Recording Sessions to SD card slot?

[oodelardeet]

Hi all,
I have a portable rig which includes a 13" Macbook Pro 2.53 Ghz running Snow Leopard and Pro Tools LE 8.0.3 on an MBox 2 Mini. Since the Mac has an SD card slot built in, I was wondering if I could use an SD card as my external drive and record sessions to it? Any thoughts on the matter would be appreciated. It would be mostly voiceover recording to an 8 gig SD card with a '6' speed rating, if that makes a difference. Thanks in advance for your feedback.
Regards,
Jon

[Craig F]

most likely the SD card reader is on the USB bus so it's unlikely to be reliable
but give it a try and see if it works

[Dism]

Found on the AppleInsider forums:

"The company notes that the new MacBook Pros have a maximum speed of 240 Mbit/s for SD media using the SD card slot, which easily exceeds the transfer rate of most SD media. For example, Class 2 media has a maximum transfer rate of 4 Mbit/s; Class 4 media has a maximum transfer rate of 4.8 Mbit/s; and Class 6 media has a maximum transfer rate of 45 Mbit/s."

So a class 6 card could probably work alright for small sessions.

[Grantica]

Did anyone figure this out? It would be way cool. I can't try it because I don't have a new MBP with the SD card slot.

[raiderrob]

One of the knocks on solid state RAM storage devices such as memory sticks or SD cards is that their read times are really good but because they write in a sequential manner, their write times are not so good. Certainly trying it will be the true test but I think the higher the load, the less acceptable this would be.

[oodelardeet]

Follow up report:
Hi all,
Thanks for all of your insights and feedback thus far. I have since recorded 5 voiceover sessions to the SD card. Most are just a few minutes long, however, one of them was about a half hour long as we were recording backup audio for an on camera training video. There were no crashes or errors. I also have recorded Logic compositions with Vienna Instruments using up to 16 instrument tracks and have had no issues either so far with the SD card as the write-to drive. Once again the card I am using is an 8 gig, speed class '6' SD card. I hope to hear of similar success stories from anyone else who might try this.
Regards,
Jon

[Dism]

Originally Posted by oodelardeet

Follow up report:
Hi all,
Thanks for all of your insights and feedback thus far. I have since recorded 5 voiceover sessions to the SD card. Most are just a few minutes long, however, one of them was about a half hour long as we were recording backup audio for an on camera training video. There were no crashes or errors. I also have recorded Logic compositions with Vienna Instruments using up to 16 instrument tracks and have had no issues either so far with the SD card as the write-to drive. Once again the card I am using is an 8 gig, speed class '6' SD card. I hope to hear of similar success stories from anyone else who might try this.
Regards,
Jon

Upon doing a bit more research, these 'class 6' cards should be able to handle the same load as a 7200 RPM drive, if the specs are true. The write speed of most 7200 RPM drives is around 45-50mbps, so if the 240mbps bus speed Apple claims is accurate, and a class 6 SD card can actually write at 45mbps, we're talking about a viable secondary disk solution.

Whether or not this is a good idea in the long run... well, I will certainly recommend backing up as frequently as possible.

[Dism]

Originally Posted by Dism

Upon doing a bit more research, these 'class 6' cards should be able to handle the same load as a 7200 RPM drive, if the specs are true. The write speed of most 7200 RPM drives is around 45-50mbps, so if the 240mbps bus speed Apple claims is accurate, and a class 6 SD card can actually write at 45mbps, we're talking about a viable secondary disk solution.

Whether or not this is a good idea in the long run... well, I will certainly recommend backing up as frequently as possible.

Ok, here's a bit more knowledge.

I've found some benchmarks comparing SD card speeds... but they all seem to be run from onboard a digital camera, and not through PCIe or eSATA. Some have even been testing via a USB card reader... which is going to be throttled by crappy USB bandwidth. Plus, it's entirely possible that even from inside a camera there will be bus speed limitations.

Bearing that in mind... the "extreme" "hi-speed" edition class 6 SD brands seem to be capable of 15-20mbps write speeds. Which is still pretty good, if it's consistant. Certainly not recommended for larger sessions, but for a small scratch drive for VO's... definitely viable.

If someone with a 15" MBP would be so gracious as to do some benchmarking via the cardslot, we could probably get a more realistic idea of what it's actually capable of.

[sogwap715]

oodelardeet,

did you encounter issues with pro tools not allowing you to designate the sd card as a recording volume? I purchased a ScanDisk Ultra II SDHC card rated a 'class 4' (no class 6 cards at local best buy or office depot) and couldn't record to it due to this. I tried deleting the digidesign databases and reformatting the sd card to NTFS. I still wasn't successful. I would like to be successful in using the SD cards as I am using a laptop with a 5400 rpm internal hard drive, no express slot, not firewire, no pcmcia, only usb ports and an SD slot. Obviously not ideal, but I would still like to be able handle some lightweight projects. I am running Pro tools LE 8.0.

[BradLyons]

On paper SD looks cool, but in the real world---they just aren't there right now. Someday it will happen I believe---but not right now.