X60/X61 SD/SDHC slot capacity and performance?

[SFWrtr]

Seeing as I got the WWAN option on my X61 tablet, I decided I'd also get an SD card to try out ReadyBoost(*) in Vista. Unfortunately, I can find no specs for the SD slot. The online manual for the unit says it is an SD slot, as does all the Lenovo hardware manuals and lit.

Anybody try putting high capacity cards in it, like 2GB or 4GB?
Anybody know any other information about the slot. (I gather it is not SDHC, otherwise Lenovo marketing would had assured that was on the machine.)


(*) Yes, I know there are reported problems, but I'm willing to try and I'd like to get a 4GB 133x card to try it with....

[xaveon]

Let me know how it goes. I'm thinking of doing the same thing with the 4GB SanDisk Extreme III card.

[aphex]

i tried an 8gb SDHC last night in my 1-day old X60 tablet, no luck.

[DavidE]

Anybody try putting high capacity cards in it, like 2GB or 4GB?

I use 2GB SD cards with my X60s all the time. No problems with the SanDisk, Kingston, and Lexar SD cards I've tried. The slot doesn't work with my MMC cards, which are slightly thinner than SD cards. I haven't tried any SDHC cards.

Since the SD slot doesn't appear to be faster than the hard drive (specs could help confirm this), you would probably be better off using a USB flash drive for ReadyBoost.

DavidE
www.davidenglish.com
www.beepzoid.com

[tinue]

A 4GB Sandisk Ultra II SDHC card works in my X60s (running Windows Vista).
While I didn't mesaure the read-speed of the card slot in MB/s, I can say for sure it is not good: When I capture pictures from the SanDisk card it is at least twice as fast through the camera than through the Thinkpad port.
Read and write speed with non-SDHC cards seems to be ok.

Regards, Martin

[tomh009]

Martin, are you saying that standard SD cards work faster than SDHC cards? Would you be willing to do a quick speed test -- copy 1 GB of large files (photos, music etc) onto a card, and then from card to hard disk, and time each operation?

[SFWrtr]

[EEeeek... Cross-post here, with responses coming in before mine! -edited by SFWrtr]

I use 2GB SD cards with my X60s all the time. No problems with the SanDisk, Kingston, and Lexar SD cards I've tried.

Thanks for the confirmation of the 2GB. Where these all 2GB? What were the speed ratings?

Since the SD slot doesn't appear to be faster than the hard drive)

Interesting...odd, even... What is the fastest SD card you put in?
133x? How did you measure the speed of the transfer to come to your conclusion?

(specs could help confirm this)

There are no Lenovo specs. Looking up the technology, though, it is reasonable to believe that the controller is attached to USB hub (typical implementation). 133x = 20MB/s, whereas USB goes at 60MB/s ideally, with no other traffic.

(you would probably be better off using a USB flash drive for ReadyBoost.

I don't think I'd like to have something dangling from my system, although I do see units that have fast write read times (18MB/26MB). Are you using one? Which?

Thanks for the info![/quote]

[DavidE]

>>Were these all 2GB? What were the speed ratings?

The 2GB Kingston (ASIN #: B000EOMXM0) is listed on Amazon as having an "up to 5 MB/sec read speed and 1.5 MB/sec write speed." I use three of these. They seem to be the best bargain. The 2GB SanDisk (model #: SDSDB-2048) is a standard speed generic card. I use two of these. And the 1GB Lexar (I don't have the model or ASIN #) is labeled as 32X. I have one of those. All work fine in my X60s.

>>Interesting...odd, even... What is the fastest SD card you put in? 133x? How did you measure the speed of the transfer to come to your conclusion?

I haven't tested this, so I could be wrong, but it was my impression that notebook SD-card drives can't deliver ReadyBoost performance that's faster than caching the same files from the hard drive. Since USB thumb drives are recommended for ReadyBoost, it may be an issue of a USB-bus-connected internal SD drive not passing through the full speed of the USB bus.

One of the biggest benefits for flash memory would come from speeding up the boot process. If flash storage is built into a hybrid hard drive (ReadyDrive) or into the system (Intel's 'Robson' Flash cache module), then Vista could use the flash to speed up the boot process. But for flash storage that can be removed, Vista has to use a different algorithm, because it can't count on the boot files being there (according to Joni Clark, a product marketing manager with Seagate Technologies, who I interviewed late last year).

