eMMC & micro SD flash card
 

Let's the benchmark begins!

I tested previously and found that not much difference between eMMC and MicroSD. But that is on my budget office computer. I tested it on my home computer again and brought a new power supply for it (old one is dodgy) and found that the eMMC is much faster in the long run :D

Re: Firmware 1.3 on its way????
 

Probably faster to move all files to your PC, then move all back to N900. Defrag on flash memory can be tricky too if it has wear-leveling.

Re: Firmware 1.3 on its way????
 

Lol problem is I got 20GB + data lol.

Re: Firmware 1.3 on its way????
 

You're... you're defragmenting the eMMC?

I'll take this as proof you don't know what you're talking about on these forums. Ever. Defragmenting a Flash drive, whether it's an eMMC or an SSD, is about the worst thing you could do for it.

It won't speed the thing up, and if anything it will probably slow the drive down.

Re: Firmware 1.3 on its way????
 

maybe i don't say anyting anymore :)

Re: Firmware 1.3 on its way????
 

For clarifying this....

Flash drives has nothing to do with the way HD drives work. While fragmentation is bad on HD drives because of the way they access the data (if the data is written secuencialy the read of all of it is done without moving the magnetic heads, while if fragmented much time is wasted in repositioning the magnetic heads) on flash drives the data is accesed without any mechanical parts having to move so the access is constant for all the memory cells wherever they are. So defragmenting flash drives isn't so good idea...

Re: Firmware 1.3 on its way????
 

sorry but I have to say LoooooooL

Re: Firmware 1.3 on its way????
 

Actually, I didn't finished the eMMC defragmentation, I got up to 76% and gave up on it then I formating the drive instead and it makes the drive accessible much smoother than previously. I got less lag when opening files and folders. It was struggling and laggy to read from the drive.

I think I have wasted around 2000 write operations to the life span of my eMMC. Luckily it didn't finished so that wasn't so bad.

Re: Firmware 1.3 on its way????
 

Formatting the drive with a standard disk format will not fix the issue either. You'd need a special tool to do a secure erase (thus also needing to repartition) and I don't know if one is included on the N900 by default.

Additionally, fragmentation on NAND has zero impact on read speeds. I think you're imagining things, really.

Well, more like you smeared writes across much more of the flash. The end result being that future writes will be somewhat slower.

Re: Firmware 1.3 on its way????
 

Flash memory by its nature fragments BELOW the filesystem layer, its how it makes sure no one part is worn out greater than another. As such any slowdown is unlikely to be caused by fragmentation.

Bottom line, you should NEVER defrag flash memory EVER! You are just randomly moving the data around not actually de-fragmenting, because while the OS will show as less fragmented it has no bearing on physically where in the flash the data really is. The filesystem is just a visual representation of how the OS sees the data layout, not how its REALLY laid out in the flash itself.

Re: Firmware 1.3 on its way????
 

Hmmm. About flash defragmentation. I find jeroen behind jkdefrag and mydefrag pretty insightful for this kind of conversation.
http://www.mydefrag.com/forum/index.php?topic=1425.0

Re: Firmware 1.3 on its way????
 

I formated it with the N900 and Windows then N900 again.
But I'm going to try formating it with the secure Mac OSX Distool to erase everything on it. Backing up right now. I don't believe that by defraging it once though not finished could smeared the writes across the flash. Though this hasn't been 100% proven. Basically it's in theory because of the flash drive doesn't have any moving objects.

I struggled to get into my memory card previously, the file explorer will either freeze for a moment then back to smooth again. I'll secure erase it may be 7-Pass Erase. It erases the information used to acess my files and writes zeros over the data 7 times. It meets the US Department of Defense standard for securely erasing.

If 7 times is a bad thing then I will just do it Once. What do you think?

So is it that bad, I defraged my eMMC for a while and gave up afterward. It didn't finished and I formated it instead and moving files out and in. I'm going to reformating it with the MacBook Pro again to clean out all the 1 values.

Re: Firmware 1.3 on its way????
 

So you are gonna kill it 7 times just to be sure ? LOL

Re: Firmware 1.3 on its way????
 

Lol yeah to reply to the comments above. That it required a clean secure format. Oh well, I gave up lol. I'll just going to use what the current format I got now. It doesn't degrade anything. Whether it is partially defragmented previously, it will not be a problem with me. Thus the camera doesn't even record smoothly anyway.

Re: Firmware 1.3 on its way????
 

Perhaps I should have been clearer. When I meant "secure" I did not mean cryptographically secure but instead secure in that data was actually removed. This generally requires special, SSD (or NAND, rather) aware tools that explicitly erase each block.

Running the OS X "secure erase" tool will do nothing but wear the eMMC further and make disk performance worse.

