XPost: comp.mobile.android, alt.comp.microsoft.windows

I need a bigger sd card - I spent years for this moment by using Windows to make Android sdcard swaps smoother and drama reduced experiences for all.

Some questions...

Does a Windows "Quick Format" work as well as the slow format?
Does the format type matter when the sd card is to be used in a phone?
Do you change the volume label when you format on Windows for Android?
<https://i.postimg.cc/dVtqQ9dX/sd01.jpg>

Some background...

In May of 2021 I received from T-Mobile a new free Samsung Galaxy A32-5G
with 64GB of internal storage, which I broke twice under warranty so
T-Mobile replaced it twice within the first two years where all I had to do
was swap out the old 64GB sd card and put it into the new phone each time.

Everything came over seamlessly without the Internet involved, which, if
you know me, is something I strive to avoid when copying personal data.

But this is different than swapping out the phone. This is swapping out the
sd card which has been in use since 2021 with all my data sitting on it.
<https://i.postimg.cc/fWX7wzcg/filesys.jpg>

Of course, I did two things years ago to plan for this type of event:
1. I formatted all my sd cards on Windows to the same volume name, and,
2. I put all my data under a single folder on the external sd card.

Those two simple things, I hope, will make this sd swap, uneventful.
a. Format the sd card on Windows to "0000-0001"
b. on Windows, create a top-level directory of "0001"
Note: The names don't matter as long as they're consistent.

I just bought from Amazon a 128GB three-pack with reader at about $10 each. And, while a quick format on Windows takes a couple of seconds, a slow
format takes quite a bit longer - it's still running on my old desktop.

Did I need that slow format?
Is the default of XFat (128kbyte allocation unit) an OK setting for phones?
Is the type of card I bought OK for phones?

The (slow) format is still running, but when it's done, I'm going to copy
my "0001" data over from the old sdcard in the phone, to the new sdcard.

And then I'm going to swap out the old sdcard for the new one for, what I
hope to be a seamless experience using Windows to make Android smoother.

Wish me luck!

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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XPost: comp.mobile.android, alt.comp.microsoft.windows

On Wed, 10/23/2024 5:54 PM, Andrews wrote:

I need a bigger sd card - I spent years for this moment by using Windows to make Android sdcard swaps smoother and drama reduced experiences for all.

Some questions...
Does a Windows "Quick Format" work as well as the slow format?
Does the format type matter when the sd card is to be used in a phone?
Do you change the volume label when you format on Windows for Android? <https://i.postimg.cc/dVtqQ9dX/sd01.jpg>

Some background...
In May of 2021 I received from T-Mobile a new free Samsung Galaxy A32-5G
with 64GB of internal storage, which I broke twice under warranty so
T-Mobile replaced it twice within the first two years where all I had to do was swap out the old 64GB sd card and put it into the new phone each time.

Everything came over seamlessly without the Internet involved, which, if
you know me, is something I strive to avoid when copying personal data.

But this is different than swapping out the phone. This is swapping out the sd card which has been in use since 2021 with all my data sitting on it. <https://i.postimg.cc/fWX7wzcg/filesys.jpg>

Of course, I did two things years ago to plan for this type of event:
1. I formatted all my sd cards on Windows to the same volume name, and, 2. I put all my data under a single folder on the external sd card.

Those two simple things, I hope, will make this sd swap, uneventful.
a. Format the sd card on Windows to "0000-0001"
b. on Windows, create a top-level directory of "0001"
  Note: The names don't matter as long as they're consistent.

I just bought from Amazon a 128GB three-pack with reader at about $10 each. And, while a quick format on Windows takes a couple of seconds, a slow
format takes quite a bit longer - it's still running on my old desktop.

Did I need that slow format?
Is the default of XFat (128kbyte allocation unit) an OK setting for phones? Is the type of card I bought OK for phones?
The (slow) format is still running, but when it's done, I'm going to copy
my "0001" data over from the old sdcard in the phone, to the new sdcard.

