Database Users

Defrag Storage Card, Don't Do It.

This is just a quick heads up. It was new to me and I had never came across the issue before on here, so I am posting my results.
I was doing some routine maintenance on my PC and I had accidentally left one of my external USB Stick drives in the machine. I noticed that in the Defrag options, it now gave me an option to Defrag the external drive. I thought to myself, thats kinda cool, I bet my 6gb Micro SD card on my phone could benift from a good defrag. I quickly popped my Micro SD card from my phone, plunked it into a USB Key Reader and told Diskeeper to Defrag the Micro Card. I was thinking, this should be great, I have thousands of files on my Micro Card, a good Defrag should be a cool thing. A few mins later it said it was done so I pulled it out and put it in back in my phone.
The next day I went to launch TomTom and it took 5 mins just to launch the app. I thought it had froze or something. I was fighting with it, driving me nuts. I re-installed TomTom, still taking 5-8mins now to load the app. When I tried to get directions it would take up to a min just to plot a route. (should only take a few seconds) I re-flashed the phone with a new ROM, then reinstalled TomTom and it did not help at all. Everything on the storage card was taking forever to load. Even the music apps were bogging down really badly.
Today, I yanked the Micro Card out of the phone, placed it in a USB key and copied the contents to a temp Dir on my desktop, formated the card, then wrote some data to the card and formated again.
Finally I put all my data from the temp Dir back onto the card and put the card back in my phone. Launched TomTom and took about 5 seconds rather than 5 mins to load. Everything is back to perfect.
I was hoping to Increase speeds with the Defrag of the Micro SD card and in fact it killed it horribly.

Lol, good to know. I would have thought the same thing!

a little common sense would have told you that would be a bad idea.
defragging is designed to 'defragment' files and put the most used files all together at the start of the drive. meaning a hdd head doesn't have to do a lot of skipping about for one file. then yet more skipping to find the next file, and a whole load more skipping to find different pieces of that file, etc etc.
the fact that solid state media doesn't have a drive head renders defragmenting unnecessary, plus as SSDs also have a limited number of write cycles the excessive writing required to move files around the card reduces its lifespan.
hope this helps

It depends
After owning several Pocket PCs with various expansion types, defragging has it's benefits and it's pitfalls.
(The following comments are based on percieved experience. I've not done any benchmarking.)
I've found using cheap card readers can definitely cause problems with cards, particularly when defragging. It can result in various errors in the files and sometimes even render the card unreadable/unwritable. Even reformatting has no effect. To solve the problem I've often had to use a digital camera to reformat the card before it can be read/written by a PC via card reader.
Multi-media files seem to be the type of file that benefits most from a contiguous file that needs to be read/written by the Windows Mobile device. Particularly video. Why this is so, I do not know. But when watching video or listening to audio skipping and stuttering seem to be much less aparent when the file is contiguous. Also, I've been able to resurrect some .jpg files unreadableby my WM device by doing a defrag. Again, no idea why.
Almost any file that needs to be constantly read seems to benefit from a contiguous file, e.g. GPS maps.
Safest way to make files contiguous is to copy the contents of the card to a hard disk, reformat the card, then rewrite to the card.
Just my 2 cents.
Would be interested in anyone else's observations, particularly with media files.

Defragging files on flashcards is pointless - skipping from sector to sector in a row takes as much time as to skip into random sectors...
Frequent writes on cards descrease their lifetime... So that - defragging anything else than hard disks is harmful for media.

maybe unrelated, but is the option "encrypt files in the storage" (or something sounds like that) from within the windows mobile's settings pose any danger? i.e. conflicting with PIM backup files etc.
thanks

