ATTENTION Current Mac mini/A+ users: Boot Mavericks from an SD card, load a RAMdisk, dismount your internal SATA drives, and pour a drink for the musicians walking out of your speakers!

[Jud]

Depending on the player you prefer you may want to try ram disks trick as well...)

 

And, it seems nobody mentioned - you need to check whether your mac has dedicated sd card slot separated from usb - if its on the same tree with usb trick may not work. Apple in a left top corner> About this mac> System report>

 

Yes, if the SD card slot is on your Mac's USB port, you may want to use RAMDisks *instead of* SD cards. These, however, have their own limitations - unfortunately, Macs don't tend to come with a lot of RAM, and in many of the newer ones users don't have the option to add more after purchase.

[goldsdad]

Don´t forget to look for 32 GB. Speed is no point but polished contacts (Sony or Transcend).

 

Have you investigated RAM modules with various polish-quotients, too?

[Ipoci]

Hi Massimiliano,

as AnotherSpin pointed out, Transcend is good, (better avoid SanDisk, it hasn´t got polished contacts) ....

 

Regards, Uwe

 

Thanks Uwe for comments,

 

today I had some free time to spend playing with computer ... First I started with Yosemite installation to a KomputerBay SD64 600x but I wasn't able to achieve a clean installation. To be more precise I wasn't able to have an installation at all ... After the first reboot, the loading bar stuck for ages ... Very strange, this SD works perfectly for any other purpose.

 

I did a couple of try but then I moved to a Sony SD64 I recently bought, and then everything works perfectly at first shot.

 

Unfortunately I don't have a DAC now to a serious listening session ... A friend "stole" my JLSounds+linearPS after he listen it, so I need to wait for my new equipment ... I just connect the micro-jack analogue output of my MBP retina with the amp and I'm suprised how good is the sound ... I think pure Yosemite is better than ML. So let's wait for the DAC ... ;-)

 

In the meantime I've to decide ...

 

Boot from SD64 + audio files from a Thunderbolt SSD

Boot from Thunderbolt SSD + audio files from SD64

 

Have a nice day, Massimiliano

[alsterfan]

...but then I moved to a Sony SD64 I recently bought, and then everything works perfectly at first shot.

In the meantime I've to decide ...

Boot from SD64 + audio files from a Thunderbolt SSD

Boot from Thunderbolt SSD + audio files from SD64

Hi Massimiliano,

Good to hear that the Sony SD card is working for you. My clear decision would be: Boot from SD card, create a RAM disk for copying music from your Thunderbolt SSD, unmount a l l the HDDs and SSDs via disk utility and start enjoying.

All the best,

Uwe

[wwaldmanfan]

My MacBook Pro is running Mavericks 10.9.1 (standard installation) with C.A.D. optimization v1.2.2. With all my audio apps and additional utilities, the total storage space utilized on my internal Kingston SSD is 13 GB. Using Super Duper!, some months ago, I made a boot disk on a 64GB SanDisk Ultra SDXC I 30 MB/s card, with dismal results. Boot times approached 3 minutes, and all computer operations slowed to a glacial crawl. Forget that.

 

However, today I splurged and spent $16 at Staples on a new, 16GB SanDisk Ultra PLUS SDHC UHS-I 48 MB/s card, and tried again. Now, amazingly, boot time is only 23 sec. vs. 12 sec. from the SSD, and with only the slight comparative lag in performance overall.

 

So, I boot the OS and run Audirvana from the SD card, unmount the internal SSD, load up a 4GB RAM disk with albums, then unmount the bus-powered FireWire drive, quit the Finder, start play, and turn off the LCD screen.

Everything that was disabled can be restored with a few keystrokes or mouse-clicks, if necessary.

 

So, do I hear an improvement in SQ? It's hard to quantify, but for a total investment of $16, I would say, "yes".

[Superdad]

Now, amazingly, boot time is only 23 sec….