And then I'm going to swap out the old sdcard for the new one for, what I hope to be a seamless experience using Windows to make Android smoother.

Wish me luck!

You would buy an SD card with static and dynamic wear leveling.

A quick format is good enough. It writes and puts a FAT or $MFT on the partition.

The slow format does the same, except it includes a read-verify of the surface.

To "erase" a storage device, diskpart "clean all" will write the entire
surface with zeros. Or dd.exe can write the surface with zeros.

It's hard to get good info about SD, like the wear leveling scheme.
If it has both static and dynamic wear leveling, it could last longer
because then you can't really burn a hole in it as easily.

The difference to a USB flash stick, could be the binning of the flash.
Maybe the flash is a bit better. USB sticks could be pretty low quality.
Like purchasing a 16GB USB key, could be a 32GB chip with half of it
pinned off because it didn't pass.

SD has limits on both write speed and read speed. The physical interface
is pretty "thin", and that's why it can't read faster than it does.
There is a promise that coming SD cards will have one lane PCI Express interfaces, which should make then read better. But when that is done,
the writing won't be faster. Just as the worse USB3 flash sticks might be 100MB/sec read and 10MB/sec write. My Rally2 can write at about 16MB/sec,
but it doesn't read in a big hurry. Whereas USB3 sticks can have larger differences between read and write. And some USB, have "uneven" behavior.
I've got a stick here now, it stalls for a while, it does a tiny bit of
writes, then stalls some more. My SD doesn't do that.

Paul

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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XPost: comp.mobile.android, alt.comp.microsoft.windows

On 2024-10-24 09:20, Paul wrote:

On Wed, 10/23/2024 5:54 PM, Andrews wrote:

I need a bigger sd card - I spent years for this moment by using Windows to >> make Android sdcard swaps smoother and drama reduced experiences for all.

Some questions...
Does a Windows "Quick Format" work as well as the slow format?
Does the format type matter when the sd card is to be used in a phone?
Do you change the volume label when you format on Windows for Android?
<https://i.postimg.cc/dVtqQ9dX/sd01.jpg>

Some background...

...

Did I need that slow format?
Is the default of XFat (128kbyte allocation unit) an OK setting for phones? >> Is the type of card I bought OK for phones?
The (slow) format is still running, but when it's done, I'm going to copy
my "0001" data over from the old sdcard in the phone, to the new sdcard.

And then I'm going to swap out the old sdcard for the new one for, what I
hope to be a seamless experience using Windows to make Android smoother.

Wish me luck!

You would buy an SD card with static and dynamic wear leveling.

A quick format is good enough. It writes and puts a FAT or $MFT on the partition.

The slow format does the same, except it includes a read-verify of the surface.

Doesn't it fill everything with zeroes as well? Or erase all sectors?
That reduces the life of the card or stick.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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XPost: comp.mobile.android, alt.comp.microsoft.windows

Paul wrote on Thu, 24 Oct 2024 03:20:49 -0400 :

You would buy an SD card with static and dynamic wear leveling.

Hi Paul,
Thanks for that advice. I don't even know what that means.
On Amazon, they don't tell you that in the product information.
My choices were Lexar or Sandisk. I chose the (cheaper) Lexar.

But should I of given that I need "wear leveling" for that card???

Putting my glasses on & my magnifying glass to the package, I still can
barely read the print - and it's too wide for the macro lens to snap a
single photo of, so I'll create a mosaic with the macro so you can see all
the fine print and funny-looking sdcard-specific-emoji (sdoji?).

A quick format is good enough.
It writes and puts a FAT or $MFT on the partition.

Thank you for that advice that a quick format is good enough.
The slow format took a very long time - maybe 45 minutes or so.
The quick format didn't take more than ten seconds (I didn't time them).

The slow format does the same, except it includes a read-verify of the surface.

Hmm. My slow format gave no "errors", so does that mean there were no read errors or does that mean any read errors were jumped over by the format?