Please read
Just found this article

dave852 said:
a little common sense would have told you that would be a bad idea.
defragging is designed to 'defragment' files and put the most used files all together at the start of the drive. meaning a hdd head doesn't have to do a lot of skipping about for one file. then yet more skipping to find the next file, and a whole load more skipping to find different pieces of that file, etc etc.
the fact that solid state media doesn't have a drive head renders defragmenting unnecessary, plus as SSDs also have a limited number of write cycles the excessive writing required to move files around the card reduces its lifespan.
hope this helps
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well said, SD cards and USB drives are flash drives and as so they don't need defragmentation and also as it was mentioned in the quote, it reduces it's lifespan.
Cheers

With Sandisk offering a 5-year limited warranty for their ordinary microSDHC and a 10-year limited warranty on their Ultra microSDHC cards and an expected minimum life of 15 years and maximum of 75 years (according to a Sandisk forum moderator) does it really matter what you do?
With storage memory sizes and formats moving so fast, who expects to keep using these things bought today on a daily basis on 5 or even 10 years' time?

Defragmentation error - lost clusters

I have Wizcode Defragment and ScanDisk on my HD2, nearly every time that I defrag I get an error message stating 'Errors were found on volume "storage card". The volume cannot be defragmented. Please check the volume for errors first and try defragmenting again'.
I then run ScanDisk which finds a number of invalid/lost clusters, yesterday there were over 200 lost clusters and today 27.
Is this anything to be concerned about? If so, what steps should I take to remedy?
Thank you for your assistance.

u defrag the Storage Card while it's in your HD2?

denizenx said:
u defrag the Storage Card while it's in your HD2?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes. With Wizcode Defragment Mobile I do not think there is an alternative.

defrag ing your sd card will reduce its life fairly significantly.flash memory has a limited number of write cycles, so defragmenting will use up quite a significant number of these cycles.
but more to the point .... my card always comes up as containing errors whenever I put it in my pc card reader, and asks if I want to fix it. it has been doing this for around 2 years and I've always chosen no, and never had any issues.

samsamuel said:
defrag ing your sd card will reduce its life fairly significantly.flash memory has a limited number of write cycles, so defragmenting will use up quite a significant number of these cycles.
but more to the point .... my card always comes up as containing errors whenever I put it in my pc card reader, and asks if I want to fix it. it has been doing this for around 2 years and I've always chosen no, and never had any issues.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for your reply. I was not aware that defraging a card reduced its life.

no worries.
don't lose any sleep over it,I believe the rewrite cycles are somewhere in the region of 10,000 cycles, so one or two defrags is neither here nor there, but I know how addictive de fragging can be, so doing the whole card even once per week will soon mount up.
personally if I were you and you are worried, I'd use the pc to scan and fix the card.

yeah forget about dragging your card.
get a kettle and a card reader.
copy thee contents of the card to your pc (in a new folder some where)@ put the kettle on while its copying. when is done format your card copy the contents back again to your nice shiney clean card. go make a cup of tea while they are copying back
the card will now be defragged

Apart from being a little harmful, defragmenting flash memory is also useless as there are no moving parts to suffer from fragmentation.

right
I concur. Defragging volumes on solid state media, like anything other than conventional harddisks, is not in any way contributing in any practical performance increase.
There are some benchmark tools for winmo out there. Just wait untill your card is realy fragged, run the benchmark, defrag, and run the test again. You will see no performance increase.
As stated, it's the moving parts that hate fragmented volumes, your HD2 has none, beside the buttons when you press them.
You shouldn't bother.
You should however get a solid state drive (SSD) for your desktop or laptop. It'll make you happy.
Broke, but happy.
(Check tests on internet, there is quite a lot difference between SSD's)
Best to spend that time researching performance of different SD cards. I for instance am very content with my 8 GB Transcend SDHC, some kind of superspeed series. It writes allmost 20MB/s in my desktop cardreader.
Nice.
It realy doesn't care what part of the 8 GB it needs to access to get you your file. I think I saw some article stating the difference is measured in µs. I don't think you can notice µs's, even when they bring their entire family of µs's.
Research tweaking cache sizes and pagepool. Might help with performance, depending on how you use your device.
Hope this helps.

