SD Card recommendations

[xenon 1]

What SD Cards are compatible with the Pro1-X ?  I was thinking of buying 1 or 2Tb of storage but with so many varieties on the market, it's not clear what is compatible.

[Hook 2,061]

Any microSD card should be compatible.  I tend to get Sandisk (currently 256 GB) and I stick to Ultra rather than Extreme because the Pro1 doesn't really get the benefit that some high end DSLRs might. Frankly, as long as it is a Class 10, you should be fine. 

But I'm no expert.  Others here are likely to know more.

[ddark-il 100]

Keep in mind that you'll need to format it with FAT32.  exFAT is not supported.
If you plan to switch the card between camera and a phone, probably you'll be stuck because of lack of exFAT support.

If your use case is only with the phone - take the cheapest one (from reputable Brand/Store, there are many fake cards from China)

[Rob. S. 1,207]

Just to add to what already was said – In a heavily used smartphone, depending on what you use the card for, it might make sense to make sure the card (i.e. the card's controller) does wear levelling. I'm not sure whether there still are cards available which don't, but I already managed to quickly wear down two cheaper, smaller cards (of renowned brands, though) which I used as the main storage in a Raspberry Pi. That said, I haven't had a defective card in any of my Android devices yet.

[toast 59]

Speaking of SD cards, does anyone know what specifications the reader has in the Pro1 X? I mean, what speed specifications is it capable of? UHS-I? (IE. should I buy a slow and cheap or a fast and slightly less cheap SD card?). Or is the device itself slow enough for it to make no difference?
Also, does the FAT32-only apply to all available ROMs, or only stock Android?

[claude0001 731]

2 hours ago, toast said:

Also, does the FAT32-only apply to all available ROMs, or only stock Android?

I do not know about stock Android, but on LIneageOS (16.0) I have two partitions on my SD-card: one formated as ext4 and one as ext3, and both just work. I did the formatting externally using a PC. The same card can also be accessed via an external (USB) card reader connected to the Pro1, so this is independent of the built-in reader. At least on the low level, I think the kernel supports all filesystems it is aware of, irrespective of the specific block device.

Of course, how Android treats a partition on the high-level may be a different story. On my Lineage 16 (Android 9), I can use my ext3/4 SD partitions normally from standard Android apps once I identified them as "portable storage" upon first detection. However, this may have changed in later versions.

As for the I/O-performance of the reader, I do not know, neither for my Pro1 nor for the Pro1X.

[toast 59]

1 hour ago, claude0001 said:

I have two partitions on my SD-card: one formated as ext4 and one as ext3, and both just work.

That sounds great, was hoping to format it to ext4 as well, seeing as most of my computers are Linux machines anyways.

Here's crossing my fingers that lineageos for Pro1 X will have the same fs support.

[claude0001 731]

1 hour ago, toast said:

was hoping to format it to ext4 as well

Be aware that, as part of its security concept, Android runs every app under a different UID. As a consequence, with an ext4 FS, data sharing across apps can be difficult unless they use the common GIDs (media_rw, etc.) foreseen to that effect. In the past, many people used FAT-formatted SD-cards to circumvent that restriction, taking advantage of the fact that FAT simply does not know about UNIX file permissions. I do not know if this affects your use case(s).

[toast 59]

10 hours ago, claude0001 said:

[...]As a consequence, with an ext4 FS, data sharing across apps can be difficult [...]

I do not know if this affects your use case(s).

I do not believe it will, but as a worst case scenario, I will just have to try another fs instead, if I notice any problems. 

But thanks for the heads-up! 🙃

[kashif 349]

Just to put my input, i am using !TB Samsung sd card, and a 500GB Samsung sd card.

Both are working fine.

[Rob. S. 1,207]

20 hours ago, toast said:

should I buy a slow and cheap or a fast and slightly less cheap SD card

15 hours ago, claude0001 said:

Be aware that, as part of its security concept, Android runs every app under a different UID

For me, my attempt to use ext4 has caused serious trouble for some regular use cases, and some apps just didn't work anymore with their data configured to be stored on the SD card. 

Generally, and since one 512 MB card (Kingston "Canvas Go! Plus") actually did fail for me already, I'm now going for sensibly fast (and thus not the cheapest) Samsung or Sandisk cards...