Is it possible to easily expand storage on the N900 above 48GB?
 

My wife needs at least 60GB of storage (mainly for music). She has been thinking of getting the N900, but with the delay, she is now ready to get an iPod Touch with 60GB storage.

If I can convince her to wait a few more weeks for the N900, will she be able to expand the storage beyond 48GB?

(I assume micro-SD cards are limited to 16GB now, but if they come in 32GB later, will the N900 address all that memory?)

Re: Is it possible to easily expand storage on the N900 above 48GB?
 

It should. In some systems (like unpatched windows xp on 32 bits), some size limitation occurs naturally. It's because the system addresses memory using 32 bit locations (i.e. if the system wants to look at location X in memory, X must be a number that can fit in 32 bits). Now 32 bits can only hold a number that corresponds to 4 GB, so that's why you can't use more than 4GB of ram on xp.
48 GB is a rather arbitrary number, so if the card can add more than 16 GB, it should work. Also, the kernel is linux, which can use humongous amounts of storage.
Note however that i haven't used maemo, so i can't guarantee there isn't some some quirk. Unless some maemo authority says otherwise, it should be possible

Re: Is it possible to easily expand storage on the N900 above 48GB?
 

SanDisk have a 32GB that should be freely available soon. I have heard that the N900 does recognise it too but not having seen that with my own eyes I will "wait and see". There are rumours of a 64GB version too but frankly I think that's a way off. Of course you can always swap multiple cards in and out if that helps too!

Re: Is it possible to easily expand storage on the N900 above 48GB?
 

Up to 2TB microSD cards will work fine as long as you use something besides exFAT.

Re: Is it possible to easily expand storage on the N900 above 48GB?
 

@GeneralAntilles - so if I mkext3fs cover the entire storage space (I have no need for 'doze compatibility) I'll be able to whack a 32|64 Gb card into the N900 with no probs?

Re: Is it possible to easily expand storage on the N900 above 48GB?
 

Sure, although that's not a requirement for SDHC cards if you don't mind FAT32.

Re: Is it possible to easily expand storage on the N900 above 48GB?
 

Oh I mind a great deal, buddy. The further I am from 'doze (and associated fecal matter like FAT), the less itchy I feel ;)

Re: Is it possible to easily expand storage on the N900 above 48GB?
 

The SDHC standard manages cards big as 32GB.

So any device/OS that is able to manage cards bigger than the 4GB ones should be able to manage the 32 GB also.

Re: Is it possible to easily expand storage on the N900 above 48GB?
 

Somewhere there's a video where a Nokia person makes a comment in passing that the N900 has been tested to make sure that it's responsive with music collections up to 64GB. I'm sure Nokia would have a few pre-production 32GB microSDHC cards to play with.

Re: Is it possible to easily expand storage on the N900 above 48GB?
 

source:
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/...657/nokia-n900

Re: Is it possible to easily expand storage on the N900 above 48GB?
 

The key to large media collections is having a NAS, home server (or even shared files on your computer) that can be accessed via the internet. Think ftp, samba etc.

Problem solved.

Re: Is it possible to easily expand storage on the N900 above 48GB?
 

Sure however some ISP's don't allow incoming traffic over certain services such as ftp and samba. Granted there are ways around it however Port Forward to NAS isn't always a solution or best situation solution.

Granted the 32Gb cards will be very expensive, I still find them better for storage solutions provided speed is not sacraficed.

(Yes I also use the NAS solution for stuff however my ISP blocks more ports everyday, making is less then easy to access it when I really need to.)

Re: Is it possible to easily expand storage on the N900 above 48GB?
 

Am I the only one still utterly amazed at the raw capacity on devices nowadays?

Seriously, 48GB is huuuuuge, my first hard drive was 240MB and lasted me ages, the 48 is more than my laptop and for me will be plenty for a long time.

I know people need more, but its still amazing at how far we have come.

Re: Is it possible to easily expand storage on the N900 above 48GB?
 

The first harddisk I had on a PC clone was 20MB, which was a lot then but it failed before I could fill it up. A couple of years later I got a machine with 40MB disk, but that one filled up so quickly that the machine was useless after a couple of months. Now I have a computer with storage nearly 2TB, I expect it to fill up quickly. And a million times (literally) more memory than the first IBM PC. Way way more than any of the predictions from a decade or two back, including those from such as Neil Stephenson and William Gibson :)

Re: Is it possible to easily expand storage on the N900 above 48GB?
 

I was under the impression that the original standard was to cope with up to 16GB but the 33GB card gets around it with some internal tricks and protocol. The 'modified' protocol in theory should cope with up to 2TB but I can't see that coming within the lifetime of the N900 though I am very happy to be proven wrong on this one! :)

Re: Is it possible to easily expand storage on the N900 above 48GB?
 

No, the original SDHC standard allows up to 32GB, with the number of 'address bits' specified (16). The Linux kernel checks up to 22 bits (2TB), so if there were any cards of that type they would be usable. But there may never be any (could be SDXC instead).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Digital_card#SDHC

Re: Is it possible to easily expand storage on the N900 above 48GB?
 

My wife has a Terastation at home. So that's a possibility. But she needs access to her music inside buildings (where she works). Most of these places do not have WiFi, and even cellular data could be a problem inside the buildings.

In addition to that, she is probably not going to go with an expensive 3g data plan. She's just going to stick her T-mob sim card in the N900 and keep her existing no-data plan. At the most she might consider one of the $10/mo data options if T-Mobile let's her do that.

My feeling is that the NAS option won't appeal to her. But a 32GB micro SD card would probably be OK. She would prefer having all her music on one memory card (instead of split between the internal memory and the micro SD card). She has 60 GB of music right now.

I'm just sharing the feedback she is giving me. I'm hoping she gets an N900 (so we'll have 2 in the family).

Re: Is it possible to easily expand storage on the N900 above 48GB?
 

When the N900 is connected to a computer via USB (or wireless), is all the (non system) storage visible at once?

In other words, can you see both the built in 32 GB and the micro SD card and copy files to/from both of these areas?

I would expect that when I plug it in to the computer via USB, I would see two mounted drives, one being the internal 32 GB and the other being the microSD card.

I have a feeling this is a dumb question, but I need to make sure I know the answer rather than assume it. Thanks.

Re: Is it possible to easily expand storage on the N900 above 48GB?
 

If you're in the US, unless your grandfathered in on the Data Plan there is no $10 a month Data, only the $20 web2go.