Maximum SD card capacity, what happens if you exceed it?

Chris Green

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Aug 17, 2016, 6:16:03 PM8/17/16

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Just about all of our Android devices seem to say that the maximum SD
card capacity is 32Gb. Is this a hard limit or is it just that 32Gb
is the maximum size tested?

--
Chris Green
·

Ken Blake

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Aug 17, 2016, 6:53:32 PM8/17/16

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On Wed, 17 Aug 2016 23:15:01 +0100, Chris Green <c...@isbd.net> wrote:

>Just about all of our Android devices seem to say that the maximum SD
>card capacity is 32Gb. Is this a hard limit or is it just that 32Gb
>is the maximum size tested?

I don't know about a limit for Android devices, but SD cards are
available in sizes up to at least 1TB.

AL

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Aug 17, 2016, 7:14:40 PM8/17/16

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Chris Green wrote:
> Just about all of our Android devices seem to say that the maximum SD
> card capacity is 32Gb. Is this a hard limit or is it just that 32Gb
> is the maximum size tested?

My Samsung tablet (Galaxy Tab S2)specs says up to 256 GB.

http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_tab_s2_8_0-7439.php

AL

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Aug 17, 2016, 7:31:47 PM8/17/16

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And my phone is apparently 256 GB also. Not sure what I'd do
with all that space, I hardly fill up the 32 GB card in
there now.

http://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_droid_turbo_2-7713.php

tlvp

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Aug 17, 2016, 10:21:54 PM8/17/16

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On Wed, 17 Aug 2016 23:15:01 +0100, Chris Green wrote:

> Just about all of our Android devices seem to say that the maximum SD
> card capacity is 32Gb. Is this a hard limit or is it just that 32Gb
> is the maximum size tested?

Device-dependent, surely. One of mine copes just fine with a 32 GB microSD
card, but won't even recognize a 64 GB one. May be an SDHC/SDXC difference.

HTH. YMMV. Cheers, -- tlvp
--
Avant de repondre, jeter la poubelle, SVP.

Poutnik

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Aug 18, 2016, 1:38:05 AM8/18/16

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Dne 18/08/2016 v 04:21 tlvp napsal(a):

> On Wed, 17 Aug 2016 23:15:01 +0100, Chris Green wrote:
>
>> Just about all of our Android devices seem to say that the maximum SD
>> card capacity is 32Gb. Is this a hard limit or is it just that 32Gb
>> is the maximum size tested?
>
> Device-dependent, surely. One of mine copes just fine with a 32 GB microSD
> card, but won't even recognize a 64 GB one. May be an SDHC/SDXC difference.
>
> HTH. YMMV. Cheers, -- tlvp
>

AFAIK, 64 GBis a point of switching of used flash chip technology
from SDHC to SDXC.

Both my older camera Canon Powershot 590 IS
and phone Sony XPeria M Dual
have in specificatons they support SDHC and not SDXC,
with maximum supported capacity 32 GB.

--
Poutnik ( The Pilgrim, Der Wanderer )
Knowledge makes great men humble, but small men arrogant.

Chris

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Aug 18, 2016, 3:22:41 AM8/18/16

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Poutnik <poutni...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Dne 18/08/2016 v 04:21 tlvp napsal(a):
>> On Wed, 17 Aug 2016 23:15:01 +0100, Chris Green wrote:
>>
>>> Just about all of our Android devices seem to say that the maximum SD
>>> card capacity is 32Gb. Is this a hard limit or is it just that 32Gb
>>> is the maximum size tested?
>>
>> Device-dependent, surely. One of mine copes just fine with a 32 GB microSD
>> card, but won't even recognize a 64 GB one. May be an SDHC/SDXC difference.
>>
>> HTH. YMMV. Cheers, -- tlvp
>>
> AFAIK, 64 GBis a point of switching of used flash chip technology
> from SDHC to SDXC.
>
> Both my older camera Canon Powershot 590 IS
> and phone Sony XPeria M Dual
> have in specificatons they support SDHC and not SDXC,
> with maximum supported capacity 32 GB.
>

Yup. Even with supposed compatibility with SDXC there are lots of reports
of problems with the higher capacity cards. If you really need it and your
device supports it try >32GB otherwise stick with 32GB for fewest hassles.

crankypuss

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Aug 18, 2016, 12:16:51 PM8/18/16

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On 08/17/2016 04:15 PM, Chris Green wrote:
> Just about all of our Android devices seem to say that the maximum SD
> card capacity is 32Gb. Is this a hard limit or is it just that 32Gb
> is the maximum size tested?
>

That's usually something that's poorly documented in the maker's product
description. Mostly, I suspect, because the specs are older than the
latest generation of sdcards. To learn the answer you can ask about a
*specific* device and someone may know, or you can stick in a 128-G
sdcard and see what it does. I've not run across an Android device that
was limited in terms of card-capacity (though specs often advertise less
than the largest available cards), but there are lots of devices out there.

