Does SD card size influence power-up speed?

[pvdhaar]

When using different SD cards (Sandisk Ultra 2GB-15MB/s and 8GB-30MB/s), I get the distinct impression that the NEX-6 starts up faster with the smaller 2GB cards despite the slower transfer rate. The difference isn't exactly overwhelming.. and I've no (access to) two identical cameras/lenses to compare them side by side, so it's impression only for now.

What I've already figured out, is that the 2GB cards can be read on both the SD card slot on my monitor and my PC, and shows up as file-system FAT. The 8GB card on the other hand doesn't register on the monitor, and shows up as file-system FAT32 on the slot on the PC. It's like the camera needs to think a tad longer about the bigger file allocation table causing a diff in start-up time.

So the real question is, am I imagining things or do others notice this as well? And the ultimate luxury question: is anyone able to do a side by side comparison?

 

[Lss]

I don't know about NEX, but there are products that indeed show such behaviour. My NEX-5N starts up pretty swiftly with a 32 GB card, so I would surprised if there is a significant difference.

 

[sevo]

There is only downward compatibility between SD (<=2GB), SDHC (>2 to 32GB) and SDXC (>32GB) - old devices (like your monitor) cannot read the new cards. Some early (for the respective version) devices/drives may perform poorly with cards conforming to the new standards, but that can hardly be the case with anything as new (relative to SDHC) as a Nex-6. Neither will FAT sizes matter - in camera use, FATs will be sparsely populated (images are few and huge compared to text files) and as solid-state memory has no seek times, skipping over large blank areas has no performance impact.

I rather suspect that you have a slow card, or a card with some formatting issue...

 

[pvdhaar]

I rather suspect that you have a slow card, or a card with some formatting issue...

With all cards formated in camera, the file system should be set up correctly.. Maybe the 8GB card isn't good; it takes ages to format by the NEX-6, not just 4x the 2GB card formating time one could justify..