TuneSpan and SD card

david chaney shared this question 11 years ago
Answered

Any reason TuneSpan can't span one's iTunes Library to a SD card? Free space is becoming sparse on my MBA and looking to free up space. I could of course span it to my network drives but will would rather keep the data on the SD card in case I'm not at home and need access. Thanks

Replies (6)

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Thanks for getting in touch.


I have never tried to span to an SD card, but if it is formatted as a normal OS X drive I don't see why you couldn't span to it. It should work just fine. The only issue I could imagine is if it was formatted it some weird way for use with a camera. I can also imagine it would not be very convenient to use an SD card both to span media to and also in a camera, I think it would be safest to just be used for one or the other.

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I just decided to test this...


Pulled an SD card out of a camera and plugged it into the built in slot on my laptop.


The card was formatted as "FAT32" to start, the standard old Windows formatting. I spanned to it with that formatting, and it worked just fine!


But, if you are gonna use it for regularly accessing your media, I highly recommend formatting to the much newer, better, standard Mac OS format through Disk Utility.


I restored my test tracks and then went into Disk Utility and changed the format of my SD card to "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" and then spanned to it again. It all worked absolutely fine again!


So, there is nothing stopping you from using an SD card to span to, I would just recommend reformatting it as a normal Mac OS drive, and only using it as a drive on your comp, not trying to use it in any camera simultaneously. Anyway, after reformatting it to the Mac OS format... I doubt any cameras would be able recognize the card like that. But, I just restored my test tracks again and reformatted my SD card back to "FAT32", put it back in my camera and took a picture. All back to normal for me with no issues anywhere.

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Thanks. If I get one, it's sole purpose will be for extra storage on my MBA.


Did you notice any speed issues with it when reading files "spanned"?

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I didn't do any intensive speed testing, so I can't say for sure what it will be like with a big old SD card with tons of media.


It will of course be subject to the kind of card you get, since it is solid state storage, it can be pretty quick, but I know there are higher and lower end cards with different read and write speeds. I'm sure you can find a pretty fast card to use.


You will also be subject to the speed of the connection. As the SD card slot is built-in, it may be pretty fast, but I'm not familiar with the speed of this port compared to USB or FireWire or Thunderbolt. I would try to look up some information about the speed of the build in SD card connection.


But, I'm pretty confident it will be usable, there are just various factors that will be specific to your computer and the SD card you get.

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Sounds good, thanks!! I love the app BTW.

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Thanks so much! Please don't hesitate to get in touch if you have any other questions!


You can always post new questions on here, or you can get in touch with me directly at http://contact.tunespan.com using the form, or there is a Contact Developer item in the Help menu of TuneSpan to email me directly. Either way, they all go to the same place and I'll get back to you!

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