Hacking M3i Zero SD cards

[milkbot]

I recently bought an M3i Zero, and then a little later an 8GB Kingston class 4 SDHC

Before I got my 8GB, I was using a 4GB kingston on that and my DSTT before it, and experienced few problems if any.

However on my 8GB, I experience fairly frequent freezing, with some games being worse than others. Portrait of Ruin and recently, YuGiOh Nightmare Troubadour were freezing multiple times a day.

When reformatting,I had read somewhere that setting cluster size to 64kb helped someone with PoR, so I tried that only to have Sakura (1.44 and 1.45) freeze on "Now Loading". Holding A and going to touchpod worked, but sakura would not work no matter what under 64kb clusters. So I changed back to 32kb but freezes persisted.

I'm considering getting another card, perhaps another 4GB, and wondering if there are any cards that are known to work great, of if there is even such research out there.

Are particular brands better than others, is class 6 that much better, is 4GB better than 8GB, SDHC or standard SD?


If anyone can help, that would be fantastic.




The 8GB Kingston I have, I am fairly sure it is genuine as it was bought from a reputable dealer, but there is always the possibility that it isn't. Can anyone confirm if they have a decent working card the same as mine?



Thank you all

 

[Mylar]

My wife has a 8G class 4. I'm almost positive it is a kingston, I'll check when I get home and toss an edit at the end of this post.

Yep, it's a Kingston.

Had no problems with it whatsoever.

 

[StuKeeler]

I have a (Japanese) Kingston 8GB Class4 MicroSDHC.

I switched to the Kingston (being a previous user of Kingston cards) after trying a Transcend 8GB Class 6 MicroSDHC card as I thought the class 6 would give me better results. However I had no end of problems with the Transcend card! (See this thread.. MicroSD's & M3i Zero)

I've not noticed any problems with the Kingston so far, except it does slow down in Castlevania Dawn Of Sorrow on the intro (as many others do).
Can you give me the exact Rom numbers and/or the region used of the two games you mention? That way I can test the exact same rom you are using to compare results efficiently.

When I changed to the Kingston, I tried different cluster sizes (using Castlevania; Dawn of Sorrow intro as a test) to see which performed best but found all were pretty much the same and IIRC, only managed to produce slower performance over the default settings! (also speed benchmarked on the PC).

There was a whole load of testing when cards such as the R4 first came out but no one has bothered with the new SDHC cards and M3 products. I tried to instigate some testing (see this thread.. Benchmarking MicroSD's) but not a single person bothered to reply (which I find odd considering the amount of questions on here related to MicroSD performance!).

The best card to use seems to still be the (Japanese made) Kingston 2GB MicroSD (NOT SDHC).

 

[CannonFoddr]

I've got a Sandisk 8Gb Class 2 - never had any problem with it freezing etc.
You say you formatted it.... How may i ask ?

I usually use the panasonic Formatter for flashcart memory cards - perhaps you could try that instead of mucking about with cluster sizes etc & see if you have same problem

 

[milkbot]

Portrait of Ruin - 0881 and
Yu Gi Oh! Nightmare Troubadour - 0095


With Portrait of Ruin, I would usually encounter freezing not on opening the menu or talking to Wind like some people were reporting, but upon changing my equipment and going to leave the equipment screen. It happened a number of times right after the first boss, though he wasn't too hard. I also experienced a couple of slowdowns when there's lots going on on-screen.

As for Yu Gi Oh, it would always happen during a duel. Sometimes upon closing and opening the DS, and sometimes just summoning a card. It worked fine on my emulator. The other Yu Gi Oh games don't seem to suffer the same problem though.


Other games freeze every so often, but it happens so few and far between I don't really worry about it.


That benchmarking sounds like a good idea, and I'm a little surprised that no-one has developed a simple homebrew for the job. If most people don't seem to suffer much freezing, I guess it isn't that big a problem. I could just have a runt of a card, haha!

I was thinking about getting a transcend, but the low price made me a little wary and I wondered if they would be any good.



Cannon, I formatted using Windows Format, my card was previously formatted with the panasonic, and that's when I was experiencing the initial freezes and whatnot, so I tried windows.



Thanks all! And sorry my posts are so big :/

 

[StuKeeler]

Thanks, I'll test them over the weekend and get back to you.

To be honest it's sounding like either;
a) Your MicroSD is badly formatted/corrupt
b) Your MicroSD itself is of poor quality (possible fake or badly made)

I suspected the Transcend was a 'dud' card but without a benchmark system or others that have tried it, I didn't want to risk trying another!

My advice would be to back up any current save data you have and then clean format the card using either the Panasonic SD formatter or Windows Disk manager (not the basic format tool) using default options.
Let your computer do this without running anything else at the same time to ensure a clean, safe format.

Also might be worth trying a different USB MicroSD reader as some claim the one supplied is of low quality (causing corruptions).

I use Unstoppable Copier (from Roadkil) to copy files to the MicroSD as it is efficient and tells you if anything is corrupted during transfer. A couple of times I had errors after simply using drag and drop in WinXP. This may just be isolated to my computer but it's another thing to rule out!

That benchmarking sounds like a good idea, and I'm a little surprised that no-one has developed a simple homebrew for the job. If most people don't seem to suffer much freezing, I guess it isn't that big a problem.

I guess, but it'd be nice to know which cards perform slightly better to ensure you have the best possible experience! What if future games (say ones that utilise new DSi features) push the limits of the MicroSD's speed and lag becomes a much more common issue?!

 

[bluejays]

My 8gb micro sd and its working fine.

(i have an m3i zero too)

 

[milkbot]

Another thing that may be related, is that MP3's often skip when they are first started, and the song length keeps jumping around as if it's not sure how long the song is.

Secondly, the DS turns off after about 30 minutes of begin closed down while just in main menu (as in, not having loaded up any games).
I'm not sure if this is a bug, or a battery saving feature as it is a waste of battery to just have the OS loaded up when it'll load every time you turn it on.


I'll try formatting with the panasonic formatter again and see what happens.


Thanks : )

 

[Magmorph]

Another thing that may be related, is that MP3's often skip when they are first started, and the song length keeps jumping around as if it's not sure how long the song is.

These are problems with Sakura, not your card.

 

[StuKeeler]

Ok, as suspected both games run fine on my card pointing to a bad MicroSD or poorly formatted.

With Portrait of Ruin, I would usually encounter freezing not on opening the menu or talking to Wind like some people were reporting, but upon changing my equipment and going to leave the equipment screen. It happened a number of times right after the first boss, though he wasn't too hard. I also experienced a couple of slowdowns when there's lots going on on-screen.
No freezing, slowdowns, stuttering, lag, or anything of the sort. I would saw it runs flawlessly!

QUOTEAs for Yu Gi Oh, it would always happen during a duel. Sometimes upon closing and opening the DS, and sometimes just summoning a card.

I tried a duel, opening and shutting the DS etc. but no slowdowns or freezes. Again, the game runs 100% correct.

 

[milkbot]

Damn. I'll see if I can dig up my other reader to see if that makes a difference. Someone said that the M3 reader wasn't very good...right?

Failing that, It'll be time for a new card :T



Thanks for your help everyone : )