Thank you all for your helpful advice.

Wizcode Defragment

Anyone ever use this utility?? It seems like it would be a great tool to use!!
http://www.wizcode.com/devblog/comments/wizcode_announces_defragment_mobile_beta

talon4x4 said:
Anyone ever use this utility?? It seems like it would be a great tool to use!!
http://www.wizcode.com/devblog/comments/wizcode_announces_defragment_mobile_beta
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why don't you install it and give it a shot? Then let us all know how it goes.
By the way, they do have a support forum. Here's a direct link to the Defrag topic -> http://www.wizcode.com/forums/viewforum/35/

It's an excellent utility tool, although one glad to have only when need arises. It is great for scanning the SD card for errors and repairing them, as directory FAT table can causes mayhem when out-of-whack. There's actually two copies of the directory that PMP checks for also.
Finally, as controversial as defragging a SD card can generate, there's no question everything runs faster and smoother done once in a while or after adding/deleting large files.
Handago regularly substancial discounts and Wizcode has 50% off sales.

Looks like mines already too screwed up to be helped

I think I'll hold off until I get a larger card. Right now I only have a 2gb card which isn't big enough for anything so I only have a couple programs installed to it. Which means it probably isn't too heavily fragmented.
Thanks for the info!!

PMP is very picky about defragging ONLY an error-free card. Running the error scan (select repair) even several times until the full report shows 0 errors. Then, the defrag can process.
Mounting the same card in card reader on a PC will very likely also complain about errors or even suggest reformat.

wouldn't it be easier to back up your sd card on your pc the format the card and copy your files back to the sd card.

Directory errors on a 2GB SD card with just music and videos and directory errors on a large 8/16/32GB card with majority of applications, Windows system dll's off-loaded to SD, etc are two entirely different scenarios.
Wiping and reload is obvious solution for one, but much, much more can be at stake grappling with damaged directory data (SD cards have no controllers like CompactFlash, so the directory is all there is).
Even copying a filled 16GB SD card WITHOUT errors to PC folder can be tricky, frustrating experience. Some programs won't transfer. Some lose licenses. I've found copying blocks of data one-at-a-time essential for success, paying particular attention to Application Data, caches, thumbnails and any files made up of minuscule data bits.
It's not the videos that's troublesome, it's system files constantly accessed that can crumble.
Fixing errors BEFORE attempting copying a 16GB SD to new 32GB SD helps a smooth transition, which isn't as rudimentary as would seem.

I don't understand how files get fragmented on a sd. There is no moving parts like a hard drive. I belive there is no gain from trying to defrag a sd card. you are better off checking file intergity than trying to defrag.

bmhome1 said:
Fixing errors BEFORE attempting copying a 16GB SD to new 32GB SD helps a smooth transition, which isn't as rudimentary as would seem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is fixing disk errors not defragmenting. Defragmenting is physically moving pieces of files so they can be accessed faster. sd cards don't pull and dump files like a hard drive they are accessed at locations on the sd. no moving parts so there is really no way for them to get fragmented. Solid state drives work the same way there is no reason to ever defragment a SSD. As always with transfering files there is alway a chance of data loss or corruption weather file integrity is good or bad.

Assassin5150 said:
sd cards don't pull and dump files like a hard drive they are accessed at locations on the sd. no moving parts so there is really no way for them to get fragmented. Solid state drives work the same way there is no reason to ever defragment a SSD.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is not true. Fragmentation occurs in solid state memory, same as HDDs. Fragmentation is due to the way the file system works, not because a drive is mechanical or not.
http://www.wizcode.com/articles/comments/flash_memory_fragmentation_myths_and_facts/
Same goes with SSD's. They fragment, and just because there are no mechanical parts, does not mean you will not see a performance drop due to fragmentation.
"It is a misconception that SSD does not suffer from file system fragmentation. . . While this is a significant improvement, mechanical seek time only makes up a part of total access time . . . Zero mechanical seek time certainly does not mean zero I/O time. No matter how fast an SSD can be, its I/O time can never be zero. File system fragmentation affects I/O time in an SSD even when the mechanical seek time is zero."
http://rtcmagazine.com/articles/view/101053