To "erase" a storage device, diskpart "clean all" will write the entire surface with zeros. Or dd.exe can write the surface with zeros.

It's hard to get good info about SD, like the wear leveling scheme.
If it has both static and dynamic wear leveling, it could last longer
because then you can't really burn a hole in it as easily.

Ah. I see. I said so already at the top of this message, unless there's something in all that sdcard emoji or the super-fine really fine print.

The difference to a USB flash stick, could be the binning of the flash.
Maybe the flash is a bit better. USB sticks could be pretty low quality.
Like purchasing a 16GB USB key, could be a 32GB chip with half of it
pinned off because it didn't pass.

Well, that original 64GB sd card has on it "Samsung", "EVO", a "3" inside
of a "U", and then "Micro XD" & "SC" & "I" also, which doesn't tell me
offhand if that has the requisite wear leveling but it lasted since May of
2021 in three phones without any indication to me of flash card errors.

SD has limits on both write speed and read speed. The physical interface
is pretty "thin", and that's why it can't read faster than it does.

Good information to know, where I use my "/storage/0000-0001/0001/" folder
to store pictures, videos, text files, PDFs, nova homescreen backups, APK backups, etc., all of which seem "fast enough" for what I am doing.

There is a promise that coming SD cards will have one lane PCI Express interfaces, which should make then read better. But when that is done,
the writing won't be faster. Just as the worse USB3 flash sticks might be 100MB/sec read and 10MB/sec write. My Rally2 can write at about 16MB/sec,
but it doesn't read in a big hurry. Whereas USB3 sticks can have larger differences between read and write. And some USB, have "uneven" behavior. I've got a stick here now, it stalls for a while, it does a tiny bit of writes, then stalls some more. My SD doesn't do that.

I think everyone should have an sd card in their phone because it allows
them to pay for smaller internal storage - and the sd card is portable
(which isn't the same thing as expandable - so let's be clear on that).

Portable means you can pop it out of one phone to use in another phone.
And it all just works - where the sd card - if they format it on Windows to
the same volume name - can be easily swapped out of one working phone into another working phone and there will generally be no hiccups doing this.

So far my swap out worked as far as I can tell, with all my map navigation
data on the sd card reading perfectly from the map programs (like OSMAnd~) residing on the phone's internal storage because the phone only knows that
the map data is stored in "/storage/0000-0001/0001/map/osm/." and to the
phone the new card has exactly the same address once I copied it over using Windows to do that copy (most people use the Internet - but I do not!).

Another question I have is that I've chosen those 8 (actually 9) characters because every sd card seems to come with that kind of a volume label (e.g., BF3A-D4C2); but I wonder if I can format it to one character?

I guess I'll try that since I doubt anyone knows if a volume label of a
single character will work on Android - so I'll run that test separately on
the remaining sd cards as I've already copied over 0001 data to this one.

Would formatting a micro-sd volume label to just "SD" for example, work?

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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XPost: comp.mobile.android, alt.comp.microsoft.windows

On Thu, 24 Oct 2024 13:20:23 -0400, ...winston wrote:

You would buy an SD card with static and dynamic wear leveling.

A quick format is good enough. It writes and puts a FAT or $MFT on the
partition.

The slow format does the same, except it includes a read-verify of the
surface.

Doesn't it fill everything with zeroes as well? Or erase all sectors?
That reduces the life of the card or stick.
Writing zeros for full format option was introduced with Vista.

Applicable also to all later Windows o/s.
Full format
- files erased
- writes zeros to the whole disk
- drive scanned for bad sectors(does not fix bad sectors)
- new root directory and file system

If a Windows full format doesn't fix bad sectors, what does it do to them?

I always thought a format put a "jumper" so that bad sectors were ignored.

Is that "jumper" (or whatever it's really called) considered a fix?
Or is a fix something else?

