Hello, new N800 owner here. I have a lot of questions, but I'll just start with them one-topic-at-a-time. Here's my first topic, about memory management:

I have just purchased a SanDisk 2GB Extreme III SD Card specifically for use with the N800 and placed it in the internal expansion slot.

1) Was this the fastest and best option for an expansion card? I read that MMC cards might be faster than flash memory, but the specs on this particular brand/model of card seemed to outclass the fastest MMC I could purchase. Anyone know of a better option?

I have already expanded "virtual" memory to this card by the full 128MB allowed via the Memory Control Panel.

What I would like to do with the 2GB card is to use it for *applications* that I install, so as not to take away from the internal flash memory storage. However, when downloading stuff, it always seems to install to the internal memory and I don't have the option to place it on the expansion card (like I would on, say, a Palm device).

2) I found some advanced instructions about doing this for the Nokia N770

http://maemo.org/community/wiki/ExtendedRootFilesystem
http://hczim.de/software/mmc-unionfs.html

... Which approach is better? Do these apply to the N800? Has anyone tried them and confirm they work? I don't want to goof anything up!

2a) These all have really technical instructions (installing a .deb file? howzat?) Is there any nice, neat GUI tool for this?

3) Would it be smarter to put the included 128MB mini-SD card into the insternal slot and use THAT for the virtual memory swap file? (i.e., cheaper to replace when it wears out?)

4) How much real-world usage would have to occur before I "wear out" a flash card by using it for virtual memory?

5) If I use the 128MB card in the internal slot and dedicate it to virtual memory, and use the technique I found for putting applications on the external slot and the 2GB card, will my Nokia freak out if I remove the external 2GB card for those times when I want to exchange/load files on the PC?

Thanks in advance. I'm sure I'm asking stuff that's already been answered but I couldn't easily find it and I'm hoping that this "silly question" will put all the answers in one place.

I'm new to the N800 myself, and haven't really tried doing anything low-level with it yet. But Flash memory is usually rated for around 1 million write cycles. When you're just using it as a disk device, you tend to read a lot more than you write. (With a digital camera, how long would it take you to capture 1 million photos? [And it would actually be a less than 1 million, since some areas like the filesystem metadata would get written more often.])

When you expand swap to the card, you have the potential to use up those write cycles a LOT faster. You only need to expand swap really if you are using apps that result in exceeding the 128MB of internal RAM that the N800 has. With a 'stock' install, I doubt that will be an issue. If you start loading lots of third-party apps on it, though, then you might be more in need of additional swap space.

Someone needs to make an SD-format RAM card, rather than flash. Then you could have an internal card that does not suffer from limited write cycles to be your external swap. That it isn't persistent should not matter for a swap device. Of course, you'd never want to store real files on it, though mounting a tmpfs on it wouldn't be a bad idea (assuming your tmpfs isn't built on top of swap already).

I decided to set it up so I dual-boot from the internal SD/MMC card. The Wiki article promised the N800 would be twice as fast overall that way, owing to the file system no longer being journaled and compressed. They were right! It's MUCH snappier now... a far more pleasing experience.

I've also extended virtual memory to that card for the time being. I suppose it all depends on how intelligently the N800 uses the swap file, whether I'll burn up the card in a week's use or not. I decided to use a swap file because I like to have Pidgin and Skype open more or less continuously plus several browser windows open at once.


A pity there isn't a utility to measure how much life remains in an SD card. (And I wonder whether the write-cycles have to do with a particular physical region -- in which case I could periodically rename my swap file and create a new one to extend the useful life of the card -- or the card overall.)

I am currently using the supplied 128MB MiniSD card in the external slot. I'm thinking I may get another high-speed card and use it in the external slot... and put the virtual memory on THAT card. My reasoning here is that it's currently much easier to back up any data files stored on the external drive and I'd get a minor speed boost by having the swap file on a separate device than the one I'm using for the operating system (similar to the way Windows runs slightly faster when you place the virtual memory file on a separate disk drive than the system partition).

I'll be setting up to boot from my 2GB internal card, but for people who just want to store apps on SD cards it would be nice if someone would describe how to make the application installer use the removable cards. Right now it keeps trying to fill up the device memory, where I'd rather keep my essential apps.

Well, you'd only need additional swap space if you're trying to run a lot of apps at once. If they're on your device but you're not running them, they're not taking up RAM.

Until recently, most people seemed to use the included 128MB miniSD card for swap and put their larger cards in the external slot. The latest firmware, however, has some card support bugs, especially with SDHC cards. Sometimes larger capacity cards only work reliably in the internal slot, or get damaged when the swap file is used. If you have the latest firmware, just be careful. If you don't have the latest firmware, then you're probably OK, but you probably don't have support for >2GB cards. If the extra features of the new firmware don't interest you, you may want to wait for the next release.

What apps are people installing on the N800 that are taking up huge amounts of room on the internal flash filesystem? So far, I've only used around 30MB on the internal 256MB flash. Things that come to mind that could potentially use a lot of stoage (e.g., GPS/mapping) all let you specify a location on a memory card for the datasets; only the app code itself is on the internal filesystem.