>>I don't think I'd like to have something dangling from my system, although I do see units that have fast write read times (18MB/26MB). Are you using one? Which?

I would feel the same way about a ReadyBoost flash drive dangling off my notebook computer. I've spoken with Kingston and SanDisk and mentioned that a small, rounded nub-like USB drive would be good for just this situation. Kingston's DT Mini Fun is the smallest one I've seen.

I'm still using XP. I have an extra copy of Vista for my X60s, but I want to be sure I can retain all or most of the battery life. Also, there are some compatibility issues I'm waiting to be resolved.

DavidE
www.davidenglish.com
www.beepzoid.com

[tomh009]

David,

Could you do the file copy test I described above?

I'll contribute by doing the same test on the Delkin CardBus adapter with a few different CF cards.

[tinue]

Martin, are you saying that standard SD cards work faster than SDHC cards? Would you be willing to do a quick speed test -- copy 1 GB of large files (photos, music etc) onto a card, and then from card to hard disk, and time each operation?

That's indeed what I thought, but I was mistaken. I've done some quick read tests with:
a) The Thinkpad X60s SD slot as Card Reader
b) A USB-connected Nikon D80 camera as Card Reader
I used a Sandisk Ultra II SDHC 4GB and a Panasonic 2 GB "High Speed" card.
The tests were done with Windows Vista, using H2BenchW from Heise.

Result: Both cards delivered ca. 2.6 MBytes/s on the Thinkpad Port. In the camera the speed was ca. 7 MBytes/s for the Sandisk, and 5.6 MBytes/s for the Panasonic.
In addition, the Thinkpad was very sluggish during the tests in the Thinkpad Port, and the CPU was up to ca. 40%. Using the camera, the CPU was 1% and the usability of the machine was not impaired.

There seems to be a problem with the Vista SD Driver.
I didn't have speed problems with WinXP (before I switched to Vista), but at the same time the SDHC card didn't work at all (it was not recognized).

Update: I've just installed the "SD Card Rollup Package" (KB936825) from Microsoft, but it doesn't change a thing.

Regards, Martin

[SFWrtr]

Result: Both cards delivered ca. 2.6 MBytes/s on the Thinkpad Port. In the camera the speed was ca. 7 MBytes/s for the Sandisk, and 5.6 MBytes/s for the Panasonic.
In addition, the Thinkpad was very sluggish during the tests in the Thinkpad Port, and the CPU was up to ca. 40%. Using the camera, the CPU was 1% and the usability of the machine was not impaired.

There seems to be a problem with the Vista SD Driver.
I didn't have speed problems with WinXP (before I switched to Vista), but at the same time the SDHC card didn't work at all (it was not recognized).

Ah ha! If anybody has followed the turbo memory controversy on Gottabemobile, this may explain why the results are so crappy!

By "in the camera," do you mean you attached the camera to the USB port on your machine?

[tinue]

By "in the camera," do you mean you attached the camera to the USB port on your machine?

Yes, exactly.

[DavidE]

Could you do the file copy test I described above?

SanDisk SD Card
Hard drive to SD card = 3 minutes 33 seconds
SD card to hard drive = 5 minutes 21 seconds

Kingston SD Card
Hard drive to SD card = 4 minutes 12 seconds
SD card to hard drive = 5 minutes 16 seconds

SanDisk USB Flash Drive
Hard drive to USB flash drive = 1 minute 52 seconds
USB flash drive to hard drive = 1 minute 4 seconds

I performed only one test for each, but rebooted each time to eliminate possible speed-up errors due to caching. I also defragmented each time to eliminate possible speed-down errors due to fragmentation. The SanDisk USB Flash drive is a 2GB Cruzer Micro that's "enhanced for ReadyBoost."

DavidE
www.davidenglish.com
www.beepzoid.com

[SFWrtr]

Long analysis follows. Hope that's okay...

The 2GB Kingston (ASIN #: B000EOMXM0) is listed on Amazon as having an "up to 5 MB/sec read speed and 1.5 MB/sec write speed."

Write speed is 1.5MB/sec (.09GB/min). Predicted time 11.1 min to copy 1GB to SD, but you got 4 min 33 sec. That's twice as fast as rated!

Read speed is 5MB/sec (3GB/min). Predicted time to read 1GB is 3.3 minutes, but it took 5 min 16 sec, almost twice as long.

Looks like the read and write speed is about 3MB/sec.