This is a quote fron Intel. Do I need to defragment my Intel® Mainstream Solid-State Drives (using Windows* Disk Defragmenter* or similar program)?
No. SSD devices, unlike traditional HDDs, see no performance benefit from traditional HDD defragmentation tools. Using these tools simply adds unnecessary wear to the SSD. It is recommended that you disable any automatic or scheduled defragmentation utilities for your Intel SSD.
http://www.intel.com/support/ssdc/hpssd/sb/CS-029623.htm#5
Corsair also suggest that defragmenting should not be done as well.
The whole point of defragmenting is to move files on a standard hard drive so they can be accessed faster by the limitations of a mechanical hard drive.

It seems that defragmentation of an SSD from a performance standpoint is debatable.
But you are saying that solid state devices do not create fragments, which is false.

by design they fragment. It's called wear leveling to prevent wear from one sector of the memory block or page. if not it would use one specific block or page over and over causing premature failure. all flash memory and ssd use the same type of wear leveling. Yes defragmenting flash memory or a ssd will not increase performance and will cause more wear doing more harm than help. SSD and flash memory life expectancy is based on a number read/write cycle. That's why I suggested formatting the sd card instead of defragmenting which is nothing but hundreds or thousands read/write cycles.

I did state defragging SD cards IS controversial, but there's more than the standard retort against doing so. Visit the Wizcode statements and THEIR concepts and decide independently, if not only worth doing, but actually beneficial for performance.
It's when one finds a heavily populated SD card that won't even mount on PC desktop anymore, that in fact there's repair solutions available.
PMP is TWO tools: 1st: error detection and repair and 2nd: OPTIONAL defragging.
It's pointless to dismiss a utility without actually using it.

bmhome1 said:
It's pointless to dismiss a utility without actually using it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can use windows to scan and fix errors on a sd card. There is no bennefit to defragmenting a sd card as I stated just more wear. So I am going to dissmiss a product that someone is trying to sell me that doen't give a real solution to a problem but actually does more harm than good. But it's your money do what you want with it.

What is actually wearing on a card? There's no moving parts like a HDD. Fragmentation can occur on any read/write media. As it gets used, files get deleted (installing and uninstalling programs), moved (photos and music), and other I/O operations that cause things to get scattered. Defragmentation can optimize how things are stored. No, there isn't the problem of the write/read heads jumping all over the disk to find fragmented data, but by defraging the card you limit the space lost from improper cluster size usage.

SSD running an OS and SD storage for 99% PLAYBACK have NO relationship.
Simply, does a 1.5GB video run smoother not broken up into 20 pieces vs one contiguous file? Absolutely, no matter what it's stored on.
That's enough reason alone to have PMP onboard.
It's free, fully functional 30 day trial. It's 2.5MB. It's $7.50 - 15.00 invested after liking enough to buy. What is the issue?!?
Oh, precious write cycles used up. I doubt my 32GB SD won't get retired long, long before 100,000 cycles.
Anyways, I defragged ONCE so far, and don't expect to EVER again...unless mysterious slowdowns creep up.
Then simply run the damn app and find out exactly what it reports and act accordingly...
or blame Win6.5, Sense, card speed or whatever less-informed conclusions to dream up.
Personally, I don't have the time.
Also, anyone who has actually transferred 15GB from SD to PC and back knows how agonizing long the process. And error checking/repair using Windows desktop is equally endless waiting. That is, IF that's an option, what do you do when the SD card can only be reformatted offered?

