Question: I am stuck in a situation where I need more storage on my macbook. Most of the space is used up by dropbox which is used for work and although I have tried selective sync it is getting a bit annoying.
I could get an external usb drive and put my dropbox on it but having the extra hard drive would make me less mobile as I sometimes like to walk with my laptop or move from room to room.
A solution I am now considering is a 128gb SDXC card which would fit nicely in my macbooks SD slot and have enough room for my entire dropbox.
Is an SDXC card a good alternative to an external hard drive?
Can I expect it to work just as quickly?
Will it be as stable and as reliable as a USB hard drive?
Answer: I would view this as a short term solution for a number of reasons:
a) Internally, the SDXC reader in your laptop connects via USB, and SDXC cards are rarely as fast as internal SSD storage. So it will be slower that your internal storage, and a little slower than many external USB 3 hard drives. Chances are it will be fast enough to keep you happy though!
b) Leaving the SDXC card in the laptop#s slot all the time will leave a card poking out of the slot a little. Every time you bump the card you wear out the card and the slot a little bit.
c) SDXC cards are not designed to be written over and over and over again like a hard drive. They are by no means fragile these days but I would always expect the hard drive to last longer, even if the warranty on the two storage devices was identical.
d) A 128GB SDXC card is not cheap.. if you check out the used Mac market you may find it is cheaper to sell your current beast get a beefed up machine? Maybe! Could you tell me which machine you have?
e) It sounds like you should be managing your file sizes better. How long before you start shopping for a 256GB SDXC card? 🙁