Jolla-Tablet, 32GB limit on SD card

asked 2014-11-20 07:40:55 +0200

ahab
141 ●2 ●3 ●5

updated 2014-12-05 22:24:56 +0200

pulsar
755 ●32 ●53 ●59

Hello out there,

as one of the early sailors, I'd like to know why SD cards are restricted to SDHC, i.e. to a maximum of 32GB. Is there any chance that this will change before the tablet gets delivered, or afterwards, e.g. by a firmware update? I'd be extremely happy to see SDXC cards supported.

Cheers & thumbs up :-)

Jürgen

Edited: I assume that transferring files to the tablet from an external storage using OTG is not affected by the type of file system on the tablet. But what are the consequences of using btrfs with regard to mounting the device on my laptop as a usb mass storage, i.e. do I then need a btrfs driver on my laptop (OSX, sorry ;-) or is this transparently handled by the usb driver stack itself?

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10

you can work with sdxc cards if they're reformatted on the Jolla phone. The issue is the ex-FAT filesystem rather than the card itself

Most likely going to be the same for the tablet

r0kk3rz ( 2014-11-20 08:12:43 +0200 )edit

Thanks a lot for your fast and helpful clarification!! :-)

ahab ( 2014-11-20 08:15:50 +0200 )edit

5

Yeah Ive spoken to guys running 128gb sdxc btrfs fornatted cards on the Jolla Phone. The issue with that is you cant swap the card into another device which likely wont support btrfs

r0kk3rz ( 2014-11-20 08:21:48 +0200 )edit

r0kk3rz can you promote your comment to an answer (or better yet combine them and write as an answer)

ymb ( 2014-11-20 09:02:12 +0200 )edit

rokk3rz: You could also work around it by installing exFAT drivers on the device but you'd need to build the package yourself or use some community build.

Melker Narikka ( 2014-11-20 09:45:30 +0200 )edit

6

answered 2014-11-28 05:36:18 +0200

anandrkris

7835 ●86 ●158 ●140

http://twitter.com/anandr...

updated 2014-11-28 05:37:55 +0200

I read elsewhere that there is a licensing issue / cost in supporting > 32GB. Now there is a new stretch goal to support 128 GB.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jolla-tablet-world-s-first-crowdsourced-tablet#activity

Goal #1 - $1,500,000: MicroSDHC support up to 128GB

Once we reach the first goal, every Jolla Tablet will be upgraded to support microSDHC cards up to 128GB! You’ll never have to worry about running out of space again. Currently Jolla Tablet supports cards up to 32GB, besides having 32GB internal storage.

Stretch Goal

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answered 2014-11-28 09:09:16 +0200

RobNas
1151 ●40 ●48 ●53

updated 2014-11-28 09:09:53 +0200

I think it's because of FAT32 filesystem. This filesystem is free of use, and doesn't support volumes >32GB. Exfat is the official filesystem that's been used for microsd cards and USB-sticks >32GB. But there are royalties involved... Another benefit exfat (EXtended File Allocation Table) has (and that interests me) is it support files >4GiB. What does this means for us: copy complete movies (1080P) to SD. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

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3

FAT32 works with discs up to 8 TiB. Just the Windows native formatting tool is restricted to 32 GiB and forces you to use exFat on bigger discs.

Matthias ( 2014-11-28 10:06:50 +0200 )edit

FAT32 is limited to 4GiB files, which may be an important consideration for some users.

strongm ( 2014-12-02 13:35:18 +0200 )edit

That file size limit doesn't have anything to do with the max capacity of the card, though.

Alex-S ( 2015-02-27 14:12:19 +0200 )edit

2

answered 2014-11-28 18:47:16 +0200

shmerl
9435 ●44 ●70 ●69

updated 2014-11-28 18:47:52 +0200

For the reference, Samsung is working on Windows driver for F2FS which is intended as a free and flash friendly filesystem for SD cards and other portable storage. But it wasn't yet declared stable, so I'd recommend using other common filesystems. Such as UDF: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Disk_Format

It supports big volumes and should also work on Windows.

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The issue with UDF as I understand is that it is not supported by Sailfish OS. Wish they at least included support for the filesystem in the OS, since they are saving from paying exFat licensing...

dimitridv ( 2015-01-29 17:09:51 +0200 )edit

0

answered 2014-11-28 18:10:07 +0200

ossi1967

15990 ●198 ●253 ●259

updated 2014-11-28 18:10:37 +0200

Answer to your edit wrt to the file system used for mass storage:

Yes, but. :)

USB mass storage would require your laptop (or any other computer you attach the tablet to) to handle the file system the tablet uses. A btrfs formated partition (SD card or internal) is only accessible via mass storage if your laptop 'speaks' btrfs. (One of the reasons - if not the only one - why FAT has such a long life on USB sticks.)

I'd expect that the tablet uses MTP just as the Jolla Phone does. MTP works no matter which file system there is on the attached device.

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5

I'll just note that MTP and works usually can't be used in the same sentence. :)

On the other hand sshfs over USB networking provides the same filesystem independent functionality and works just fine. :)

MartinK ( 2014-11-28 18:13:47 +0200 )edit

@MartinK: ;) I've heard that some ppl have issues with MTP. I'm lucky, for me it just works. (OTOH, seems that both methods have their problems, mass storage as well as MTP.)

ossi1967 ( 2014-11-28 19:59:44 +0200 )edit

I have a basketfull of USB memory sticks and guess what, no FAT devices out there. No need, you see. If a device cannot handle ext(some-N)fs then it is time to change your OS.

juiceme ( 2014-11-28 20:38:35 +0200 )edit

1

I don't like MTP. It's unstable, slow and asks me things it doesn't have to ask. One of the first things I did on my Samsung Galaxy S3 was fixing MTP with a special app that could use the SD-card mounted as mass storage. After that I've didn't encountered issues.

RobNas ( 2014-11-28 21:10:28 +0200 )edit

Jolla-Tablet, 32GB limit on SD card

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