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New Mac mini has SDXC card slot

updated 11:25 am EDT, Fri June 18, 2010

Mac mini one of first computers with SDXC


Discoveries today have proven that the redesigned Mac mini is the first Mac with an SDXC card slot. Visiting the slot in Disk Utility with an SD card inside shows an "Apple SDXC Reader" and thus that it has more room than other Macs limited to SDHC. The slot gives headroom for cards from 64GB through to 2TB in size and uses faster transfer speeds of up to 104MB per second on most of the still-early readers.

The update hints that other Macs will get SDXC in the next round of updates. The iMac is currently the oldest model in Apple's lineup with an SD card slot and may be next, but the 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pros are eligible once they grow old enough to merit updates. [via Gizmodo]


By Electronista Staff

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iMac, MacBook Pro, computers, upgrades/storage, Mac mini, Apple

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  1. nowwhatareyoulookingat

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Jul 2009

    +1
    06/18, 11:57am | report spam | reply

    Really? 104 MB/sec?

    Why would you include some theoretical maximum speed when it's hooked up to the USB bus internally, limiting it to less than 60 MB/sec... And in reality, you are lucky if you get more than 1/2 that throughput.


  1. Jonathan-Tanya

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    Joined: Oct 2004

    0
    06/18, 01:15pm | report spam | reply

    if you ever thought you could...

    Guys, ever since my Amgia days, people wanted to use flash memory to replace a hard drive....so I finally got around to trying it.

    In case you have ever wondered that thought yourself, the answer is: junk.

    The theory is correct, flash has no moving parts, so unlike a traditional hard drive, which has to move the disk head and seek a new spot on the rotating platter - flash seek time is great, so on random reads, you fly.

    But flash is written to in blocks, and you have to rewrite the whole block, not just part of it. Modern SSD's have overcome this issue by advanced alogrithms, over allocation of space, trim commands, etc.

    Your typical compact flash card, or USB stick has done no such thing. I used a respectably fast - turbo boost capable usb flash stick, loaded it up with a oracle virtual box vdi file and ran windows on it.

    What I found was shockingly fast access times for reads, followed by shockingly slow writes, at times causing massive delays and hiccups into the system.

    So....the SDXC card, what is it, a great way to transfer photo's from your camera....what it is not, supplemental storage - it would be junk for that. As the above poster said, you won't get much transfer speed, and the random writes are going to be junk.

    In short...not great, an ESATA port would have been a nice addition....as it is, I am a mac mini owner, and a mac mini fan, and the only thing I do with them, is put an SSD internally, replacing the stock drive, and then use an external firewire hdd or usb hdd.

    I can't find another angle for hooking up fast storage.


  1. Coruscant

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: May 2004

    +2
    06/18, 01:24pm | report spam | reply

    x1 PCIe not USB

    The card reader functionality is provided by the Broadcom BCM57765 which also provides the GigE functionality. The BCM57765 is connected to an x1 PCIe v1.1 interface with a peak throughput of 250 MB/s, which is sufficient bandwidth for the peak throughput of both the GigE (125 MB/s) and SDXC reader (104 MB/s).


  1. Jonathan-Tanya

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Oct 2004

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    06/18, 02:05pm | report spam | reply

    104 MB/s

    Thanks for the clarification.

    just for those wanting to take that number and use it as a way of comparison, in terms of traditional hard drives, a WD Velociraptor transfers at 131MB/s, a Spin Point F3, 110MB/s - number taken from Tom's hardware 2009 3.5" hdd chart.

    With SSD, whose main feature is not really raw transfer rates, they nevertheless run quite a bit faster, at 238 MB/s for the Intel X-25, also taken from 2009, as the chart hasn't been updated for faster drives released in 2010.

    Of course thats a bit of apple/oranges comparison because I'm talking about actual transfer rates of devices, as opposed to theoretical max bandwidth of a spec, which is almost never the observed rate, but --best we can do until someone benchmarks the thing..


  1. jacobvarghese

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Jun 2010

    0
    06/18, 03:13pm | report spam | reply

    Mac mini SSD

    Off-topic, but I'm looking to switch out the hard drive for an SSD drive on my Jun2010 Mini.

    Any suggestions?


  1. YangZone

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: May 2000

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    06/18, 03:23pm | report spam | reply

    What kind of fast?

    Is it limited to USB speed or not? That is does it Read at at least 120MB/sec and Write at at least 65MB/sec? If so it would make a great boot disk.


  1. bvijaykumar

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Jun 2010

    +1
    06/30, 12:43am | report spam | reply

    File System

    Isn't exFat file system or at least a special kernel driver required to access this media? And what about the connector for the new media type? Is it the same as the old ones? It is usually different. So the backward compatibility with older Macs might not be a 100% one.


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