Third-party memory card reliability

[raptir]

I finally filled up my 8MB PS2 memory card (official Sony card), and wanted to look into buying another one. How is the reliability on cards like the Datel 32/64MB memory cards or the Gamestop 32MB card? Will they work to their full capacity? Do they have good save reliability? Would they work with FMCB (secondary issue, since I have the 8MB already)?

[Ushi]

I am also curious on the reliability of 3rd party memory cards. I see chinese memory cards on ebay going for 10-15 bucks for 128mb but I sense its a scam. Any first hand accounts?

[raptir]

For anyone curious, I went out and bought a Datel 32MB MAX Memory card today. I was pretty hopeful after transferring my saves, as it held more than 10MB of saves with no problems. Once I started playing a game, my attitude changed. While it works, the save and load times are horrendous. The access time is about 4 times that of the official Sony card. Guitar Hero 3, for example, took about 40 seconds to save my game in between songs. If you can deal with that, they're fine, but the speed is horrendous.

[DFX]

You can't count Guitar Hero 3.

It's the more bugged game I never see.

The GH3 load time is 40x more time on any NON-SONY card.

Have personally a 64MB Max memory card. Work perfect on any game and homebrew, except GH3 taking 40x time to load/save, indeed.

DFX

[The G Man]

I recommend you take a look at these if you're looking for more space:

http://www.katana-accessories.com/ps2.html

They have 16MB and 32MB versions which use standard 8MB "pages". You push the button to change your page. They are also officially liscensed and use standard Sony Magic-Gate chips. I bought the 32MB MC and one of their wireless controllers, they're very good quality stuff. I highly recommend them.

[raptir]

Disregarding the game that I was playing, when transferring files on and off the card with uLE, the average speed was less than 1/4 of that with my genuine Sony card. I'll look into those Katana cards though, thanks. Only issue I could see there is that I use ESR with FMCB, so I'd have to switch the sector each time.

[nemesis01]

Anyone know if you can buy those Katana cards in the UK? Had a quick look, can't find any and no UK distributors listed on the 'Where to buy' page.

[yoshi314]

afaict datel cards work quite well.

some games load a bit faster (ff12 pal) even on a 50% full 64mb datel max memory card (which supposedly should slow things down). apps that do extra memory card operations (like checking for free space) might load/save slower. copying data doesn't seem much slower in ule.

it varies with game. some games operate on memcards in such way that the bigger the card - the slower saving/loading. gran turismo 4 seems to be slower when auto-saving in menu (i don't really remember how long did it take on standard memcard - it's ~10seconds on datel). dark cloud 2 on the other hand saves and loads game quite fast.

[raptir]

Hm, so you think I'd be okay with a Datel and an official card for the games that run slow on the Datel? Maybe I'll try that.

[TnA]

My Datel 32MAX worked very well.
No Boot-CD and it is also compatible with FMCB (couldn't test it myself).

It is incompatible with a few games, such as Resident Evil 4 and some others.
A 32MB, or even 64MB-Card should be available under 30€.


I heard that 64MAX are even double times slower, than 32MAX and that it has something to do with the partitioning and accessing the partitions (simultaneously?), or this "page-mapping" (thought it was partition-mounting, with multiple 8MB-Partitions, mounted and accessed at the same time.).

32MAX was fast enough for me.
Loads and works well on most of my games.
I had one Sony-MC to use it (the one I bought with my first PS2 5 years ago and it still works very well.).

Both cards should be enough for FMCB and Saves and it is recommend to have a Sony-MC, regardless if you have a MAX or not.

Hope it helps to decide. ^^
MAX are good and available at low cost.


Btw.: I will not wonder, if Datel "enhance" there cards also later (something like a OSD-Hack, to load Homebrew. <-- Unreachable partition, or it is not mapped in this way to the MC-Manager.).

[yoshi314]

as far as datel 64mb goes i had only one issue so far.

when starting metal gear solid 3 it says something like "no memcards detected, continue?", or something about not enough space on memcard, and how much you need (even though i still have at least 30mb free). when you pick "Yes" game starts and works normally (you can save/load, etc).

[objectorbit]

I have got an eight MB third party card that works great with ESR, FMCB, SMS and other apps. It is officially licensed, however.