The 2GB SanDisk (model #: SDSDB-2048) is a standard speed generic card.

I cannot find what SanDisk's standard speed is, even on their web site, so I cannot calculate if this is fast or slow for the card.

I used a Sandisk Ultra II SDHC 4GB ... it delivered ca. 2.6 MBytes/s -[USB via Camera] is 7 MBytes/s

SanDisk says: Write/Read performance: 9MB/sec, 10MB/sec
Tinue, your result is far below specifications. I wonder if there is a issue with using an SDHC card in the SD reader? Your USB camera results are lower than the spec, but it is being filtered by the camera, so we could probably assert the your result is nominal for that methodl. That your Panasonic speed was limited to the same speed as the probably faster Ultra is odd, esp. since the USB connection was slower. This could hint at an upper SD card reader performance limit.

The SanDisk USB Flash drive is a 2GB Cruzer Micro that's "enhanced for ReadyBoost."

The SanDisk web site posted ratings for this drive are
10MB/sec read .6GB/min
5MB/sec write .3GB/min

Predicted read time is 1 minute 40 seconds and you got 1 minute 4 seconds, definitely faster than spec.

Predicted write time is 3 minutes 20 seconds and you got 1 minute 52 seconds, much faster than predicted.

The flash drive is performing way ahead of specifications. Could SanDisk be dropping faster NAND into these? May-be.

I'm not sure what to make of the SD stats since we have one SD card (because of the lack of a standard SanDisk rating) and one SDHC card. Poor SDHC performance could be an incompatibility of running a SDHC on a SD drive (or just a Vista driver problem with SDHC). That the Panasonic card was limited is odd. I don't think we can yet conclude the SD reader hardware is slow, yet. The slower write on the Kingston is probably because the Kingston is not up to spec. This has been my experience with the brand - very inexpensive, a work horse but not a race horse. I guess the specification that says "up to" a certain speed means probably less in the field.

DavidE, can you please run test with a second known speed SD card, for example:

.1GB Lexar (I don't have the model or ASIN #) is labeled as 32X.

If you run the test, the standard result would be:

32x = .15MB/s * 32 = 4.8MB/sec = .288GB/min (read and write according to specs). This predicts 3.47 minutes read or write.

If anyone can please try a 60x, 80x, or 133x SD card test, that might find if there are limits to the reader.

[tomh009]

That's indeed what I thought, but I was mistaken. I've done some quick read tests with:
a) The Thinkpad X60s SD slot as Card Reader
b) A USB-connected Nikon D80 camera as Card Reader
I used a Sandisk Ultra II SDHC 4GB and a Panasonic 2 GB "High Speed" card.
The tests were done with Windows Vista, using H2BenchW from Heise.

Result: Both cards delivered ca. 2.6 MBytes/s on the Thinkpad Port. In the camera the speed was ca. 7 MBytes/s for the Sandisk, and 5.6 MBytes/s for the Panasonic.

OK, I grabbed H2BenchW as well. Testing on my X31:

Lexar 40x 1 GB CF in Delkin CardBus adapter: 6.9 MB/s
Sandisk Ultra II 2 GB CF in Delkin CardBus adapter: 11.0 MB/s

Lexar 40x 1 GB CF in X31 CF reader: 1.3 MB/s
Sandisk Ultra II 2 GB CF in X31 CF reader: 1.3 MB/s

And the CPU utilization was quite high (and the system fairly unresponsive) when using the built-in reader.

Clearly with the built-in card readers, the card itself is not the limiting factor. And I'm also thinking that I might run the Delkin adapter (with a decent CF card) with Vista as well ...

[tomh009]

I used a Sandisk Ultra II SDHC 4GB ... it delivered ca. 2.6 MBytes/s -[USB via Camera] is 7 MBytes/s

SanDisk says: Write/Read performance: 9MB/sec, 10MB/sec
Tinue, your result is far below specifications. I wonder if there is a issue with using an SDHC card in the SD reader? Your USB camera results are lower than the spec, but it is being filtered by the camera, so we could probably assert the your result is nominal for that methodl. That your Panasonic speed was limited to the same speed as the probably faster Ultra is odd, esp. since the USB connection was slower. This could hint at an upper SD card reader performance limit.

The hints are pretty strong IMHO. It could be SDHC ... or it might not be. Would be instructive to test a few cards with internal reader and with an external USB (or CardBus) reader. I'm guessing that the SD reader is maxing out at around 1.5 MB/s. This is double what the X31 CF reader can do, but still pretty low for ReadyBoost.