--
http://totally-portable-software.blogspot.com
[Sat Mar 26: "Documentation and Portability"]

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Aug 20, 2016, 7:02:20 AM8/20/16

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On Wed, 17 Aug 2016 23:15:01 +0100, Chris Green <c...@isbd.net> wrote:

>Just about all of our Android devices seem to say that the maximum SD
>card capacity is 32Gb. Is this a hard limit or is it just that 32Gb
>is the maximum size tested?

I don't know about phones, but windows XP could only read 32G unless
you download and install a little program, while Vista could read 64G
and probably higher. If you tried ot read 64G in normal XP**, it
only read the first 32G.

**I'm not sure what happens if you buy a 64G capable USB adapter and
plug that into a USB port on normal XP.

Micky

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Aug 20, 2016, 7:12:36 AM8/20/16

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Daniel reminds me that the file structure is different for SDXC, and
the downloadable program is able to read exFAT.

BTW, the downloadable program for XP (and 2000 or 98?) is not found on
MS's pages anymore, like it should be, and Paul found it for me in
archive.net, or whatever the Wayback machine is called. Anyone who
needs it should write me or search the XP newsgroup for the right
message, by Paul or quoted by me. I think he found it by searching
for the MS page that I had found myself that says it has it for
64-bit, since Paul realized the same page used to have it for 32 and
64 bit. What is wrong with MS anyway? How much business will they
loose by no longer offering it for 32-bit?

Daniel James

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Aug 20, 2016, 10:52:33 AM8/20/16

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In article <NPEtz.548489$OB.1...@fx36.am4>, Musika wrote:
> [I wrote]

>> I doubt that anyone will ever make a 200GB card,
>
> Sandisk did in 2015.

Goodness, I see that you are right. I've never noticed those on sale at
any of my usual suppliers.

I can't imagine why anyone would make a flash chip with a capacity
that's not a power of 2 ... but perhaps in this case the chip is made
to 256GB and some space is reserved/mapped out?

Thanks for setting the record straight.

--
Cheers,
Daniel.

Dave Higton

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Aug 20, 2016, 2:25:16 PM8/20/16

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In message <VA.00000bb...@me.invalid>

Daniel James <dan...@me.invalid> wrote:

>In article <NPEtz.548489$OB.1...@fx36.am4>, Musika wrote:
>> [I wrote]
>>> I doubt that anyone will ever make a 200GB card,
>>
>> Sandisk did in 2015.
>
>Goodness, I see that you are right. I've never noticed those on sale at
>any of my usual suppliers.
>
>I can't imagine why anyone would make a flash chip with a capacity
>that's not a power of 2 ... but perhaps in this case the chip is made
>to 256GB and some space is reserved/mapped out?

No flash drive or flash card is made with an integral power of 2
capacity. They all have some space reserved/mapped out.

Dave

Theo Markettos

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Aug 20, 2016, 6:33:01 PM8/20/16

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Daniel James <dan...@me.invalid> wrote:
> You've had most of the answer in dribs and drabs from others, but the
> to set it all out together in one place:
>
> There are three SD card standards:
>
> SD cards can be up to 2GB in size.
> SDHC cards can be up to 32GB in size.
> SDXC cards can be up to 2TB in size.

As I understand it:

The SD->SDHC transition is a protocol change: the initialisation sequence is
different. If this sequence is implemented in hardware or inaccessible
firmware (such as in a USB-SD adaptor) then you can't upgrade a device to
speaking SDHC. If the sequence is implemented in software (eg an on-SoC
SDHCI controller) then upgrading the OS might add support for SDHC.

The SDHC->SDXC transition is a disc format change: FAT32 goes to exFAT.
If you reformat your card you can probably use it in a device that doesn't
officially support SDXC. FAT32 isn't even the limit: it's possible to
format up to 2TB, just not with the Windows format tool. The
bigger problem with FAT32 is the 4GB file size, which is likely to be a
problem for long videos. ext3 might be another option.

