An idea. RAID0ing microSD cards.

[Daniel Ratcliffe]

First of all, how many of you remember the I believe original Samsung Focus? Remember, the WP7 device that had support for microSD? Well, remember when you put in a microSD card, it would become a part of the OS and if you tried to remove it you had to hard reset the phone? Now, I've had an idea myself. For lack of a better term, let's call it RAID0ing. Basically, what I mean is, in WP8, allowing microSD cards to become one with the internal storage. Now, this will be allowed as an option, so you can choose for hot-swappable removable media cards that support just media, not application data (such as maps), or you can choose to essentially fuse it to the OS allowing for a bigger memory for things like apps, map data, etc. Let's take the Nokia Lumia 820 as an example.

8GB onboard storage, and a 32GB microSD card. I would then have two choices. I can either choose to have it for hotswappable media and keep 8GB for apps, map data, etc and use the 32GB exclusively for media. Or I could choose to fuse it together and gain a nice 40GB of "onboard" space for everything. This would also be really useful for overcoming the limitations of the 8S's 4GB OB storage.

Thoughts, suggestions, comments?

 

[BIGPADDY]

It seems easy to combine both together but I would go for a higher capacity MicroSD card to 64GB just to play itself. :wink:

 

[Daniel Ratcliffe]

Bigpaddy, I was just using 32GB microSD and 8GB onboard as an example for a nice round 40GB. I'd love to get a 512GB microSD card + 8GB onboard. 520GB to play around with. Shweet! Bigger storage on my phone than on my laptop!

 

[BIGPADDY]

I like to think BIG :wink:

Got over carried away I thought someone already achieved this silly me :angel:

 

[vedichymn]

They got rid of that feature though because it just didn't work well for a lot of people. Internal flash and SD card ended up at wildly different speeds/reliability and it took a lot of trial and error for Focus owners to actually get a working setup.

Of all the changes with WP8, the way it manages external storage doesn't bother me at all.

 

[Daniel Ratcliffe]

I like to think BIG :wink:

Got over carried away I thought someone already achieved this silly me :angel:

My life mantra is "Think big, REALLY BIG". Looks like I've gone over you

They got rid of that feature though because it just didn't work well for a lot of people. Internal flash and SD card ended up at wildly different speeds/reliability and it took a lot of trial and error for Focus owners to actually get a working setup.

Of all the changes with WP8, the way it manages external storage doesn't bother me at all.

Well, the microSD card limitation turned out to be the reason why I turned down the phone I wanted the most (820). As a result, I've had to settle for the 920. But if it took a lot of trial and error for the Focus owners to get a working setup I can see why it was removed. Perhaps it could detect the speeds of the microSD card to determine if it would be suitable to use with the internal flash. If it can't, it gets locked to hot-swappable media storage only? Would that be an improvement. No ideas how to get around the reliability element though...

 

[ImmortalWarrior]

It's not a simple as that. Raid arrays are hampered severely by differences between each component. It is not recommended to put drives of different make, model, and size in a raid array. You try to keep the model number the same.

I'm not a big hardware guy and couldn't tell you the specifics off hand, but differences in read/write speed, block size, caching and others can cause serious issues when raiding. This is the reason why there were problems when pairing an SD with the focus and why only certain classes of certain cards would work.

It would be awesome if this was a possibility, but I don't see it being very feasible for some time.

 

[BHFH]

I think the biggest obstacles with using the SD cards is DRM and card performance. Maybe the OS should run the Windows experience index on it and if it's fast enough, allow programs to be installed on it. And if they fear people are going to pirate software by swapping SD cards, why not encrypt it with bitlocker?

 

[Daniel Ratcliffe]

I think the biggest obstacles with using the SD cards is DRM and card performance. Maybe the OS should run the Windows experience index on it and if it's fast enough, allow programs to be installed on it. And if they fear people are going to pirate software by swapping SD cards, why not encrypt it with bitlocker?

If they do that, then BitLocker will become cracked and programs will be released free that do just that. I think if you hard-code the OS into it for programs, then you put it it in another phone and it forces BOTH the phone it just got put into and the microSD card to hard reset (i.e. so the person trying to get a pirated app loses all the apps on his phone, as well as all the apps on the microSD card being lost, then those 2 fuse together automatically.) that could protect from pirating.

Of course it could also send a signal to MS that someone has attempted app piracy to get both MS accounts permanently banned. Then both parties have to repurchase all their apps, start a new Gamerscore with a new gamertag, etc, but that would be too easy to block it wouldn't be worth the effort. However I do like the idea of using the Windows Experience Index to check if the SD card is up to scratch.