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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XPost: comp.mobile.android, alt.comp.microsoft.windows

...winston wrote on Thu, 24 Oct 2024 00:56:55 -0400 :

I need a bigger sd card - I spent years for this moment by using Windows to >> make Android sdcard swaps smoother and drama reduced experiences for all.

Some questions...
Does a Windows "Quick Format" work as well as the slow format?
Does the format type matter when the sd card is to be used in a phone?

Quick format doesn't check for bad sectors, full format does(takes
longer, mostly due the scanning for bad sectors). Full format(iirc)
removes prior stored files.
-your choice. If you concerned about the card(probably sourced and
made west of the Pacific Ocean, usually China, South Korea, Phillipines
etc.) having bad sectors, choose full. If not, choose Quick.

Thanks for that advice, where I formatted the 128GB Lexar sd card on
Windows, which took a long time (maybe 45 minutes or so?) but it seems from what you wrote that it might not be a bad idea depending on the provenance.

Luckily, the Windows format of the Android sdcard is only done once.

It's formatted on Windows mostly to set the volume label so that the phone still thinks the old 64GB sdcard is in the phone, when it's a 128GB sdcard.

I just bought from Amazon a 128GB three-pack with reader at about $10 each. >> And, while a quick format on Windows takes a couple of seconds, a slow
format takes quite a bit longer - it's still running on my old desktop >
Did I need that slow format?
Is the default of XFat (128kbyte allocation unit) an OK setting for phones?

Your phone supports both exFAT and FAT32.
exFAT is usually more efficient in storage and file transfer for large capacity cards
eXFAT is almost always recommended for cards greater than 32GB

For a 128GB SDXC card(phone or pc[laptop, tablet) I would never consider formatting as FAT32 if also used on a phone.

Thanks. I took the default of exFAT for the 128GB sdcard format.
I'll remember that for the future Windows formats of Android sdcards.

As a test on Win10 Pro(1 TB SSD main drive) - I took a spare 3 yr old
128 GB Samsung EVO Plus Class 10 U3 SDXC card and formatted full - took
39 minutes for a full format. I also full formatted a 5 yr old a 64 GB SanDisk Class 10 U1(previously only used a digital camera, no longer
used, pretty much a dust collector in spare part box) - took 32 minutes
for the full format.

I didn't measure the time but mine were similar in that my 128GB sdcard
took something like 45 minutes (I didn't measure though) to complete.

Just copying the top-level folder over to the new sdcard took similar time.
<https://i.postimg.cc/xTHbYfZ5/populate-sd.jpg>

So the price of portable storage (meaning you can move the sdcard from one phone to another or you can swap out sdcards and everything still works),
is about two hours of waiting for things to finish up doing their thing.

Of course those two hours on Windows saves some number of hours on Android
if you have your app data on Android store things (such as maps) on the sd.

The phone still "thinks" it's the same card because the volume label didn't change (does a volume label need to be 4 characters, a dash, & four more?).

- Not sure if it compares to whatever you bought(a quick look on
Amazon didn't show any Samsung[my preferred SDXC card] 3 packs) which
seems to mean the Samsung test may/may not not apply to full formatting
a different brand of an SDXC card, but the 64 GB at approx. a half hour
might indicate up to an hour for a full format on a 128 GB card(twice as
many sectors to scan)

Here's what I bought on Amazon <https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CB11S919>.
I didn't know what to look for, so I simply went by the $28 price.
That's about $10 per 128GB of portable storage since it was 3 cards.

In case the links change over time, here's what the description says.

Lexar E-Series 128GB Micro SD Card 3 Pack, microSDXC UHS-I Flash Memory
Card with Adapter, 100MB/s, C10, U3, A1, V30, Full HD, 4K UHD, High Speed
TF Card

Wide Compatibility:
Ideal for your smartphones, tablets, Drones, action cameras and Gopro.
Premium memory solution for smartphones, tablets, or action cameras.

4K Ultra UHD:
Quickly captures, plays back, and transfers media files,
including 1080p Full-HD, 3D, and 4K UHD video.