The camera not recording smoothly likely has more to do with the CPU getting interrupted by something else. Of course, now that you've smashed your internal memory several times over then chances are your recording will be worse now.

Re: Firmware 1.3 on its way????
 

Defragmentation on HD drives is only needed for poorly designed file system types, such as FAT and NTFS. Most file systems for unixish systems are designed to minimize fragmentation and susceptibility to fragmentation.

I tried to post this last night, but talk.maemo.org became unresponsive for longer than I could stay awake. That seems to happen often around 5:00 UTC.

Re: Firmware 1.3 on its way????
 

lol I didn't smashed it serveral time. I only format it using a Quick Format via Windows and Format again via N900 just to make sure the file system is compatible.

I didn't format it with OSX either. It is because there is not point of formating and erasing what is already erased. So I'm pretty sure my internal Memory is heathy :D

Thank for your advise and assumption though :D
There is a process spiked up, I noticed after I click Video capture button, GST_video_thumb spiking like a hedgehog the moment the file is writing on the eMMC. And also index tracker.

Re: Firmware 1.3 on its way????
 

Correct. FAT!!!! the bastard MS format. Why on earth would people use MS format and make standardise?

ext3 and ext4 is much much better and faster. But it is only work only on Unix OS. lol..I guess everyone is brained washed by MS to make such terrible format standardised at the first place.

Anyhow can N900 reads and writes ext3 file system format??

Re: Firmware 1.3 on its way????
 

You have posted that you have defragmented it. Even once is enough to "smash it several times". Defragmenting a mostly filled and fragmented partition will move files several times apiece, not counting all the moving a flash disk does behind the back of the OS.

Re: Firmware 1.3 on its way????
 

Yes I did but also I didn't finished it. It would be worst if I did left it go until finished. Still got about 25% left to go though. Whether it is smashed serveral times now, I still love it lol. You can't take my love away from my N900.

This is just similar to the OC effects. Once you're over clocked it, the cpu is smashed serveral times and who'd know the long term effects.

Presumably death.

Re: Firmware 1.3 on its way????
 

ext has its problems. Its not perfect.

Re: Firmware 1.3 on its way????
 

So which one is worst, FAT or EXT?

Re: Firmware 1.3 on its way????
 

Hey all I've conducting a test with my eMMC benchmark.
Got this screenshot for you all to look at.

1. eMMC

2. Adata Class 6 8G card

I use this tool.
Flash Memory Toolkit.

Benchmark may be vary on different machine. This machine of mine is very slow. eMMC seems to be faster at smaller files but slower at larger file. But very consistant Write speed.

Re: [Maemo 5] Request: eMMC & micro SD flash card defragmenter
 

I have created this thread from twenty-three posts that were formerly a sub-thread within "Firmware 1.3 on its way????" Please continue discussion of flash defragmenting and defragmenters here, in this thread.

Re: Firmware 1.3 on its way????
 

Don't know how the benchmark works, but generally, for writing whole files (say a big AVI file), your eMMC should be around 3 times faster than that (about 17MB/sec)

Re: Firmware 1.3 on its way????
 

If anything currently in use is worse than FAT, I can't think of it.

Re: Firmware 1.3 on its way????
 

So being a Linux-only kind of chap, I went through the process of re-formatting my MicroSD as ext3 and having the N900 mount it automatically. I forget the thread but with a bit of tweaking it's possible.

Performance seemed better and it was nice being able to store symlinks & files larger than 4 GB.

But I could not find a way of solving the UID/GID permissions problems. The N900 user has one UID, my desktop has a different one, files & directories do not always have universal read/write access and I don't want to permanently change my umask on either N900 or Desktop PC. I also don't want to manually change permissions of everything I copy back & forward.

So until there is a filesystem flag to ignore ownership, I'm back to crap old FAT32 for my Linux-to-Linux transfers :rolleyes:.

Re: [Maemo 5] Request: eMMC & micro SD flash card defragmenter
 

Warning: any reformatting should use a default block size for this flash device. In this case you can get a top write performance. If you use something different then performance may fall down dramatically. The right block size during flash formatting has a biggest effect on performance in comparison with VFAT/EXT3 issue.

Re: [Maemo 5] Request: eMMC & micro SD flash card defragmenter
 

Yeah I used default block size when I format. Just a default format windows one. Not sure if the performance may increased if a file larger than 700Mb being copy but it is depending on host machine as well. Beside that the device is pluged into a cable and is not directly from the card to the computer. I think this is why the performance dropped.

Re: Firmware 1.3 on its way????
 

Not that I have spent a lot of time on it, but I have never got mine to mount automatically on boot.

I also got an additional 500MB free space on a "8GB" card when I dumped its contents, reformatted to ext2, and restored contents.

I use scp to transfer, but sshfs should do what you want. I haven't messed with sshfs in a long while, and never used it much, so I don't remember all the details.