[SFWrtr]

Tomh009: The cardbus adapter, did it have a gold edge (that is, is it 32-bit)? In any case, your results are in spec. for the CF card ratings.

The slowing down on the built-in X31 CF card reader (if I understood correctly that it is a built-in CF reader) down to 1.3MB per second could be due to either a 1.1 USB interface or to an internal slow 16-bit PCMCIA interface. I'd vote for the former. What version of USB is on the X31?

As for the SD reader maxing out at 1.5MB/s, we have seen a read speed of 2.6MB/s on a 4GB SanDisk Ultra II (SDHC), about 3MB/s using a Kingston SD, and 4.6MB/s on the generic SanDisk SD card. Could be maxing at 4.2MB/s, but I'd reserve judgment until somebody tries a 32x, 60x, or 80x SD (not SDHC).

Thank you everybody! This is very interesting. For the moment I'm holding off buying an SD card until I see higher figures.

I'd like to see more data. Anybody else? Please chime in!

[tomh009]

Oh, yes, it really is CardBus. I have a bunch of old-style PCMCIA readers but they aren't much faster than the X31.

X31 has USB 2.0. So at least 2.0 is on the system ... but the built-in reader is slow enough to be used only for emergencies!

Sorry, I actually meant maxing out at 3.0 MB/s. I think I had the X31 on the brain at the time. But, yes, that standard Sandisk card did perform better than that, so that's not right, either.

P.S. I edited your topic title to hopefully attract a few more people (with SD cards) to this thread!

[SFWrtr]

Maybe internally it's attached to a 16-bit PCMCIA bus? Without disclosure on this, who can say. Interesting.

P.S. I edited your topic title to hopefully attract a few more people (with SD cards) to this thread!

's'okay with me, for your stated reason. Still, for new readers, the title was: "X60/X61 tablet SD Slot. SDHC? Highest cap. card accepted?"
I'm very interested in whether a 2GB or 4GB SD will work, whether a fast SD (60x, 80, 133x) will work at full speed, and whether a SDHC will work. (It's looking like there's a problem with SDHC by the data we've seen so far.)

[tomh009]

(It's looking like there's a problem with SDHC by the data we've seen so far.)

Or, to be more precise, at least one SDHC card, while readable, is performing well below specifications!

[SFWrtr]

Yes, yes, right. Thanks for the correction. I do hope that SDHC will work as I'd like to get a Lexar x133 Pro 4GB card...

[ymarker]

i have a ridata 150x 4gb sd card in my phone and it worked fine on the x60t. Didn't do any benchmarks on it though.

[SFWrtr]

i have a ridata 150x 4gb sd card in my phone and it worked fine on the x60t. Didn't do any benchmarks on it though.

From what I can tell, there are both SD and SDHC versions of 150x and 4GB. Please verify you are using the one marked SD. The best I could get from the net on this card is that it has a write speed of 11MB/s (75x) and a read speed of 22.5MB/s (150x). This is typical of all 150x cards I've seen so far.

Would you mind copying 1GB of files (approximate) to your RiData SD card using the built in SD reader, then copy it to a fresh directory on your X60t?


75x means that write is 660MB/min and the write to SD optimal should take 1 1/2 minutes.

At 150x, the read speed is twice as fast (1.35GB/min). and it should take about 40 seconds to complete the read at optimal speed.

I don't know how these speeds compare to the hard drive. That may be a limiter. So, YMarker, would you like to try the test, please?

[tinue]

Hello

At least on my system (X60s, Vista) it's got nothing to do with HC: The built-in reader is slow and consumes a lot of CPU while reading both HC and non-HC SD cards.

I've seen on other forums that people are using the built-in reader of the X60s successfully for ReadyBoost, so quite possibly it is an issue that is limited to my system. When I find time I'll try to fiddle a bit with my system. Possibly I'll even plug my old XP harddisk into the system and see how it goes there.

Update: I've tried with WinXP (pretty much factory restore updated to current Lenovo drivers and Windows patches). Result: I get 3.1 MBytes/s for non-HC cards, and I can't read HC.

--> I wonder why any el-cheapo external USB Card reader delivers decent performance, but the built-in reader of my expensive Thinkpad doesn't?

Regards, Martin

[tomh009]

I wonder why any el-cheapo external USB Card reader delivers decent performance, but the built-in reader of my expensive Thinkpad doesn't?

