folders. What some people do is order them into alphabetical folders (A-D, E-I, J-K....) or you can organize them by type of game (Action, Adventure, Platformer, RPG, Shooter...)

 

[Destructobot]

Try reformatting the card with the Panasonic SD Formatter. For me, it made the memory card load up literally 5 times faster than when it was formatted with Windows.

 

[Skydancer]

Format your Card as FAT. Loads super fast! But dont work on 8Gb Cards

 

[DaMummy]

use high allocation size, i think rpg takes 32kbit allocation as most, wont do 64, that sped up greatly on my sisters ttds, i dont know how rpg would handle it since ive always been using 32kbit, and i have 4gb full of roms and it doesnt take more than 3-4 seconds to load of micro

 

[dewback]

This is the reason I use many 2gb sd cards works quicker and find the files

 

[carterman]

Try reformatting the card with the Panasonic SD Formatter. For me, it made the memory card load up literally 5 times faster than when it was formatted with Windows.

Man, Destructobot, you are just too awesome for words. This solved my problem perfectly, the folder's loading in 3-4 seconds on my 8GB a-data card, thanks a bunch!

(BTW, in case you cared - the GBA Backup Tool 0.2 does a better job at backing up EEPROM saves, cart_save was screwing up some of the headers, I haven't necessarily had that problem with GBABT .2)

 

[mrSmiles]

that formatting app worked for me also, much faster now with my 8gb

 

[carterman]

I used cf_ds.nds to measure reading times, and the access times are about twice as fast:

All times in microseconds (read: 544 microseconds to read 512 bytes of data, 4396 microseconds to read 4 Kibibytes of data):
Standard Windows Formatting:
sequential 512 B/4 KiB/16 KiB: 544/4396/17629
random 512/4/16: 1166/4532/17734

Panasonic SD Formatting:
sequential: 512 B/4 KiB/16 KiB: 267/2174/8763
random: 512 B/4 KiB/16 KiB: 529/2194/8808

That's pretty much identical results to my Kingston 1GB microSD with standard windows formatting. Gonna try reformatting that Kingston...no noticable change from previous tests. In fact...it's a bit slower than what the Adata is doing, but I'm not comparing apples to apples here.

 

[Taza]

This thread should be stickied. The difference in speed between Panasonic formatter and Windows formatter is *massive*. SDHC is easily as fast as SD now.

 

[DaMummy]

this isnt really news....

 

[VatoLoco]

Taza Posted Today, 02:24 PM
This thread should be stickied. The difference in speed between Panasonic formatter and Windows formatter is *massive*. SDHC is easily as fast as SD now

I recently added the formatting info the the AKAIO wiki, in the tips and tricks area.