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New SDXC cards with Macbook Airs?

I just ordered the new 64 GB Class 10 SDXC Flash Memory Card for my MacBook Air SD slot and was wondering if anyone's tried it out in their own MacBook Air, and what their experience has been so far.


How fast is it?


Did you need to reformat it?


If so, what's the optimum format choice?


Mac OS Journaled?


ExFat?


Free Space?


I read a review with a posted comment claiming it runs as fast as an internal 7200rpm drive, although I'm skeptical of this claim. I was planning on using it as my iTunes library, but if it's really that fast maybe I can install Windows 7 via bootcamp?


Any advice would be much appreciated.


Thanks in advance

MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.6.7), 13"

Posted on Apr 23, 2011 8:16 AM

Reply
30 replies

Apr 23, 2011 11:59 AM in response to voipben

According to this newer post...


https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2624447?threadID=2624447&tstart=45


...the 64 Gig SDXC cards work fine in the MacBook Air's SD slot. I was just wondering about the specs and whether you can run an OS off it (specifically Windows 7 via boot camp).


But I'll find out for myself in a couple of days and will post what I find here.

Apr 23, 2011 12:17 PM in response to lippyloggy

Thanks! Missed that thread, which sounds promising. I will be looking forward to your findings, both re. the card working and running Win from it (which would also be of interest to me--as I'm sure you know, standard SD cards don't perform well for this but perhaps the XC's faster data transfer rates will resolve the issue, assuming the reader supports them).

Apr 28, 2011 4:27 PM in response to voipben

So I got my Transcend SDXC 64GB flash card, and yes, it reads and writes perfectly in my MacBook Air.


The next step will be trying to install Windows 7 on it. I've already reformatted the drive with the Disk Utility app to Macintosh OS (Journaled), but haven't had time to try the whole install process yet. But from what I've googled, Microsoft restricts the installation of their OS's onto any external drives. But there seem to be quite a few work-arounds.

Oct 3, 2011 1:15 AM in response to lippyloggy

I was excited at the prospects of using a 128 GB SDXC for my iTunes library but its not working out so well.


I copied all of my songs over to the card and then created an alias of the parent folder and parked that at ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music. I experimented with playing some songs and overall it was working ok. It did take a little while when switching between tracks rapidly (0.5-2s) but I was ok with that.


My problems started when I tried adding new songs. iTunes is totally getting locked even when adding just 1 new song to the library. Its taking about 60s to process each song.


I do have a pretty large library at 12k + songs, but I've been trying to diagnose the issue and started adding songs to a completely empty library. It was behaving alright until I got to about 3k or 4k songs added then it really took a nose dive. I also have tried explicitly changing the iTunes media folder rather than using an alias and its still not behaving well.


One recourse might be to go back to manually organizing and keep some files on the SSD, but I'd rather have iTunes keep my media files organized for me. It sounds like a total pain to do otherwise, especially as I'd need to move stuff off to the card and then have iTunes relocate these files.


If anyone has tried this as well or has any suggestions, let me know.

Oct 4, 2011 2:08 PM in response to lippyloggy

I did not format myself, but it is in the ExFAT format. I'm not sure if the size would effect the speed, but as I said when I started with a fresh library it started to slow down around 2000 or 3000 songs.


I'm curious, do you get any kind of slowdowns with iTunes? Adding an album of songs? How is your Library setup, did you set the Media Folder location within iTunes or use folder aliases?

Oct 4, 2011 11:34 PM in response to lippyloggy

I'm curious, are you syncing an iPhone to your Library? I haven't even wanted to try that because of the issues I'm experiencing, but eventually it will be a requirement as well.


I have a Lexar Media 128 GB SDXC. It would be strange if different cards of the same speed category are so variable on performance.


I'm trying a reformat in Mac OS X (Journaled) to see if makes any difference.

New SDXC cards with Macbook Airs?

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