Best SD Card for Raspberry Pi 2

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Paul1977

5047 posts

Uber Geek

#180965 28-Sep-2015 10:50

I've been having a play with a Raspberry Pi 2 and Plex as a streaming device.

I currently have a cheap class 4 Adata SD card in it, and was wondering what sort of benefit I would see from using a better card.

I see most sites recommend Class 10 UHS-1. But would I benefit even more from a class 10 UHS-3 card such as a SanDisk Extreme Pro?

And where would I likely see the benefits of a faster card? Faster menu and thumbnail loading?

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timmmay

20581 posts

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#1395711 28-Sep-2015 12:57

Probably no benefit at all, or a very small benefit at best. Given a better card costs hardly anything you might as well try it. Extreme pro isn't necessary, extreme or even ultra are probably almost as fast.

Sandisk is a good brand, so is Transcend. I can't remember which I got, but it was cheap.

JWR

821 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1395841 28-Sep-2015 15:19

The SD class rating is mainly for photographic and video applications, where sustained read/write speed is very important.

But, the class rating doesn't say a lot about how good it will be for general Raspberry Pi use.

The Raspberry Pi operating system (Linux), typically does small random read/writes (more reads than writes) and the Raspberry Pi is hardware limited to around 20-30MB/s read/write anyway.

A low SD class SD card could be very good at small random read/write.

Also, some cards just don't work in the Raspberry Pi.

I found this page useful for what will and won't work... http://elinux.org/RPi_SD_cards

CB_24

366 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1395896 28-Sep-2015 16:43

I use these ones - http://www.thewarehouse.co.nz/red/catalog/product/Sandisk-Ultra-8GB-Micro-SD-Card?SKU=1789932
The Warehouse tends to be cheaper than other retailers also.

mattwnz

20164 posts

Uber Geek

#1395898 28-Sep-2015 16:47

You need a fast card if you are doing video at 4k I have found, as some of the slower ones can't keep up.

Idiot60

9 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1395914 28-Sep-2015 17:25

Personally I use a class 10 as it was recommended from some websites (as noted by some of the previous replies), though I go for the smaller capacity (8-16Gb) as I mainly use the Pi as thin client connecting to Plex running on my NAS - and the price difference for the different class micro SD cards is minimal (Note: Pi 1 - uses a full SD and Pi2 uses a micro - sadly this caught me out).

I also found I got speed improvements when I used a separate USB drive for storage, but that was for earlier versions of OPENELEC on a Pi 1. I've found the speed of the Pi 2 as a thin client running Rasplex (I'm not sure if I could recommend this enough for ease of use/setup) works well without the extra hassle.

Whoops, I forgot to add, I stuck with UHS-1 as the price jump to 3 for what you would get seemed pointless as I found the speed fine.
Speed improvements were mainly seen when caching thumbnails when going in to different sections the first time - especially where there are a lot of entries. Also when using a lower class card I sometimes got slowdowns/pauses when jumping forward/back (and there was a slight increase in the time taken for the movie/TV programme to start playing).

Paul1977

5047 posts

Uber Geek

#1396348 29-Sep-2015 09:33

CB_24: I use these ones - http://www.thewarehouse.co.nz/red/catalog/product/Sandisk-Ultra-8GB-Micro-SD-Card?SKU=1789932
The Warehouse tends to be cheaper than other retailers also.

DSE online had these for $12.74 yesterday, so I got a couple of these.

The specs and part number on their website I think were for last years models, but when I collected them they were the current generation (48MB/s as opposed to the 30MB/s listed on DSE site).

So I was happy with that.

Paul1977

5047 posts

Uber Geek

#1396360 29-Sep-2015 09:43

Thanks for all the advice. As above I got a couple of 8GB Sandisk Ultras as DSE had them on special, and I think these are what pishop.nz sell as well so I figured compatibility wouldn't be an issue (pishop doesn't list the part number, but the picture is of an Ultra).

Booting may be a little faster, but honestly didn't really notice any obvious improvement in loading Plex menus and thumbnails etc. Can't really complain for the price I got them at though.