(SDXC also supports a newer Secure Digital spec, but that should be
backwards compatible with older readers)

TL;DR: try it and see, it may work.

Theo

Chris Green

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Aug 21, 2016, 5:33:03 AM8/21/16

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Yes, OP here, my searches turned up the above too. I.e. that one may
be able to make a larger (64Gb, 128Gb) SD card work by reformatting it
to FAT32. When my 64Gb SDs arrive I'll try it if they don't work 'as
is'. I have Linux boxes I can format with.

--
Chris Green
·

Nigel Wade

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Aug 22, 2016, 4:55:32 AM8/22/16

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On 20/08/16 12:02, Micky wrote:
> On Wed, 17 Aug 2016 23:15:01 +0100, Chris Green <c...@isbd.net> wrote:
>
>> Just about all of our Android devices seem to say that the maximum SD
>> card capacity is 32Gb. Is this a hard limit or is it just that 32Gb
>> is the maximum size tested?
>
> I don't know about phones, but windows XP could only read 32G unless
> you download and install a little program, while Vista could read 64G
> and probably higher. If you tried ot read 64G in normal XP**, it
> only read the first 32G.

Windows XP can read/write FAT filesystems in excess of 32GB.
Microsoft created an artificial limit of 32GB in the format.exe program so that it would not format a FAT partition beyond 32GB. The reason being that FAT beyond 32GB has to use a large cluster size, and this can potentially waste a lot of disk space (the cluster size is the minimum "quantum" of disk space allocation, a file containing 1 byte of information will occupy 1 cluster). FAT requires a cluster size of 32kB for > 32GB filesystems. Since NTFS only requires a 4kB cluster size for filesystems up to 16TB, it made some sense to impose the limit.

However, the implementation left a lot to be desired. For example, Microsoft didn't notify you at the time you attempted to format a partition > 32GB as FAT, only when the format actually reached the 32GB point on the disk and it then throws an error. Very annoying.

Using any other format mechanism (format.exe from a previous version of Windows, Linux etc) allows FAT partitions of greater than 32GB to be formatted and accessed on Windows XP.

>
> **I'm not sure what happens if you buy a 64G capable USB adapter and
> plug that into a USB port on normal XP.
>

I expect it would work perfectly well for read/write, but be unable to format beyond 32GB using the Microsoft supplied format.exe program.

Micky

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Aug 22, 2016, 11:15:49 AM8/22/16

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On Mon, 22 Aug 2016 09:55:30 +0100, Nigel Wade <n...@local.domain>
wrote:

>On 20/08/16 12:02, Micky wrote:
>> On Wed, 17 Aug 2016 23:15:01 +0100, Chris Green <c...@isbd.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Just about all of our Android devices seem to say that the maximum SD
>>> card capacity is 32Gb. Is this a hard limit or is it just that 32Gb
>>> is the maximum size tested?
>>
>> I don't know about phones, but windows XP could only read 32G unless
>> you download and install a little program, while Vista could read 64G
>> and probably higher. If you tried ot read 64G in normal XP**, it
>> only read the first 32G.
>
>Windows XP can read/write FAT filesystems in excess of 32GB.
>Microsoft created an artificial limit of 32GB in the format.exe program so that it would not format a FAT partition beyond 32GB. The reason being that FAT beyond 32GB has to use a large cluster size, and this can potentially waste a lot of disk space (the cluster size is the minimum "quantum" of disk space allocation, a file containing 1 byte of information will occupy 1 cluster). FAT requires a cluster size of 32kB for > 32GB filesystems. Since NTFS only requires a 4kB cluster size for filesystems up to 16TB, it made some sense to impose the limit.
>
>However, the implementation left a lot to be desired. For example, Microsoft didn't notify you at the time you attempted to format a partition > 32GB as FAT, only when the format actually reached the 32GB point on the disk and it then throws an error. Very annoying.
>
>Using any other format mechanism (format.exe from a previous version of Windows, Linux etc) allows FAT partitions of greater than 32GB to be formatted and accessed on Windows XP.

Very interesting. Sorry for getting it wrong. Glad you were here.

>
>>
>> **I'm not sure what happens if you buy a 64G capable USB adapter and
>> plug that into a USB port on normal XP.
>>
>
>I expect it would work perfectly well for read/write, but be unable to format beyond 32GB using the Microsoft supplied format.exe program.

