There are a lot of threads on this discussion forum, and blog posts around, that have some confusing information regarding various SD cards and their usability in the n800.

I spent the last 6 hours digging through all of them to make sure I had the entire story, and I thought I'd shove everything into a single post.

The n800 stock kernel currently supports SD 1.0 and SD 1.1 cards (hardware support) and both Fat16 and Fat32 file systems. The stock kernel does not support SDHC (SD 2.0) cards.

The n800 file manager application only formats in Fat16, but will read Fat32 partitions just fine.

In a nutshell, then, you can plug *any* SD card < 4GB into your n800 and everything will "just work". You can use 4GB cards that are NOT SDHC cards, but (a) these cards are not official SD 1.0 cards and (b) the file manager will format them as fat16 devices, which will limit them to 2GB, so you need to format them on another device (like a PC) as Fat32 file systems to get the 4GB of usable space out of them. The 4GB cards (that *aren't* SDHC) are technically outside of any spec (they don't conform to 1.0, 1.1, or 2.0 of the SD specification), so they are liable to produce buggy results, use at your own risk. Note that many people are using the 4GB cards with little problems.

There is a kernel patch available to make your n800 support SDHC cards - this is available here http://intr.overt.org/blog/?p=44. Commercially, there are 8 GB SDHC cards readily available. Vendors are releasing 16GB SDHC cards at various points this year. RiDATA 16GB SDHC cards are being showcased 08-11 Mar 2007 - http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/RIDATA-...-PMA-Show.html.

So, to sum up:

If you don't want to get adventurous, don't buy any card bigger than 2GB and make sure that the card you buy is not SDHC, and you top out at 4GB.

If you're a little bit adventurous, buy a 4GB non-SDHC card and you can top out at 8GB.

I'll try and get a list of known to be working cards. For the ubergeeks amongst us, my theory is that certain of the 4GB cards have a voltage problem that makes them buggy with the n800, that's just a SWAG.

If you want to kernel hack your n800, you should be able to buy and use 8GB SDHC cards, right now, in your n800.

If you wait until the next release of the OT 2007 OS, the SDHC patch (according to a blog I can't find at the moment) should have been included. I have been unable to find out if the File Manager app will also be updated when this occurs (I certainly hope so, and encourage everybody to email Ari Jaaksi (http://jaaksi.blogspot.com/) or post to his blog to encourage him to make sure that (a) the kernel patch is incorporated (b) the file manager app is updated to default to fat32.

Oh, and finally, flash memory cards are probably going to plummet in price in the next 3 months as the higher capacity cards hit the mainstream, so if budgeting is an issue, patience will reward you well at this point.

Whoo! Forget an iPod, within a year I'd say the probability is > .99 that you'll be able to walk around with 32x2=64GB of storage in your n800!

I really don't think we all should email poor Ari.. no need to spam him to death. I'm pretty sure the message has been noted by Nokia already, and either it'll happen or it won't, for the upcoming release. Other than that little nit. nice writeup!

(As for 128GB in the N800.. I remember my school paid nearly $15K for a ten-megabyte disk to the school computer.. ah, those were the days! )

This cleared a lot about that SD card thing, good work. It would be nice to have such a data storage in N800. Lots of videos, music...we'll see what will happen.

Markku

128 MB... what'll be the impact on the access speed to data? if you have a gigantic warehouse, you can't use the same small forklift that ran fast and efficient in your little storage.

padraic2112 that was a clear and easy to understand review, thank you.

I think the only problem with file manager is when formatting the card (i.e it can't format as fat32). Already formatted card should work just fine. Or is there really some problem?

I have 2 "non-standard" 4GB cards in my N800. I didn't format them, just plunked them in and they work just fine with the file manager. With anything, actually...

I have two 8gb SDHC cards in mine. Patched kernel too of course. File manager works fine for everything I have used it for. I have never tried to format a card however...

So is it safe to assume one can use the file manager on all cards but you can not format (reformat) all cards to fat 32?

I have updated my top post for new readers to clarify this, thanks.

Yes, as far as I know (I just got my n800 today and don't have my SD cards yet) this is correct. I'll update the top post again when I can confirm.