64GB Micro SDXC compatible in J3? Maybe SO!!

[Freeze]

I know smartphones and cowon j3 isn't exactly the same but this article gives encouraging hope that it will work.

Upon inserting the card in my phone I received an error notification stating that the card was damaged. After a quick trip to Settings to format the card, the phone recognised the SDXC card and showed 59.46GB of storage available. A number of people expressed concerns that the phone may show 59GB of space, but not be able to utilise more than the first 32GB of storage, so I loaded up 47GB before trialling it in the phone to be sure. Full disclosure: my SGSII is Rooted and running a custom ROM, however there are no mods or hacks included to enable SDXC support.

So after all of that, how is it running in the phone? Virtually perfectly, so far as I can tell. I can browse all of the directories from within file managers, all my apps that utilise the external SD card continue to work as per usual, music and media plays without issue, HD video recorded to the card is identical to the same videos recorded to the internal SD. The only issue I've found so far is that the camera doesn't seem to be able to work out how many minutes of video or pictures can be taken with the available storage.

There is more good news though - I've used it in my Galaxy S on Froyo, and my HTC Sensation, and it works fine on both of these devices also (the Sensation is pure stock, the SGSI is on Darky's custom ROM, again this is not a ROM with any kind of support for SDXC baked in).

I think it was dfkt that said sdxc requires another pin and will not work when i thought it could work. Guess he isn't always right

I'm not sure why Sandisk isn't shouting this from the rooftops, to be perfectly honest. Certainly the business case for massively increasing the market for your product seems fairly clear. Perhaps its because the vaunted claims of 30MB/s transfer speeds are unattainable if you elect not to use the default exFat formatting

It is looking like sdxc is compatible with sdhc but you do not get as big of a speed increase as you do with dedicated sdxc devices. But you still get a nice speed increased compared to 32gb sdhc. So anything the sdhc ran the sdxc can run plus do it a little faster. Can anyone test this out?

[Urne]

According to Razorblader on ABI a 64GB SDXC card should work in the Clip+ and Fuze, so yes there is a hope.

If you read following posts on the next page you can also find out how and why that is possible. I hope this will work with the Cowon J3 too, but given the prices of the SDXC cards right now and the risk implied I won't spend money on testing that out right now.

PS: This is only possible with the current 64GB SDXC cards that follows the SD 3.0 Specifications SDHC cards also do. SDXC cards which follows the new 4.0 specification won't work. Read more info about that in the link I posted.

[Enzyme]

nice, good to somebody's working on hard facts and testing rather than speculation and incomplete theory, gj

[Urne]

Earlier today user kp-j3 posted the following on >>ABi Forums.

Originally Posted by kp-j3, anythingbutipod.com

SUCCESS!

(Your mileage may vary)

Using firmware 2.26, and a SanDisk 64GB Mobile Ultra MicroSDXC Class 6 card.

I formatted it in fat32, and loaded up approximately 6000 songs on it. I was using sleep mode, so the manually initiated database rebuild attempt did not work, it just blew out the old database for my 32gb card. Turned sleep mode off, shut down. Started and database built with no issues.

Went from approximately 5800 songs with 32gb internal 32gb external to almost 9000 songs with a 32gb/64gb combo.

It seems a little slower starting song 8890, but I guess it's because it's at the end of the card.

I plan to spend some money on a 64gb microSDXC card (the same model actually) after Christmas as well and try to confirm this. The fact that someone got their microSDXC card working on the J3 is great news though!

[andrew_berge]

Originally Posted by kp-j3

It seems a little slower starting song 8890, but I guess it's because it's at the end of the card.

That just... doesn't make any sense to me. It's not a hard drive, speed should be the same (at least noticeably) no matter where on the card the data is.

But i guess there could be a variety of things that could have slowed it down. Large, high bitrate file, hi-rez albumart, etc.

[nieh]

This would be awesome if it works with all SDXC stuff. Is there anything higher than 64GB on the market yet?

[Urne]

Originally Posted by nieh

This would be awesome if it works with all SDXC stuff. Is there anything higher than 64GB on the market yet?

There is no higher capacity than 64gb of microSDXC variant yet though SDXC cards already exist at 128gb. As for whether it will be compatible with the J3's SDHC slot, this solely depends on the specification the microSDXC card is based on. The current batch of 64gb microSDXC cards is based on the SD 3.0 specification but we will probably soon see cards based on the SD 4.0 specification - These cards will all be incompatible with the J3's microSDHC slot.

@andrew_berge: I also wondered quite a bit about the issue kp-j3 described but figured there probably would be another explanation. It's good to know nevertheless though.