Miami_Son said:
What is actually wearing on a card? There's no moving parts like a HDD.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Solid state memory is limited to a certain number of read/write cycles before failure (unlike HDD, which can theoretically be re-written infinitely . . . its the mechanical parts that fail). And de-fragging solid state memory actually requires many read-write cycles. Assassin is right about that.
But its controversial how long it will actually take to make an SSD or SD card fail. Some have theorized decades, and even de-fragging it on a regular basis isn't going to make much of a difference. Some claim the life spans of these devices will be much shorter. The formats have not been around long enough to really know.

Just as with hard drives, the greater the FREE space on the SD card starting out, the quicker and less taxing on write cycles. In other words, DON'T wait until your SD card is close to full (at least 10% minimum free space traditionally) and expect defragging to go smoothly and/or fast. The less free space available the more churning processing.
My 32GB card freshly loaded with 15GB from retired 16GB SD and numerous movies (totalling around 17GB) had low level of fragmentation (under 15%) and defragged quickly (five minutes) due to all the free space to shuffle files. The most fragmented file was a 1GB video for some reason. It was hardly a drama event, greatly helped by exceptionally informative GUI during processing.
Pocket Mechanic Pro has been around almost a decade, going back to Win Mobile 2002. It defragged my 2003 iPaq's very, very expensive 4GB SD card too many times to count. That card is still in use today.
The wear cycle concern is blown WAY out of proportion. Since 2001, I've been abusing dozens upon dozens CF, SD, SDHC and microSDHC filling up repeatedly, reformatting, defrag when needed, never a single burp from any (anybody want 32MB CF cards
Ironically, Intel's first SSD launch didn't go so well. The lightning speed fell off a cliff very quickly, due to guess what. Their next-generation SSD revised algorithms addressed slowdowns along with the timely introduction of trim command. This was all in the past year. It's hardly time yet to become didactic regarding SSD's.

No need to format your SD card any more.

Do not format you SD card, in this way you will loose all your data.
You just need to Defragment you SD card and in this case you will never loose your data but also you will found that your SD card is back to High speed.
Defragmentation can be done using any windows just right click on your SD card then go to tools tab then click on defragment.

Interesting.....
Things never get fully deleted off SD cards anyway...

part of the sd tech is something called wear leveling..
doing a defrag on your memory card is not going to be very accurate.
the card has an on board chip that spreads out the writing of sectors to keep them from wearing out. this is transparent to the system.
Do not defrag a memory card. This consumes write/erase cycles and shortens the MTBF.

aarons6 said:
part of the sd tech is something called wear leveling..
doing a defrag on your memory card is not going to be very accurate.
the card has an on board chip that spreads out the writing of sectors to keep them from wearing out. this is transparent to the system.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried it on my HD2 and it works, and booting Android come faster as if i format it.
Defragment : it reorganize all the blocks in the SD card (re addressing the blocks)
which make running or opening a file is faster and it give more space.
It only effect on SD card files and not Android system files.
Android system files are found in data.img which is a virtual disk (Formatted as EXT2)

zaidsa3sa3 said:
I tried it on my HD2 and it works, and booting Android come faster as if i format it.
Defragment : it reorganize all the blocks in the SD card (re addressing the blocks)
which make running or opening a file is faster and it give more space.
It only effect on SD card files and not Android system files.
Android system files are found in data.img which is a virtual disk (Formatted as EXT2)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes but because of the write leveling circuit those files are not organized contiguous in the first place.
they are placed in order of what sectors get written to less.
or at least thats how its supposed to work

But, the data.img is one big file on your sd card...
I could see doing a defrag once in a long while, like if you load up with a bunch of MP3s you plan on leaving there. But, if you constantly move files on & off, and defrag often, then you're just wearing your card out faster.

I thought defragmentation was only effective on hard drives?

aarons6 said:
yes but because of the write leveling circuit those files are not organized contiguous in the first place.
they are placed in order of what sectors get written to less.
or at least thats how its supposed to work
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try it before you judge
Am pretty sure of what i am talking about.