And that's exactly the case with the X31 CF reader as well ...

Now, when I click on Safely Remove Hardware (in Windows XP), I note that on the X31, it is showing "PCMCIA IDE/ATAPI Controller", and when I click on Properties, it further tells me "on Ricoh R/RL/5C476(II) or Compatible CardBus Controller". So it looks like on the X31, the CF card reader might be connected to a 16-bit PCMCIA controller.

Can you see what the card reader is connected to on the X60s, using a similar technique?

[tinue]

Can you see what the card reader is connected to on the X60s, using a similar technique?

According to the device manager, the "SDA Standard Compliant SD Host Controller" is connected to the "Intel 82801 PCI Bridge".

So it looks like the adapter is a PCI device on the southbridge. So far there is no obvious reason why it is so slow.

Regards, Martin

[DavidE]

DavidE, can you please run test with a second known speed SD card, for example:

.1GB Lexar (I don't have the model or ASIN #) is labeled as 32X.

Lexar 32x SD Card
Hard drive to SD card = 3 minutes 4 seconds
SD card to hard drive = 5 minutes 20 seconds

Because the Lexar is a 1GB card that formats to less than 1GB. I used 500MB of files and doubled the times.

The processor, RAM, hard drive, and operating system could be a factor when comparing card speeds across systems, so it might be useful if we note these along with the tests. My X60S (1704-69U) has a low-voltage 1.66GHz Core Duo (not the Core 2 Duo) processor, 2GB of RAM, 5400 rpm 160GB hard drive (swapped out from the standard 100GB drive), and Windows XP.

DavidE
www.davidenglish.com
www.beepzoid.com

[ymarker]

i have a ridata 150x 4gb sd card in my phone and it worked fine on the x60t. Didn't do any benchmarks on it though.

From what I can tell, there are both SD and SDHC versions of 150x and 4GB. Please verify you are using the one marked SD. The best I could get from the net on this card is that it has a write speed of 11MB/s (75x) and a read speed of 22.5MB/s (150x). This is typical of all 150x cards I've seen so far.

Would you mind copying 1GB of files (approximate) to your RiData SD card using the built in SD reader, then copy it to a fresh directory on your X60t?


75x means that write is 660MB/min and the write to SD optimal should take 1 1/2 minutes.

At 150x, the read speed is twice as fast (1.35GB/min). and it should take about 40 seconds to complete the read at optimal speed.

I don't know how these speeds compare to the hard drive. That may be a limiter. So, YMarker, would you like to try the test, please?

Don't have the x60t anymore as I'm upgrading to x61t. Just wanted to let everyone know that the card works on the sd card reader for x60 (and thus x61).

[SFWrtr]

DavidE, can you please run test with a second known speed SD card, for example:

Lexar 32x SD Card
Hard drive to SD card = 3 minutes 4 seconds
SD card to hard drive = 5 minutes 20 seconds

Because the Lexar is a 1GB card that formats to less than 1GB. I used 500MB of files and doubled the times.

Thanks, DavidE!

32x = .15MB/s * 32 = 4.8MB/sec = .288GB/min (read and write according to specs). This predicts 3.47 minutes read or write.

The write to the SD card is faster than the spec by about 20%; for read, it is slower than spec by about 25%.

This information coupled with the discovery that the SD card reader might be on a 16-bit PC Card bus internally [per tomh000] does indicate that there is a maximum speed somewhere. A 32-bit cardbus PCMCIA will probably get faster speeds.

As for the CPU spike... I'm speculating, but isn't the data on an SD card encoded? What if the encode/decode were done in memory instead of the reader device? To add to the speculation, if the CPU is required then using the card for ReadyBoost could very well cause real performance values. Again, that's speculation,in light of which the advice to use a USB memory key for turbo memory might be sagely.

Please, anybody want to try a 60x, 80x, 133x in the slot?[/b]

[stephenyeong]

SD Reader topic start again ?
Don't try to use Build-in SD Reader for Ready Boost. Although it can read/write at about 7MB/s with my Class 6 2GB SD.

I've test the SD Card Reader on my X60, it is slow compare with my USB card reader and cause too mush CPU interrupt (I post a reply before).
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... highlight=

I think this is cause by the old discontinued Ricoh R5C822 chip (in my case X60)
http://www.ricoh.com/LSI/product_pcif/p ... index.html