High Speed Memory Card:
Leverages UHS-I technology for a transfer speed up to 100MB/s.
Loads apps faster with A1-rated performance. (Based on internal
test environment of Lexar, so the actual speed may vary with
different host devices and environments. For devices that don't
support UHS-I, the transmission speed will be different due to
interface limitations.)

Multi Capacity:
Available in capacities ranging from 32GB to 512GB.
The 128GB micro sd card can support up to 6 hours 4K video,
or up to 20 hours 1080P video, 37,600 photos, or 19,440 songs.
(Due to different capacity algorithms and partial capacity are
used for system files, management and performance optimization,
so the actual available capacity may be less than the
identifying capacity.)

Ultra Durable: Waterproof, temperature-proof, shockproof, magnetic-proof.

Would you have purchased those three cards (for about $10 each) if you knew that the major use would be to go into a smartphone such as the A32-5G?

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XPost: comp.mobile.android, alt.comp.microsoft.windows

On Thu, 10/24/2024 1:15 PM, Andrews wrote:

Paul wrote on Thu, 24 Oct 2024 03:20:49 -0400 :

You would buy an SD card with static and dynamic wear leveling.

Hi Paul,
Thanks for that advice. I don't even know what that means. On Amazon, they don't tell you that in the product information.
My choices were Lexar or Sandisk. I chose the (cheaper) Lexar.

But should I of given that I need "wear leveling" for that card???

Putting my glasses on & my magnifying glass to the package, I still can barely read the print - and it's too wide for the macro lens to snap a
single photo of, so I'll create a mosaic with the macro so you can see all the fine print and funny-looking sdcard-specific-emoji (sdoji?).

The information is hard to get.

The Tech Support at the SD company, are mostly clueless.

When an SD has both static and dynamic wear leveling, it
then had the endurance of a SATA SSD drive. You get 600 writes
to every location on the device. The wear is evened out.

A USB flash stick, some seem to have nothing. A few too many
writes to low addresses, and you burn right through it. This
means at USB flash stick death, location 0 has 600 writes
while location 0xFFFFFFFF has zero writes. As does 0xFFFFFFFE.
Much of the upper media section of the device is still
waiting for the first write. And in reality, as near as I
can determine, you're not even getting 600 writes. It's a
pathetic lower number. This happens for TLC or QLC flash,
while the MLC or SLC we can no longer get, that lasts a lot longer.

For any device, we would like that feature. There is a Patriot
(and there are other brands) of USB stick that have an SSD inside
and a USB to SATA adapter chip. And those have both features
and support TRIM.

While some discussion threads, attempt to discuss which
limited model numbers of Sd devices have the feature, there is
no one to verify the info and tell us what we're buying.

This is why I quick format, plug in, and carry on with life.
because I'm not going to find anyone with the answer.

Do backups every once in a while.

Paul

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XPost: comp.mobile.android, alt.comp.microsoft.windows

On Thu, 10/24/2024 1:20 PM, ...winston wrote:

Carlos E.R. wrote:

On 2024-10-24 09:20, Paul wrote:

On Wed, 10/23/2024 5:54 PM, Andrews wrote:

I need a bigger sd card - I spent years for this moment by using Windows to
make Android sdcard swaps smoother and drama reduced experiences for all. >>>>
Some questions...
Does a Windows "Quick Format" work as well as the slow format?
Does the format type matter when the sd card is to be used in a phone? >>>> Do you change the volume label when you format on Windows for Android? >>>> <https://i.postimg.cc/dVtqQ9dX/sd01.jpg>

Some background...

...

Did I need that slow format?
Is the default of XFat (128kbyte allocation unit) an OK setting for phones?
Is the type of card I bought OK for phones?
The (slow) format is still running, but when it's done, I'm going to copy >>>> my "0001" data over from the old sdcard in the phone, to the new sdcard. >>>>
And then I'm going to swap out the old sdcard for the new one for, what I >>>> hope to be a seamless experience using Windows to make Android smoother. >>>>
Wish me luck!

