new to rockbox - sansa e250 v1 and MicroSDHC card classes

[bind]

I have Sansa e250 with v1 firmware and I want to buy a 16 gb memory card but i see different classes of card and do not know which will work for me.

what do the different classes mean and which ones are compatale with rockbox ?

for isntance the kingston website ( http://www.kingston.com/flash/sdhc_micro.asp ) shows Class 2 and Class 10 cards.

I want to use rockbox because currently the max i can use is MicroSD 2gb cards and I want to use the MicroSDHC cards of higher memory if possible (dont want to waste money for them if it isnt possible).

thanks in advance

[fratermus]

IIRC, Classes are speed ratings (and maybe only on the write functions, not the read functions).

I suspect card speed differences are not a big deal in a read-intensive application like a media player.  Now if you spend lots of time synching/loading maybe that would make it more important.

This page is about SD, but may be useful to read.

[bluebrother]

what do the different classes mean and which ones are compatale with rockbox ?
thanks in advance

The class of a SD card tells about its speed. I haven't checked myself but I don't see a reason why the class should make a difference for using with Rockbox. The speed can be important if you need to write a lot of data fast (like digital cameras that want to write a lot of high resolution pictures in a short amount of time), and transferring data to a slower card obviously takes longer. But that's all about it.

The important difference with SD cards is the difference between SD and SDHC: SD can only be as big as 2GiB, while SDHC allows larger cards (up to 32GiB are specified, though I don't see a reason why even more shouldn't be possible with the SDHC spec). While SD and SDHC cards look identical they are not compatible -- a SD card reader can't access a SDHC card. Rockbox works fine with both SD and SDHC, so there is no problem with this.

[bind]

thank you very much.

gonna go buy a MicroDSHC card and try rockbox out !

it will be nice not to constantly switch out 2gb MicroSD cards !

[Serenity]

I went from a 2GB class 2 MicroSD to a 16GB class 6 MicroSDHC; Rockbox performs the same with both, but it's a lot quicker when I copy large chunks of music to the class 6 16GB card.  I have a slimline MicroSDHC reader attached as a dongle to my e280v1, just for the geek factor. 

I did notice that since the e200v2 still has to connect using the OFW, my 16GB card causes some issues when I plug into my computer.  The reader really comes in handy then.  For simplicity's sake, I'm sticking with my v1 at the moment.  In the future, I'll switch.

[bind]

ok I bought my new 16GiB MicroSDHC card (24 bucks on ebay), have my e250 player and I am all ready to try the rockbox.

I have one more question before I try to install.

DO I need to format my new 16GiB MicroSDHC card any special way to work with rockbox ?

its current formatting is 4096 file allocation unit size and FAT 32.

thanks - looking forward to this !!!!

[saratoga]

FAT32 is fine.

[bind]

thank you very much.

the installation went flawlessly and I am now loading music into my 18 GiB sansa e250 mp3 player.

woohoo !

you guys rock !