 

SD card boot in just 23 seconds?! That IS amazing! Congratulations. Wish I could get mine to boot that fast.

 

Be sure to follow the procedure I posted somewhere for keeping the Sleep Image from coming back. Mavericks made it so it takes the extra command I listed. Otherwise your 16GB SD card is soon to have an 8GB Sleep Image file taking up its space. Let me know if you need me to find the instruction for you.

 

Cheers,

ALEX

[alsterfan]

So, do I hear an improvement in SQ? It's hard to quantify, but for a total investment of $16, I would say, "yes".

This result seems to shake my standpoint up, that at least the slow Sony SD cards sound better than others from Sony. Might the findings be due to the size of 16 GB? So far I have always used cards with a size of 32 GB.

Regards,

Uwe

[wwaldmanfan]

This result seems to shake my standpoint up, that at least the slow Sony SD cards sound better than others from Sony. Might the findings be due to the size of 16 GB? So far I have always used cards with a size of 32 GB.

Regards,

Uwe

 

I cannot offer a scientific explaination. All I can do is reiterate that the SanDisk SDXC 64gb card from a year ago was so slow it was utterly useless, and that the new SanDisk 16gb SDHC card is very fast, and does sound a little richer and more detailed than booting from the internal drive.

Smaller capacity SD cards are pretty cheap, so some experimentation might be worthwhile, if one is interested.

[jabbr]

Has anyone compared SD to the PCIe flash? It's a bit hard to believe that a data card through the USB path would be quietest

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[alsterfan]

Might the findings be due to the size of 16 GB? So far I have always used cards with a size of 32 GB.

Not having a comparable SD card at hand I tried the following:

1. I created 2 partitions on a Transcend 32 GB SDHC 600x and copied my Music OSX (5,1 GB) to an 11 GB partition.

2. I did the same with a Sony 32 GB SDHC 40MB/s.

Ad 1. boot time is 45 s

Ad 2. boot time is 55 s

3 Boot time of the Sony 32 GB SF32N4 Class 4 is 60 s.

As to SQ I still prefer 3 over 1+2 with a bit of more musicality and a slightly deeper bass fundament.

So it seems to me that wwaldmanfan´s findings don´t have the explanation in its smaller size. Perhaps a different controller is the reason for a shorter boot time.

Another point comes to my mind. When I boot my iMac from a fusion drive the progress bar develops almost evenly with no interruption. Now after having deactivated a lot of services it thrice comes to a stop before getting to the end. Among other things this way to improve SQ might lead to a prolonged boot time.

Regards,

Uwe

 

#jabbr

I have asked this about a week or two ago. It seems that so far nobody has had the opportunity for comparison.

[Superdad]

Has anyone compared SD to the PCIe flash? It's a bit hard to believe that a data card through the USB path would be quietest

 

Hi jabber: The SDXC card slot in 2010/11/12/14 Mac minis is handled by a Broadcopm Gigabit Ethernet Controller with Integrated SDXC Card Reader which sits directly on the PCIe bus. The only Apple computers whose card readers are on the USB bus are a few earlier laptops (and maybe one older iMac). It is easy to tell as the spec for those on the everymac.com pages shows those models as having an SD card reader as opposed to all recent units with the faster SDXC reader. One can also find this info for their own machine in System Profiler.

 

And SD card interfaces are VERY slow and electrically "quiet" (in comparison to FW, Thunderbolt, or USB--with their PHYs and protocol stacks and signaling).

 

But indeed (and as I have been saying since it came out), the 2014 mini's PCIe flash memory connection could/should rival the SDXC slot for our audio/OS purposes. Not to mention it is blazingly fast! I think not having an active SATA drive/interface active is one of the final steps in getting the most from a Mac mini (the first being getting rid of the SMPS and PWM fan pulses).

