Sandisk 512MB Ultra II & Extreme card SD cards

[iPAQALYPSE]

Hi everyone, I'm kinda new here so I would like to say greetings to all :D
I'm not sure if this is the right section to post in, so please correct me if I'm wrong :wink:

I'm from Gloucestershire in the UK, and recently I bought a Sandisk 512MB Ultra II SD card from ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3810399486&ed=1082999527000&ssPageName=ADME:B:EOT:UK:3

I thought the price was affordable and I really needed more memory for my iPAQ h2210, so I bought this card from the above link. For the past six months I've used a Sandisk 256MB SD card, which was very slow compared to my previous experiences with Panasonic SD cards. I tried formatting my old 256MB card with different file formats and cluster sizes, but still it was so slow. It also used to take about 5 seconds to create a new folder, and kept on yielding errors & corruptions (even after the V1.10 Rom & SDIO update).

After buying the Ultra II SD card, which was delivered in only a few days, I opened up the package to find a Sandisk Extreme 512MB SD card?! This was quite strange when clearly the ebay auction page shows a Ultra II 512MB SD Card! The packaging of the card was for a Ultra II card but there was an Extreme card inside! At first, I was very confused as to whether this was even a real card, or if it had a phony label on it. Anyway, after a little testing I found out that it was REALLY FAST! I was shocked at the crazy performance of this card :shocked!: I haven't used any card at this level or size, but I have to say I'm very impressed! Consequently, I felt that I obviously benefitted from this sale! :twisted: Does anyone think I should contact the seller about this, or should I just keep the new card? :roll:

I've done a bit of googling on the net and found that the Extreme cards are of the highest end of the Sandisk SD range, even though there seems to be little difference between the Extreme & Ultra II models. Nevertheless, I am still slightly confused about these cards and was wondering whether anyone would kindly clarify any differences, if any.

Also, one last query about the formatting of the new card. The default file system of the card is FAT16, cluster size 16KB and the FAT is backed up. I mainly install large applications & games (generally over 300KB in size each) and have many documents and files ranging in size of 100KB to 20MB. Should I format the card as listed above in the default factory manner, or should I use any other different settings? I apologise if this topic has been metioned before, but I'm still a curious newbie and would like a generous, simple answer. :D

Many thanks in advance! :wink:

:byebye:

[Jason Dunn]

Regarding the deal you got, I'd say you just found a good deal - if the seller doesn't know what he's selling, his loss and your gain. :-) The read/write speeds of the Extreme vs. the Ultra seem to be the same, so I think the Extreme is just their "all weather" version, probably better sealed against the environment.

Do you have a USB 2.0 external memory card reader? If so, do me a little favour. Download this app:

http://www.magicnotes.com/steelbytes/HD_Speed_ENG.zip

Do the following tests on it with a 5 minute timer per test, then report back the average from each test:

Read 256 KB
Read 1 MB
Read 16 MB
Write 256 KB
Write 1 MB
Write 16 MB

Thanks! I'll compare your results with mine from the Ultra II that Sandisk sent me.

PS - Welcome to the site. ;-)

[Jason Dunn]

BTW, if anyone has other brands of 512 MB SD cards (they have to be 512 MB please), I'd appreciate seeing the test results from your cards as well. I'm particularly looking for the numbers from a regular Sandisk card.

If you're going to do the tests, be sure to disable all other running applications, including anti-virus programs. Anything that uses the CPU could potentially muck up the results.