I think its better on your card to just copy everything on your card to your computer, then format card and copy everything back at once. I thing defragging causes too much writing and erasing on the sectors... it will make your card wear out quicker.
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA App

Defrag is only good for harddisk to save seektimes and minimize head movement
on a SD Card is nothing like that, no head that must seek thing.
There is no need to defrag SD Cards or SSD Disks

Quick format : it only clear the address table and it will not rearrange the blocks.
Defragmet is similar to full format but it is much faster and without loosing your data.
For me i will go to Defragment option.
BTW SD card doesn't have a read/write head that may scratch the cylinder (Harddisk),
it is a 0/1 operation (no mechanical parts) so it will not brick your SD card.
"SD card lifetime is 10 years or more."

ByteFax said:
Defrag is only good for harddisk to save seektimes and minimize head movement
on a SD Card is nothing like that, no head that must seek thing.
There is no need to defrag SD Cards or SSD Disks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It will reallocate the blocks in the sectors which will put all related blocks in sequence, which will make running an application faster with more free space on your sd card.
Try it and read about it before you judge.

Can you tell me where did you find that kind of info? I thought you shouldnt defragment sd cards and ssd drives. That just doesn't sound right to me...

100% correct.
ByteFax said:
Defrag is only good for harddisk to save seektimes and minimize head movement
on a SD Card is nothing like that, no head that must seek thing.
There is no need to defrag SD Cards or SSD Disks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA App

The normal reason people suggest formatting your SD card is so that you can select a larger cluster size, to help with R/W speed and therefore battery life.
A defrag doesn't do this (obviously), so there will be times where a format is definitely the right thing to do.

zaidsa3sa3 said:
It will reallocate the blocks in the sectors which will put all related blocks in sequence, which will make running an application faster with more free space on your sd card.
Try it and read about it before you judge.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you tell me the access time of a Hard Drive and the one from a SD card?

Access time of a HDD is usually ~9ms-~11ms depending on the size, rotation speed and make. SD/SSD's usually have access times below 0.5ms, but, SD's are quite slower than SSD's which is why people want NAND support so much. NAND is not fast as transferring data but it's access write/read time is at least 10 fold faster.

TonyCubed said:
Access time of a HDD is usually ~9ms-~11ms depending on the size, rotation speed and make. SD/SSD's usually have access times below 0.5ms, but, SD's are quite slower than SSD's which is why people want NAND support so much. NAND is not fast as transferring data but it's access write/read time is at least 10 fold faster.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hehe, knew that but my point is that defragging only works on a HD because the head needs to go from one position to another.
Mechanical things take a much longer time so that is why we (I use a SSD so no need to) have to organise the data on the drive so it can read/write in one go.
Actually on SSD's they spread the data around since they wear out. So the controllers randomizes the data around so 1 cell isn't abused all the time.
I would love to see the benchmark of a fragged and defragged SD card.

Guys
I tried it using 2 HTC HD2 T-mobile 16gb as the senario below:
Me :
Install new build mdj v.4.1 without Formating
defrag sd card
run es file explorer
Time taken for the application to load 3 sec
My Cousin:
Install new build mdj v.4.1 without Formating
run es file explorer
Time taken for the application to load 8 sec
Do you think it's the same ?????????????????????

It seems to me that sd cards are going to wear out, probably in about the same amount of time , whether they are defragged or not. We're talking thousands of write cycles here, so 7 or 8 defrags throughout the life cycle of the card isn't going to be a huge deal. And if you wear it out a little faster, that's the price you pay for a possible performance increase. I know sd cards aren't cheap, but they're not ungodly expensive. So I would say format the card when you first get it, try and load all your crap onto it at once (as much as possible) as opposed to slowly adding files as you go, and to yes do a defrag on it at key times, say like if you're removing one Android build and installing another. The benefits of defragging may be small, or even non-existant, but the same can be said of the extra wear that defragging puts on the card.