Cost five bucks less than a Sony card too. Got it at a Target.

[dlanor]

Originally Posted by TnA

My Datel 32MAX worked very well.
No Boot-CD and it is also compatible with FMCB (couldn't test it myself).

I have three such cards myself, and have tested them all with FMCB, which works fine.

A funny thing with one of them is that it is labeled as a 16MB card, but after reformatting with homebrew methods it works like a 32MB card. I've tested that by actually storing 32MB of data on it, and then verified the files after retrieval from the card, so I know that the storage capacity really grew from 16MB to 32MB

I suspect that they were out of the 16MB memory chips during some production phase, and simply formatted the bigger ones to 16MB, so as to be able to deliver ordered 16MB cards. But after a reformatting with MCKiller (or similar formatters) such a card will gain the real size of the memory chip

It is incompatible with a few games, such as Resident Evil 4 and some others.

I never noticed any incompatibilities, but I don't play all games, and haven't tried RE4. If my cards too have such problems I guess I'll have to fall back on using an 8MB card fo such games.

A 32MB, or even 64MB-Card should be available under 30€.

I agree that they 'should be', but as always the real price will vary with supply and demand, rising sharply when dearly wanted and hard to get.

I heard that 64MAX are even double times slower, than 32MAX and that it has something to do with the partitioning and accessing the partitions (simultaneously?), or this "page-mapping" (thought it was partition-mounting, with multiple 8MB-Partitions, mounted and accessed at the same time.).

Many types of filesystem operations (like list sorting) is proportional not to the number of entries, but to the square of that number. So for such cases doubling the size will not just double the delays once, but will do it twice over.

This is also true for the amount of objects stored in a directory, so a nearly empty MC will handle much faster than a nearly full one. So if you raise the number of folders on an MC by a factor of 4 (for example) then the delay for some directory operations will be multiplied by a factor of 16.

The same relationship applies to many other things too, not just MCs, which is the reason for the huge delay the first time you start HDLoader after using some other application to install a new game to an already large game list. Someone with just a few games will never notice this, but a game list with 200 entries will be appx 10,000 times slower than a list with just 2 entries...

32MAX was fast enough for me.
Loads and works well on most of my games.

Agreed, though the slowdown is quite noticeable with many gamesaves on the MC.

I had one Sony-MC to use it (the one I bought with my first PS2 5 years ago and it still works very well.).

I have two of these myself, plus a non-Sony 8MB MC from MadCatz.

Both cards should be enough for FMCB and Saves and it is recommend to have a Sony-MC, regardless if you have a MAX or not.

I most definitely agree...!

Btw.: I will not wonder, if Datel "enhance" there cards also later (something like a OSD-Hack, to load Homebrew. <-- Unreachable partition, or it is not mapped in this way to the MC-Manager.).

I'm not sure what you meant by the details here, but it is quite likely that various manufacturers will try to make money on selling some kind of ready-made exploit MCs using FMCB (or methods derived from it). From what I've heard small-time retailers are already doing it, and it would only be natural for manufacturers to want those extra profits for themselves, instead of seeing it all go to retailers of the cards they make.

Best regards: dlanor

[TnA]

Yes, I meant something like a ultra-noob-safe "Service-Mode-MC", like on PSP.

[..uNEEk..]

does anyone know if this memory card is compatible w/ free mcboot esr etc?

http://cgi.ebay.com/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi...m=320297909277

thanks

[yoshi314]

one more issue discovered with datel 64mb :/

star ocean 3 director's cut cannot create battle trophy data, saying that "there is not enough space on the memcard".

once you make the file on 8mb memcard and copy it over to 64mb card - it works from there.

[raptir]

I have to say, after trying out and eventually returning the 16/32/64MB Datel memory cards, it's worth it to spend the extra money on the Katana cards. They work exactly the same as the official Sony cards (since they use official MagicGate chips). Only disadvantage is that you need uLE or something else that can copy files to a USB stick to move saves from one partition to the other.

[t00p]

Ive used datel 16mb and 32mb cards. While Ive never experienced corrupted data they are very slow indeed. Also they do not work in a few games. Okami is the only one I can think of but there are more