Database and storage access speeds?

[iPodVT]

My music library has grown too large for the amount of storage I have in my iPods (5/5.5/6/7 Gens) and so I am going to increase their capacity.  As well, I've added some very time consuming database queries to my tagnavi_user.config and tagnavi_custom.config files.  So I'm wondering if anyone here knows the answer to the following:

All other things being equal, would there be a meaningful difference in access speed between an iFlash-Solo with a 256GB microSD in an SD adapter vs an iFlash-Quad with two 128GB microSDs (all Samsung Pro Plus flash and adapters)? [edit]

I have observed that storage access with the 6/7 Gen Classics is generally much faster than with the 5/5.5 Gen Videos when using Rockbox (and maybe/probably also with the Apple firmware?), so I'd be inclined to install the faster storage into the Videos.

Thanks.

[amachronic]

Rockbox's I/O performance is extremely bad when it comes to the database. It's super slow since every disk access made by the database is only 512 bytes at a time, which'll get you roughly 200 KiB/sec read/write speeds at best. SD cards really need large reads and writes to get good performance.

I think the iPod 6g uses 4k physical sectors, which could improve things by forcing Rockbox to transfer in 4 KiB increments instead of only 512 bytes. So I'd expect the 6g to perform better than the Video no matter what, just because of the bigger sector size.

[iPodVT]

Thanks very much for your reply and information, amachronic.

In general, Rockbox has been plenty fast enough for me so far except for extreme tasks like listing all ~11,000 tracks in my music library (which is the kind of thing I would do mostly just to see what will happen, rather than because I have a practical use/need for it).

I put the iFlash-Quad with two 128GB microSDs into a 160GB 7th Gen iPod Classic (64MB RAM) and the iFlash-Solo with one 256GB microSD (in an SD adapter) into an 80GB 5.5 Gen iPod Video (also 64MB RAM).  It took the 7th Gen about 48 seconds to gather and display a list of all ~11,000 tracks, and it took the 5.5 Gen about 2min 40sec to do it with its identical copy of the same music library.  Copying all of those tracks' files onto the iPods (while running the Apple firmware) and then initializing/building their databases in Rockbox was similarly much faster with the 7th Gen, though I didn't time those operations.