[Enzyme]

does anyone know if sdcards can be piggybacked\run in parallel?

what i mean is wiring up two cards or more to produce a larger storage area, im not sure how simple the circuitry is inside those cards, although i do have an old 1gb waiting to be hacked up in the name of scientific investigation.

[TheDarkSide]

I really need to get a 64gb micro SDXC card.

[davide37]

Originally Posted by Freeze

I know smartphones and cowon j3 isn't exactly the same but this article gives encouraging hope that it will work.

It is looking like sdxc is compatible with sdhc but you do not get as big of a speed increase as you do with dedicated sdxc devices. But you still get a nice speed increased compared to 32gb sdhc. So anything the sdhc ran the sdxc can run plus do it a little faster. Can anyone test this out?

Putting the SanDisk 64gb micro sdxc in the adaptor and then plugging it in my PC's SD card slot came up with just 32gb storage and no fat32 option for format. I then put it in an Android smartphone and this seemed to format it successfully to its full capacity. I put the card back in the SD adaptor and successfully transferred over 40gb of mp3 and video. I then put the card in my J3 and was able to access all the files I transferred from the PC without any obvious playback stuttering. However, when I tried accessing the 64gb micro sdxc in the J3 via USB, I get an error message saying that the card needs to be formatted. If I put the card back in the SD card reader I'm able to access and the micro sdxc without any problem. So, the 64gb micro sdxc works in the J3, but transferring files onto the card does involve using the SD card reader which is a minor drawback.

[kp-j3]

Originally Posted by davide37

Putting the SanDisk 64gb micro sdxc in the adaptor and then plugging it in my PC's SD card slot came up with just 32gb storage and no fat32 option for format. I then put it in an Android smartphone and this seemed to format it successfully to its full capacity. I put the card back in the SD adaptor and successfully transferred over 40gb of mp3 and video. I then put the card in my J3 and was able to access all the files I transferred from the PC without any obvious playback stuttering. However, when I tried accessing the 64gb micro sdxc in the J3 via USB, I get an error message saying that the card needs to be formatted. If I put the card back in the SD card reader I'm able to access and the micro sdxc without any problem. So, the 64gb micro sdxc works in the J3, but transferring files onto the card does involve using the SD card reader which is a minor drawback.

I definitely went through a couple of formatters (again) before I found a fat32 one that would do 64gb. I thought once it was formatted, I pulled it from the SD to microSD adapter, stuck it in the j3 and loaded it from there, but I just confirmed that I didn't, the microSD card is unrecognizable from xp or 2008 server, so it looks like you have to pull it and put it in the adapter to load.

[Danfried]

Gee, so if I want to put music onto a 64 gig card that I've already formatted to FAT32, I still have to use a card reader? Or has anyone with Windows 7 tried writing to the card while it is in the J3, hooked up to a PC?

[kp-j3]

Originally Posted by Danfried

Gee, so if I want to put music onto a 64 gig card that I've already formatted to FAT32, I still have to use a card reader? Or has anyone with Windows 7 tried writing to the card while it is in the J3, hooked up to a PC?

Just tested with windows 7, same thing as the others, it reports a 28.25 gig raw partition while the card is in the J3.

It's going to change my strategy a little bit, in that I'll put relatively static stuff on the card once, and use the internal memory for transient storage. I find myself changing stuff out less and less as the amount of storage goes up.

I would think it could be fixed in firmware if Cowon wanted to.

[Danfried]

Well, I went ahead myself and bought the same card as everyone else -- a Sandisk Mobile Ultra 64 GB microSDXC card, Class 6. I'll confirm it works with my laptop's internal SD slot (using an adaptor), but I have the same problem as kp did when I put it inside my J3 and then connect it via USB.

Nonetheless, the J3 has no problems with it in normal operation. I've adopted the same strategy as kp -- I've put around 50 gigs of my music on the Sandisk card, while using internal storage for podcasts and those genres of music I'm more likely to add to. This was pretty easy for me because the folders I'd used to organize my music were already arranged by genre. For example, I don't often add music to my Classical collection anymore, so I put my classical folder on the Sandisk card, while movie soundtracks went into internal storage.

I'm using Windows 7 32-bit Ultimate, and my J3 is the 32 GB Black model.

[Adoby]

Yet another confirmation that the 64GB class 6 SanDisk SDCX card work fine in the J3!

I am a Linux user, latest Ubuntu, and I used the utility GParted to format the card to fat32.

When I connect the J3 via USB to the computer, I can see the full capacity of the card. In fact I just transfered around 50GB to it using USB with the card in the player. So I don't need to use a card reader to update the contents of the card.

So I can use a reformatted 64GB SDCX card without any issues at all!

Nice!