I think you're thinking of non-SD devices, because SD cards that are
64G are all SDXC I think and they are all formatted in exFAT.

I brought up the USB adapter because I could choose one that was
64G-capable. I thought that was meeting the problem half-way, and
might work, as if the adapter had some built-in software that could
read exFAT, when I'll bet it's just a bunch of wires.

I have an XP laptop and an adapter and I could take a card out of
something to test, and since I've already updated the XP to read 64G,
I could rename the file (a .dll?) to test, but it's too much trouble.
;-) Somewhere in the XP newsgroup is a thread that I posted to,
maybe started, where iirc it refers to some problem or some
non-problem that reminded me to find this and install it. Only been a
month or two and I can't remember.

Daniel James

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Aug 27, 2016, 12:49:34 PM8/27/16

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In article <3335b7b25...@my.inbox.com>, Dave Higton wrote:
> No flash drive or flash card is made with an integral power of 2
> capacity.

Well ... yes and no. Almost every flash memory card (the 200GB SanDisk
one being the only exception of which I am aware) is sold as having a
power-of-two capacity -- just look at the 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, etc., cards
on the market. As you say, a little of the capacity is reserved for the
controller's wear-levelling activities, but the makers don't draw
attention to that by calling the cards 15GB, 30GB, etc.

PC SSDs with intelligent controllers do generally reserve space to
assist with their wear-levelling functions, so a 256GB flash chip might
be used in a nominally 240GB SSD -- SanDisk make one of those, for
example -- but that's not a 200GB SSD. You don't need to reserve 20% of
the chip's capacity for wear levelling.

Recently, I've been seeing more SSDs sold with 256GB, 512GB, etc.,
capacities and fewer with 240GB, 48GB, etc., and the newer cards really
do have larger capacities. I'm not sure whether that's because the wear
levelling has become cleverer and needs less reserved space to work
well, or because the makers have started using over-sized flash chips
so that they can sell the SSDs as having "standard" sizes.

The controllers in SD cards aren't as smart as the controllers in hard
disk replacement SSDs. They still do wear levelling, but it's not as
aggressive and doesn't need as much reserved space. About 3% would be
normal.

So, why do SanDisk sell a 200GB SD card, and what is the actual
capacity of the flash chips in it? I don't know ...

As far as I can see, though, the 200GB card is an oddity. The *only*
SanDisk flash memory card available in 200GB (or any non power-of-two)
capacity is their "Ultra UHS-I" micro-SD card, and that card is also
available in 256GB capacity. I wonder whether that card is a 4-chip
design and the 200GB card is actually a 192GB card in which one of the
chips is faulty? That could be the case if the card is particularly
hard or expensive to make and SanDisk want to salvage as many of the
reject cards as possible.

Weird.

--
Cheers,
Daniel.

Dave Higton

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Aug 27, 2016, 3:41:07 PM8/27/16

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In message <VA.00000bc...@me.invalid>

Daniel James <dan...@me.invalid> wrote:

>In article <3335b7b25...@my.inbox.com>, Dave Higton wrote:
>> No flash drive or flash card is made with an integral power of 2
>> capacity.
>
>Well ... yes and no. Almost every flash memory card (the 200GB SanDisk
>one being the only exception of which I am aware) is sold as having a
>power-of-two capacity -- just look at the 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, etc., cards
>on the market.

Yes, and my point is that your first example is 16 GB and not 16 GiB.

Dave

Daniel James

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Aug 28, 2016, 9:54:25 AM8/28/16

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In article <b9e359b65...@my.inbox.com>, Dave Higton wrote:
> Yes, and my point is that your first example is 16 GB and not 16 GiB.

OK, I missed that ... but IEEE 1541 prefixes are not commonly used by
manufacturers, especially manufacturers of storage devices, so I don't
think that's particularly telling.

I do take your point, though, that basing a card around an NGiB chip
and calling it an NGB card would give some elbow room for wear
levelling.

--
Cheers,
Daniel.

acant...@gmail.com

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Jun 19, 2018, 5:52:03 PM6/19/18

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My ZTE will support a Samsung 128 evo sd card but when I put my hc 16 GB sd card in it says exceeds max capacity. Ive had ths sd card in before and it worked just fine. Any suggestions on what to do or why this is doing this?! Thanks