SD Memory

[richmatthews76]

Is SD memory fast enough to run apps on a phone?

 

[Rukbat]

Probably not. It's fast enough for storage, but I doubt running it as RAM (which it's not, it's more sequential) would give you a phone you'd want to wait for.

 

[richmatthews76]

LOL It was just a curious thought!

 

[lunatic59]

Try towing a motorhome with a Porsche and you'll get the picture.

 

[richmatthews76]

Lol...I've got a KIA Soul....would that work??? Up here they would try to use a riding mower?

 

[Rukbat]

That's about the ratio - riding mower - but without the "riding" part. And without the self-propelled part. Remember using tape as a storage medium for computers? Think of using that to actually run apps on, and you get the idea.

 

[codesplice]

In my Nexus One days I regularly used a Class 10 32GB MicroSD as my primary application storage. I can't say that it was great for performance, but it was done out of necessity (the N1 had 512MB of internal storage total - so closer to 200MB available for apps and their data) and it worked mostly fine. I formatted a ~16GB partition of the card to ext4 and essentially symlinked that partition to /data. It was a messy hack, but it did work just fine.

I wouldn't do that unless you absolutely needed to (like if you don't have much storage available), but it is a perfectly workable solution - just make sure that you use a fast (Class 10 or so) card.

 

[lunatic59]

The N1 had a 1GHz single core processor. The op has an S4 Mini and a Note 3 both of which will be hamstrung by trying to run apps from the SD card ... even a class 10. And you'll be stressing the card. Accelerated failure is almost guaranteed.

 

[codesplice]

I was responding to the general question of "will it work" as opposed to "will it work on these devices" since the question wasn't posed in a device-specific forum

 

[lunatic59]

I never said it wouldn't work, just that it wouldn't work well. I'm a big fan of seeing if I can get something to work, but not on a daily driver.

 

[richmatthews76]

I have a very long integrated Microsoft and in the earlier Years O/S 2 mentality. You throw in another harddrive format and off you go. So that was my reasoning behind the question. With Unix I know what root is, how to change directories, get a file list, and mount a drive (true Unix) then I am basically clueless. I did play with Red Hat I liked it allot.

 

[Davdi]

It works just fine on older phones. I've got a Wildfire S running CM10.1, with a 16GB card formatted as follows:
2GB EXT4, 2GB Linux Swap and the rest as FAT32. I've installed INT2EXT4+ so the phone thinks it's got 2GB available. (Limited memory is a serious problem on the WFS)