[Jolida]

Nice thread & a worthwhile mod with regards to the SD card. Following the instructions from the 1st post in this thread, I bought a 64GB SanDisk Ultra SDXC card & formatted it using Mac Os journaled (GUID table) & installed Mavericks. Install took 27 mins just as it took almost on my SSD. The OS boots at around 1.5 mins which is more than ok for an sd card boot.

I use both Amarra & A+, though in my system Amarra sounds vastly better when both the player & the music files are off the Ramdisk. The person who sold me the sd card clearly offered me the same SanDisk sd card at 2 different prices. Obviously one was counterfeit so it's not strange that slow boot issues may be related to the above.

Thank you SuperDad, the tweak was well worth any hassle.

[Superdad]

Nice thread & a worthwhile mod with regards to the SD card. Following the instructions from the 1st post in this thread, I bought a 64GB SanDisk Ultra SDXC card & formatted it using Mac Os journaled (GUID table) & installed Mavericks. Install took 27 mins just as it took almost on my SSD. The OS boots at around 1.5 mins which is more than ok for an sd card boot.

I use both Amarra & A+, though in my system Amarra sounds vastly better when both the player & the music files are off the Ramdisk. The person who sold me the sd card clearly offered me the same SanDisk sd card at 2 different prices. Obviously one was counterfeit so it's not strange that slow boot issues may be related to the above.

Thank you SuperDad, the tweak was well worth any hassle.

 

Hi Jolida:

 

Glad you are liking the results. I think your slow boot time is due either to the SanDisk card (I find Toshiba Exceria or Transcend cards to work better) or the fact that your SanDisk is a 64GB size--I have always used 32GB cards and I seem to recall that something else goes on when addressing the bigger cards (I could be very wrong on that though--no time to research). Best boot times for Mavericks that people are getting from SD card range from 40 seconds (fast) to 70 seconds (what my Transcend does now after a lot of use and reformatting over 2 years).

 

But as long as the computer is responsive after boot then you should be fine. If Finder response (opening menus and folders) and application response is sluggish, then something went wrong with your install or with OS slimming/optimization. And I have had a couple of SD cards simply not want to perform well at all (super sluggish OS) after cloning. I do think that people are having more consistent and trouble-free results installing the OS directly to the SD (as you did) than cloning a partition to it.

Do be sure to fully disable the Sleep image creation (search for my post on that) or about 8GB of your SD card will always be taken up by a useless file (though with a 64GB SD card that is not such a big deal).

 

Regards,

--Alex C.

[wwaldmanfan]

I think your slow boot time is due either to the SanDisk card (I find Toshiba Exceria or Transcend cards to work better) or the fact that your SanDisk is a 64GB size--I have always used 32GB cards and I seem to recall that something else goes on when addressing the bigger cards (I could be very wrong on that though--no time to research). Best boot times for Mavericks that people are getting from SD card range from 40 seconds (fast) to 70 seconds (what my Transcend does now after a lot of use and reformatting over 2 years).

--Alex C.

 

C.A.D. optimized Mavericks 10.9.1 cloned to SD card with Super Duper!

On my 2012 MacBook Pro 2.5GHz dual-core Intel Core i5/8GB RAM:

 

SanDisk Ultra SDXC I

64GB 30MB/S

boot time: 2-1/2 min.

 

new SanDisk Ultra PLUS SDHC I

16GB 48MB/S

boot time: 25 sec.

[Superdad]

C.A.D. optimized Mavericks 10.9.1 cloned to SD card with Super Duper!

On my 2012 MacBook Pro 2.5GHz dual-core Intel Core i5/8GB RAM:

 

SanDisk Ultra SDXC I

64GB 30MB/S

boot time: 2-1/2 min.

 

new SanDisk Ultra PLUS SDHC I

16GB 48MB/S

boot time: 25 sec.