Memory Upgrade Time

Nothing like having a .5 tb data drive on your 10+, 1 tb ones are still on the high side but starting to see good reasonably priced .5 tb ones lately.
Go for the V30 spec ones. Been using Lexar flash products for over 15 years, excellent products, never had one fail.
This one should work well in the 10+...
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13542/lexar-launches-512-gb-a2-class-microsd-card
Best deal I've found:
https://www.google.com/shopping/pro...ds=epd:15737020019612347070,cdl:1,prmr:1,cs:1
Will see what's it like in a few days...

Update, got it today and slammed it in.
The 10+ recognized it and formatted in about 10 seconds.
Showing as 465 gb available memory.
Downloaded a 221 gb folder from internal memory in 96 minutes.
Appears stable and working normally... sweet.
Note: Samsung File Manager was glitching on me after the setup and file transfers. Clear app cache. Perfect.

Update. Zero issues other than normal need to clear file manager caches.
Poweramp had to reset its library from the former internal music folder to the new SD card one.
Poweramp is a champ, took less than 2 minutes and works like nothing ever was changed
Runs great. Easiest SD card install ever.
Didn't need to do a low level format to get Android to "see" it.
Remember to never touch any of the SD card contacts when handling and installing. If there's a lot of ESD (static electricity) ie low humidity, carpet, wool sweater etc... touch an earth ground before handling the card. Repeat if you need to get up during the installation. Using a ESD ground strap and mat is best if you have it. If you can feel, hear or see a static charge it's already enough to destroy an SD card!
Handle like a RAM stick! These cards do have some built in ESD protection on their inputs but it's has a limited voltage and number of ESD events that it can absorb. One ESD event can destroy it or cause a failure days, weeks even years later.
ESD is the #1 cause of premature failures.
Yeah if you ever see a phone center not using ESD protocols (most don't) be mad... and do it right, do it yourself!

Internal speed test of card. The N10+ does not disappoint...
Write from SD card to internal memory
Roughly [email protected] or 79.15MB/s
Next upgrade is the 1tb V30 Sandisk Extreme, lol down to my last 100gb

Got the 1tb V30 upgrade today from B&H Photo for a total of $189, free 2 day Fed Ex. Extremely well packaged, overkill. Order Friday afternoon. B&H Photo does not disappoint.
Since I have .5tb internal memory on this Note that's largely unused I will copy what's on the .5tb card to internal memory. Then slam in the new card and load it from that copy.
Reduces the possibility of errors and it writes relatively fast like this; SD card to/from internal.
Not having a SD card to use as a data drive is unthinkable to me at this point. All my computers are dual drives. The new Samsung flagships suck Apple bad.
Configured like this, the Beast rocks...

Online. The N10+ recognized the new card at boot up. I formatted anyway. No detected glitches so far, replaced a few shortcuts, rescaned Poweramps new library copy and once again fully operational. The data transfers appear to have gone perfectly.
Internal copy times:
Old .5tb card (read speed)
SD card > internal memory [email protected]
New 1tb card (write speed)
Internal memory>SD card [email protected]
Both cards are V30 Sandisk Extremes.
A 1.5tb dual drive N10+, hell yeah!
Power used for both transfers:

Yes, well... this was disturbing. Had a error on a Poweramp playlist with one song. Said it wasn't in the library on its SD card database, it was.
Restored it to the playlist, no other errors noted.
So I looked around storage a bit and unmounted the card. On remounting got the card is corrupted error message. So I rebooted, clear the system cache and the card is functional again. wtf? Android Bench is the prime suspect, probably not SD Maid however will review all apps that have access.
Or was it just the fact I failed to reboot before remounting the card? spooky.
Whatever, it never hurts to reboot or clear the system cache when having any kind of issues.
Meh, time to make another backup... because you never know. Androids very rarely crash and burn but it can happen at anytime.