You would buy an SD card with static and dynamic wear leveling.

A quick format is good enough. It writes and puts a FAT or $MFT on the partition.

The slow format does the same, except it includes a read-verify of the surface.

Doesn't it fill everything with zeroes as well? Or erase all sectors? That reduces the life of the card or stick.
Writing zeros for full format option was introduced with Vista.

Applicable also to all later Windows o/s.
Full format
 - files erased
 - writes zeros to the whole disk
 - drive scanned for bad sectors(does not fix bad sectors)
 - new root directory and file system

I recommend using Process Monitor, to track what a tool does to a device.

USB is a bit of a problem, as it is treated differently.

Not everything is logged on the system, with the same skill and dexterity.
You won't know whats going to happen until you get there.

*******

A full format was a concept of a long time ago. It might have been
called a Low Level Format.

Devices could be soft sectored. There was an index mark on the drive.
As the drive would rotate, your LLF would lay down a track. This
includes writing header section, write splice, and payload area.
If you stopped the low level format, the drive was bricked.
And seeing as the drives cost $1500 back then, you looked
like a right dope when this happened. (At least once, the power
went off at work while I was doing that.)

well, modern drives are no longer soft sectored. We no longer redefine
the interleave pattern by rewriting the entire surface of the platter.

Modern drives have servo wedges, and both headers and servo wedges are permanent.
The header is the address.

The only thing you can do to a modern drive, is write the payload section
of a sector.

Now, flash drives, the address is implicit. The address is hard wired.
Via a MAP table, there can be a mapping between external virtual LBA
and internal storage LBA. The written part of the flash, contains
the 512 byte sector, plus a 50 byte syndrome with Reed Solomon code in
it. I have never seen any information which points to there being
a verification LBA value in the sector too. But the size of the sectors
does not have to be a precise power of two. Nothing inside modern flash
has to be like that any more. They use all sorts of weird numbers for
stuff, and I don't know the rule set for that.

When you format a drive, the activity does the bare minimum.
You rewrite the metadata tables. Most of them, placing a
minimal length table is sufficient (the table will grow with time).
The master file table, it will be small, and it will have all file
entries removed.

None of the remaining clusters, need be written. The OS is not
a maintainer of a forensic situation. The user must know where the
information leakage points are, and use the right tool for the job
when highest security is required. I have tested this, by injecting
test patterns on drives, and finding later, two hundred "shards"
of info were left behind. Naturally, this leaves me just a bit concerned
about my control of things.

diskpart clean # Remove partition table, hardly cleans a damn thing, takes one second
clean all # Takes hours on a slow drive, overwrites the surface with zeros

dd.exe # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=8192
# That writes zeros over the storage device SDA.
# Hard drives a divisible by 8192. The entire surface is written.
# Consult the help, to determine the real name string of the drive.
# The name shown is just an illustration.

You can then partition and format, in the knowledge that any "format"
command you're using, which does not do a lot, all the other clusters
are already zero because you dd'ed them and you don't have to worry
about information leakage.

Any time I do research on disk layouts, I establish a background pattern
by zeroing the entire drive. This takes a few hours on the size of drive
I would normally use. Next, I partition the drive. Then, take a hex editor,
and "scroll" down near the end of the disk. The GPT secondary table stands
out like a sore thumb, down at the end of the drive. You can't miss it then, because most of the drive is still zeroed.

Similarly, for RAID research, I zero the drive on an alternate-brand
computer, do the RAID setup on the branded RAID I want to test, then
bring the drive back to the alternate-brand computer and "scroll" with
my Hex editor. Then I can see the 64KB or smaller RAID metadata table.

By knowing how these things work, you can be in control.

Using tools like Process Monitor, you can observe things being done,
if need be.

