Card or Hard drive?

[stephanie]

Hello to everyone,

If you were like given a choice between a memory card (n73) and a hard drive (N91) - which one will you choose? If both were the same 4GB capacity?

[f_alejandro]

I prefer Both and it depends. :) LOL.

Card to lessen the weight at least a bit of the phone. At the current stage of card and microdrive development, microdrives have faster development phase whereas storage cards is in its infancy for higher capacity modules until recently a 4GB micrSD card has been announced by Sandisk. Maybe that is why Nokia has included 8GB in N91 because there’s no ready or available high capacity cards more than 4GB during the development of the NSeries microdrive-equipped cell phone.

Investment-wise, “most consumers” buy generic cards and these generic materials are more vulnerable and they easily get ruined or corrupted. I presume that original high capacity cards may also have the same tendency on rare occasions. And in my opinion, microdrives have greater life latency period compared to cards – just an opinion. Pricewise, I think high capacity cards will be approximately the same as microdrive value. And according to Nokia, Nseries phone offering microdrives can be easily serviced by them in case the hard drive fails to function.

Nevertheless, I prefer both be included in a cell phone unit for flexibility, scalability and dependability in case each medium fails to claim their right to service the user’s needs.

P.S. Nokia engineers know better and I'm nothing compared to them. if we will be seeing more microdrive-equipped cell phones in the near future, then maybe microdrives have advantage on these cell phone units.

[problematic]

Hard to choose between the two.

With a mem card, you can have more than one, so instead of buying a 4GB card, you can buy 4 1GB cards instead. It wins in attrition rate - if 3 cards fail, you'd still have 1 you can use. The cards are cheaper and weigh less too. (keeping the cost of the phone down). I agree with F_Alejandro, cards are more susceptible to damage than a hard drive. The cards can be de-magnetized and corrupted, they can be bent or scratched, they can be lost or misplaced, the pins (on a phone or card reader) can be bent or get loose - so many bad things can happen.

But besides all that - if you're asking which one is better, an N73 with a 4GB card or an N91 with a 4GB hard drive. I'll recommend the N73. It has the better camera, larger brighter screen, dual speakers, 3D sound effects, faster processor, and less moving parts.

[maverick786us]

Hello to everyone,

If you were like given a choice between a memory card (n73) and a hard drive (N91) - which one will you choose? If both were the same 4GB capacity?

Hard Drive is in built so less prone to damage compared to plastic coated memory cards which might get damaged if you slightly man-handle them. So in terms of stability I vote for Hard Drive.

But through memory cards make portability easier, and they can be replaced, they can be used with for multi-purpose as well like, cameras, data storage.

So its hard to make a choice between 2. It all depends on how you wanna use it

[oneclick]

Difficult choice there.

I think both the card and the hard drive (N91) are reliable enough.

In fact I remember this thread about the n91 - the hard drive survived.
http://forums.mobileburn.com/showthread.php?t=16362.

But in my opinion, having 4GB is like having all your eggs on one basket. If it gets a virus or is corrupted and have to be reformatted - you have to do the whole thing. When on the other hand, if you had 4 x 1GB cards, or 2 x 2GB cards - if a card gets broken or unusable, or have to be refomatted - you still have other cards to use.

I also heard that the N91 is sometimes slow (when accessing the drive).

tnx-1clk

[hotzigetty]

i'd choose the n91...

[f_alejandro]

Difficult choice there.

But in my opinion, having 4GB is like having all your eggs on one basket. If it gets a virus or is corrupted and have to be reformatted - you have to do the whole thing. When on the other hand, if you had 4 x 1GB cards, or 2 x 2GB cards - if a card gets broken or unusable, or have to be refomatted - you still have other cards to use.



True indeed. But this case is merely base on one's protection and phone management also. Regardless of what a phone offers with its storage, viruses do not pick on which medium to infect.


I also heard that the N91 is sometimes slow (when accessing the drive).
tnx-1clk

But often times not. :) As we all know, it is a hard disk and not a flash disk. This one also depends on how you organize data information inside the microdrive. Just like what i have mentioned in the N91 8Gb review (http://forums.mobileburn.com/showthread.php?t=21097), organizing media files should be organized well. Other's put huge number of tracks inside a single folder thus, seek time on audio tag information takes a longer period of time than usual. as suggested, use Windows Media Player 10 and above to manage folders and albums inside the microdrive for a well organized directory system as Windows Media put tracks inside a folder for a particular artist then album and the track itself. there's also a tool inside the N91 menu for optimizing file system like the disk defragmenter in case you suspectd that access to microdrive is slower than usual. :)

[difenbaker]

Hello to everyone,

If you were like given a choice between a memory card (n73) and a hard drive (N91) - which one will you choose? If both were the same 4GB capacity?

mmmm... that's a toughie. But for myself, I'd go with the memory card. It's just easier to use, easier to maintain, and easier to replace (if necessary).

cheers!

[manav]

Card, for obvious reasons.

[francisofarabia]

definitely card...

consume less power...

no moving parts, hence that is why it is rated up to 10 years or more, whereas you will be happy if a hard drive will last you 3 years...

easy to replace...

[dmitri]

definitely card...
no moving parts, hence that is why it is rated up to 10 years or more, whereas you will be happy if a hard drive will last you 3 years...

easy to replace...

You're really balancing ruggedness (HDD) against number of writes possible before the media dies (solid state). The computer industry has been hesitant to create solid state storage for OS drives. So part of that equation should be how often it's used, and for what.

-dp

[mewtwosama]

How many times was the N91 drop tested? I recall it being over 100 times.

Then you talk about the read/writes of a memory card. A person would more than likely have moved on to their next phone before reaching that limit.

N73 has miniSD. N95 has microSD.
Its successor will (hopefully) use micro SDHC that has a limit of 32 gigs. Regular SD was originally supposed to have a 2 gig limit, I could be wrong on that.

By the time Nokia jumps on the SDHC bandwagon, the N91 might have an even larger revision. Maybe that one will also have a memory card slot, best of both worlds.

Anyway, I pick memory card. Card media is getting dirt cheap.

[francisofarabia]

You're really balancing ruggedness (HDD) against number of writes possible before the media dies (solid state). The computer industry has been hesitant to create solid state storage for OS drives. So part of that equation should be how often it's used, and for what.

-dp

we are definitely talking about MP3 applications here... how often??? ask a 13 year old???

damaging a mem card is very remote if you are not very clumsy... with most 2GBs and 4GBs, you are probably not going to remove if from your phone and it is really better not to remove it... hence any possible damage is actually very remote....

the best thing to talk about then is MTBF...

[carcomptoy]

Having the hard drive makes it seem more special, but obviously more practical would be to have the memory card. So I suppose memory card.

[stephanie]

Thanks very much for the replies. I'll tell my bro to buy a card.

[jayesh]

a card anyday ... i am not happy with the n91 and its failures... my ex went through 2 N91's and she is a very careful user.