 

Yup, no real rhyme or reason to it. Speed rating of the card (unless it is an ancient dog) does not seem to be the factor. Yet it is odd to think that the card size is the issue. The only proper way to know would be for someone to buy the exact same model of card (e.g. SanDisk Ultra PLUS) in 3 sizes, clone each one with the exact same procedure, straight from the box, one after another, and then clock the boot of each.

Won't be me anytime soon. I've got a list of other experiments (plug work!) as long as my arm.

[Jolida]

What is the size of your Os disk after slimming? Even after deleting the sleepimage file & removing all the languages using Monolingual , my Mavericks install is at 9.2 GB.

Is there a guide or something that u could link me to, if u think the size of my os disk is still a lot?

Thanks once again.

[Jolida]

C.A.D. optimized Mavericks 10.9.1 cloned to SD card with Super Duper!

On my 2012 MacBook Pro 2.5GHz dual-core Intel Core i5/8GB RAM:

 

SanDisk Ultra SDXC I

64GB 30MB/S

boot time: 2-1/2 min.

 

new SanDisk Ultra PLUS SDHC I

16GB 48MB/S

boot time: 25 sec.

 

Is this your new card?

http://m.snapdeal.com/product/sandisk-ultra-micro-sd-16/1638659433

[Superdad]

What is the size of your Os disk after slimming? Even after deleting the sleepimage file & removing all the languages using Monolingual , my Mavericks install is at 9.2 GB.

 

That sounds about right.

[wwaldmanfan]

What is the size of your Os disk after slimming? Even after deleting the sleepimage file & removing all the languages using Monolingual , my Mavericks install is at 9.2 GB.

Is there a guide or something that u could link me to, if u think the size of my os disk is still a lot?

Thanks once again.

 

My whole ball of wax is about 13.7GB. Clean install of stock Mavericks 10.9.1 (nothing altered or deleted), plus my "audio apps" folder containing Audacity, 6 iterations of Audirvana Plus 1.x.x, C.A.D. optimization scripts, MediaHuman Audio Converter, AudioFile Engineering Sample Manager, TTDR Offline Meter, XLD, a couple other things, and all their support files.

 

No iTunes music files saved in my User folder. I do all my tagging and library management on another computer, then copy the files files to the external FireWire HDD, and load them into A+ from the Finder.

[wwaldmanfan]

Is this your new card?

http://m.snapdeal.com/product/sandisk-ultra-micro-sd-16/1638659433

 

No, that is a "micro" Ultra. I have the standard-size SDHC Ultra PLUS. I bought it a few month ago at Staples for $15.

And now, SanDisk now makes three faster cards than mine. Lookee here:

 

SD Cards for DSLRs and Other Digital Cameras from SanDisk

[pl_svn]

bought, last month, a couple of SD cards for a new camera and found my 5 years old ones, the fastest kind back then, are not even on par with nowadays basic/cheaper ones :lol:

[wwaldmanfan]

bought, last month, a couple of SD cards for a new camera and found my 5 years old ones, the fastest kind back then, are not even on par with nowadays basic/cheaper ones :lol:

 

Computer technology (and clothing made in the Orient) are about the only thing that keep getting cheaper. My first Macintosh CPU had 4 MEGABYTES of RAM and 80 MEGABYTES of hard drive storage. It cost over $2,000, which was real money back then. Additional RAM was about $100/MB.

Now you get 500x the performance for 1/50th the cost. It really is amazing, when you think about it.

[Jolida]

So this the card u usehttp://www.sandisk.com/products/memory-cards/sd/ultraplus-uhs-1-class10-48mbs/?capacity=16GB

 

Is there any performance issue while using a Micro SD along with the adaptor? I guess it is the same? No?

[Jolida]

Also, this seems strange..

https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/

[wwaldmanfan]

Also, this seems strange..

https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/

 

DO NOT DOWNLOAD THAT

 

I tried it out of curiosity on my Mac. The app froze after "formatting" the SDXC card, and then the card was unreadable. Fortunately, I was able to repair and reformat the card with Disk Utility.