Paul

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XPost: alt.comp.microsoft.windows

On Thu, 10/24/2024 9:13 PM, ...winston wrote:

Paul wrote:

On Thu, 10/24/2024 1:20 PM, ...winston wrote:

Full format
  - files erased
  - writes zeros to the whole disk
  - drive scanned for bad sectors(does not fix bad sectors)
  - new root directory and file system

I recommend using Process Monitor, to track what a tool does to a device.


A full format was a concept of a long time ago. It might have been
called a Low Level Format.
 
    Paul

Iirc, a true Low Level format required 3rdparty tools.
 The last time I did a low level was years ago a Connor(Seagate manufactured drive(small drive ~500 MB) installed in a HP tower.
Don't even remember the tool, obtained it from an IT admin on a 3.5" floppy.  - a few months later, the drive died. Track O, un-repairable.

<https://www.easeus.com/partition-master/high-level-format-vs-low-level-format.html?>

<https://www.easeus.com/computer-instruction/low-level-format-vs-standard-format.html?>

<https://www.minitool.com/partition-disk/high-level-format-vs-low-level.html>

I was doing them on 5MB and 10MB (full height) drives coming into the department.
It's possible a SASI controller was part of the solution at the time.
And you had to look out the window and check the weather before
you started (some of our power drops were weather-related). And you had
to have the operation run to completion, or the drive would be bricked.

One of the reasons for doing an LLF, was the change from interleave 3 to interleave 1. Something was "going fast enough" on our hardware setup,
we could change the interleave. (It might have even involved a different
brand SASI card.) While that should have made the drive feel faster, considering
how creaky everything was back then, you would hardly notice.

1 4 7 2 5 8 3 6 9 Interleave 3 (takes three rotations to read nine sectors)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Interleave 1 (one rotation to read nine sectors)

The data rates were awful (less than 1MB/sec) ... but nobody benched anything back then.
We didn't want to know :-) When the alternative was a floppy drive at 75KB/sec, you were not complaining, no matter what the number was.

Before hard drives came along, a "dream machine" was one with two floppy drives.
While this isn't ours, it illustrates what people used to fight over. Nobody wanted the machines that had only the one floppy (your *OS* was on that floppy).
Any time the OS floppy comes out of the machine, your screen would say
"Hey, dumbass, put my floppy back in" :-) Being asked to copy a data floppy, would always bring a scowl to the face of a single floppy drive computer user. I had one of those for a while. There was so little RAM in the computer,
you couldn't buffer a full floppy in there! Nightmare stuff.
"Insert floppy 1" "Insert floppy 2" "Insert floppy 1" ... "Hey dumbass..."

https://www.hpmuseum.net/images/9895A-35.jpg

Paul

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Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
[...]

Before hard drives came along, a "dream machine" was one with two
floppy drives.
While this isn't ours, it illustrates what people used to fight over.
Nobody wanted the machines that had only the one floppy (your *OS* was
on that floppy).
Any time the OS floppy comes out of the machine, your screen would say
"Hey, dumbass, put my floppy back in" :-) Being asked to copy a data
floppy, would always bring a scowl to the face of a single floppy
drive computer user. I had one of those for a while. There was so
little RAM in the computer, you couldn't buffer a full floppy in
there! Nightmare stuff. "Insert floppy 1" "Insert floppy 2" "Insert
floppy 1" ... "Hey dumbass..."

https://www.hpmuseum.net/images/9895A-35.jpg

Two 8" floppy drives for a mere $5830! A steal!

<https://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=262>

Thanks for the memory! I enjoyed the 'Collector's Notes' and the
reference to <https://www.hp9845.net/9845/projects/hpdrive/>. The things
people do to keep old stuff working. Amazing!

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On 2024-10-25 07:35, Paul wrote:

Before hard drives came along, a "dream machine" was one with two floppy drives.

Yes. I could not afford a hard disk (didn't sufficiently know what it
was, anyway), but I knew I needed two floppy drives on my first machine.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

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On Fri, 10/25/2024 9:11 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:

On 2024-10-25 07:35, Paul wrote:

Before hard drives came along, a "dream machine" was one with two floppy drives.

