Hacking Speed comparison, totally unscientific.

[villadelfia]

With my class 2 8GB microSD card I tested 2 common fixes that are supposed to speed up your card and fix some roms:
1. Format your card with the Panasonic SD formatter
2. Format your card with "format X: \fs:FAT32 \a:64K"
3. Control with a run of the mill windows format with 4K clusters

I did 2 tests on each of these and timed the first one.

Test 1: Time it takes for scrolling in YSMenu in my romfolder from top to bottom:
1: 41.8s mean from 3 runs
2: 39.6s mean from 3 runs
3: 52.4s mean from 3 runs

Test 2: Does Portrait of Ruin crash when spamming the start button for 3 minutes straight (just to switch between pause menu and game screen for maximal datatraffic)?
1: Doesn't crash, tested 3 times
2: Doesn't crash, tested 3 times
3: Crashes after 15 seconds of punishment, tested once.

You can make your own conclusions from this, it seems that the 64K method is faster, but only slightly so. But both methods are leaps and bounds beyond the boilerplate format.

As an added note I might add that GBA_ExpLoader 0.58b loads significantly faster with the 64K clusters than with the Panasonic tool. 3.4s versus 5.8s (Mean times from 3 tests, all 3 with a sav in sram that needed to be written)

--villadelfia

 

[rasputin]

Did you set the 'adjust format size' to on in the options when using the Panasonic formatter?

 

[Hitcher]

Did you set the 'adjust format size' to on in the options when using the Panasonic formatter?

What does that option do anyway?

 

[Bri]

I bet if you make the cluster size 128K it will be faster still. The problem with larger clusters is that files take up more space on average in exchange for faster speeds.

Does anyone know what cluster size the Panasonic formatter uses by default?

-Bri

 

[rasputin]

Did you set the 'adjust format size' to on in the options when using the Panasonic formatter?

What does that option do anyway?

Couldn't say for sure, but would guess along with Bri that it formats with the largest cluster size usable for the size of the mem card.


Anyway I found in my own unscientific test, done a day or so a go on a SDSC-SDHC with a Transcend class6 8GB that...

Panasonic formatter with 'special format' on > format X: \fs:FAT32 \a:64K

.........when getting VaniaDOS vid to run at full speed on SCDS1-OS.

 

[xist]

Well this is what the manual says....means zip to me....

Format Size Adjustment

If the formatted capacity of the SD/SDHC Memory Card is not the multiple size of
specific unit size, called “cylinder”, some hosts cannot access it successfully. This
function adjusts format size to multiple size of cylinder. By reformatting using this
function, some hosts may become possible to access it successfully.

OFF:
This software doesn’t adjust the format size. Usually, this option should be
selected.

ON:
This software adjusts the format size to the multiple size of cylinder. In this
case, the formatted capacity may become smaller than before.

* This function is supported for the specific users who encountered some troubles depending
on the formatted size. If you don’t have any troubles about it, you don’t need to use this
function

 

[villadelfia]

I bet if you make the cluster size 128K it will be faster still. The problem with larger clusters is that files take up more space on average in exchange for faster speeds.

Does anyone know what cluster size the Panasonic formatter uses by default?

-Bri

FAT32 Supports up to 64K clusters. Also, DS Files are all multiples of 512KB (512KB, 1MB (saves), 8MB, 16MB, 32MB, 64MB, 128MB, 256MB (games)) Therefore 64K/128K Clusters would have no overhead space.

The Panasonic formatter uses The largest clusters Allowed so that the amount of clusters lies in between 65526 and 4177918. That is 64K for 8GB, 32K for 4GB and so on.

It also does some special formatting to make it adhere perfectly to SD standards (hence the name SD formatter). But due to the poor implementation of the SD standard on the DSTT a plain format works slightly faster than a proper format.

--villadelfia

 

[aimansss95]

2. Format your card with "format X: \fs:FAT32 \a:64K"

can someone tell me what does - a:64K?? does it mean the allocation thingy??

 

[villadelfia]

2. Format your card with "format X: \fs:FAT32 \a:64K"

can someone tell me what does - a:64K?? does it mean the allocation thingy??

It makes it so that your clusters are 64 Kilobytes big. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_(file_system)

 

[Hitcher]

FAT32 Supports up to 64K clusters. Also, DS Files are all multiples of 512KB (512KB, 1MB (saves), 8MB, 16MB, 32MB, 64MB, 128MB, 256MB (games)) Therefore 64K/128K Clusters would have no overhead space.

The Panasonic formatter uses The largest clusters Allowed so that the amount of clusters lies in between 65526 and 4177918. That is 64K for 8GB, 32K for 4GB and so on.

It also does some special formatting to make it adhere perfectly to SD standards (hence the name SD formatter). But due to the poor implementation of the SD standard on the DSTT a plain format works slightly faster than a proper format.
Thanks for that info because I found the info below confusing.

QUOTEON:
This software adjusts the format size to the multiple size of cylinder. In this
case, the formatted capacity may become smaller than before.