Yes. I could not afford a hard disk (didn't sufficiently know what it was, anyway), but I knew I needed two floppy drives on my first machine.

We originally started with hard drives, for departmental server level.
The cost could be spread over more desks that way.

Then the 3 inch high "chunks" of hard drives arrived (and the opportunity
to put one on each desktop had finally arrived). They
could be smaller than other equipment we'd worked on or evaluated.
But still the things struck you as "not very elegant" and
little better than "a floppy with a rigid platter". Just the
heads moving radially, and using a stepper motor to move in and
out, that wasn't elegant, when twenty feet away was equipment
using voice coil. It's not like the consumer technology at the time was aggressive.

And that stuff could be flaky. My initial reaction was not to take
one home with me :-) It would be a small bundle of trouble. If
you didn't have one, that's a good thing. The shock or vibration spec
was only about 2G's or so. Jumping on the floor could crash the heads.

The departmental server, the heads retracted out of the disc pack. The
heads didn't touch the platter when the drive was not in usage. Whereas the Seagate full height drive was CSS (contact start stop). And I don't think
there was any retraction attempt -- if the power goes off, the heads
would just drop onto the platter where they were.

Not really all that attractive, for $1500 . Plus the cost of the controller card.
The drive itself was as dumb as a floppy. No SMART. SMART did not exist then. And Enhanced Secure Erase, consisted of dropping the drive on the floor.
No, we didn't drop any. But the first year, there might have been four failures.

And there was no email on there. Our email was on mainframes. Developer source was stored on the departmental server. This meant, at least initially, the
risk factors on the hard drive were minimal. I filled mine up with files,
but it took two years of usage, to fill a 10MB drive. Our file systems guy had collected statistics, and the average file size back then was 2KB. And that's partly
because there were no graphics. Yet, we still did desktop publishing. The user manuals were two feet thick.

Paul

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XPost: comp.mobile.android, alt.comp.microsoft.windows

Andrews wrote on Thu, 24 Oct 2024 17:15:03 -0000 (UTC) :

Another question I have is that I've chosen those 8 (actually 9) characters because every sd card seems to come with that kind of a volume label (e.g., BF3A-D4C2); but I wonder if I can format it to one character?

I guess I'll try that since I doubt anyone knows if a volume label of a single character will work on Android - so I'll run that test separately on the remaining sd cards as I've already copied over 0001 data to this one.

Would formatting a micro-sd volume label to just "SD" for example, work?

I tested it on the remaining sdcard and it works just fine to set the
volume label to a single character instead of the 4-dash-4 characters that
are typical.

I popped the single-character volume label into my Android and it "seems"
to have worked also, which would simplify the path as LOTS of programs
require you to type a filespec (such as Android webdav servers).

So now, instead of a filespec of /storage/0000-0001/0001/webdav", I can
type "/storage/1/0001/webdav", and to be consisistent, that can be
shortened to "/storage/1/1/webdav" where the first "1" is the card volume
label and the second "1" is a top-level directory designed to show up first
in the list (which is typically in alphabetical order).

Unfortunately, I have so many phones already set up as
/storage/0000-0001/0001 for the data storage, that I'm kind of stuck with
the longer convention.

But the good news is for those of you who are just starting to become efficient, here are my recommendations for using Windows to make Android smoother.

1. Format all your sdcards on Windows as exFat with a single-character
volume label - which can be the number "1" (or anything you like).

2. Create a top-level directory which shows up first in a sort
(again, anything you like, but the number "1" shows up early on).

3. Then, forevermore, you can set apps to store data in that directory.
"/storage/1/1/."

If you do this for EVERY sdcard, then ANY sdcard can be popped into another phone, and everything will work because the phone thinks is the same card.

That's what I mean by "portable" storage (which I've been doing for years).

Given it's easier to manage Android from a Windows PC than from the phone,
in the end, the combination of Windows + Android makes both smoother.

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