Low disk space / SD cards and such

Hi,

One of my primary machines is a windows 10 (microsoft surface pro 3) device which has pretty limited hard drive space. Is there a way with Logos 7 to store books on the SD card instead of on the built in SSD?

I tried with logos 6 to put the whole thing on the SD card leading to general errors all the time... perhaps with v7 there is a way to just put the library file over on the SD card?

thanks...

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Bradley Grainger (Logos)

This has not changed from Logos 6 to Logos 7.

The program still requires an internal drive to store all the resources, and usually won't work correctly when run from an external drive/SD card.

There's an open suggestion to allow only part of the library to be installed on a computer: https://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/5751660-install-only-selected-resources-to-save-disk-space

Mark Barnes

I tried with logos 6 to put the whole thing on the SD card leading to general errors all the time... perhaps with v7 there is a way to just put the library file over on the SD card?

You can selectively move parts of Logos onto other drives. It's officially unsupported, but works fine. SD cards are slow, though, and moving to a removable drive is more risky than moving to a normal drive.

If you want to do so:

Close Logos.
Move a folder onto the other drive.
Create a symbolic link from the original folder to the new one.

If you need help with step (3), see here: https://community.logos.com/forums/p/124420/812441.aspx#812441

Bob Schaefer

Mark's correct - it's possible to move your library to your Surface's SD card. But he's also right that it's not a very good option. I put the fastest SD card I could find in, and gave it a shot. The result? My library could never complete an index. It just churned and churned. The SD card was too slow.

Bob Schaefer

I guess I should clarify - I think my library did eventually get indexed if it stayed constant for enough days in a row. But every time an update or a newly-purchased resource came down the pipeline, it was back to indexing. This happened often enough that the end result was that my library was essentially being indexed all the time when it lived on the SD card.

Alexxy Olu

Mark and Bob, could the issue with the SD card and indexing be machine specific?

I say so because reading the forum posts on the use of External Micro SD cards, the results have been mixed with some having things working fine and others having experiences not so pleasant.

I have had my whole Logos library on the ASUS vivotab for quite a while now. I moved the library to a 64GB micro SD as my library resources increased.

When indexing became an issue because of the size of my library, I changed to a 128GB micro SD card.

Over time, I have upgraded from L5 to L6 and now to L7 and LN membership and everything still works fine for what I use the tablet for. The vivo tab came with Windows 7 and was not supposed to support Windows 8.

But I have since continued to up grade it and now has Windows 10 on it. It was also not supposed to support more than 64GB card but I have a 128GB card working on it. May be I should say I use the tablet mainly for teaching in bible study, preaching, reading and sometimes watch videos.

I expect that the Windows surface pro 3 series are much superior machines compared to the vivotab, and should be able to power Logos even if it has to be installed on a micro SD card.

I will be interested in how John resolves the issue.

My vivo tab is getting to the end of its life and I am thinking along the line of possibly replacing it with a Windows Pro 3 (because it is only slightly larger than the vivotab) when the time comes.

Mark Barnes

Different levels of satisfaction with SD cards probably depend on multiple factors:

The speed of the SD card
The expectations of the user (users with very fast tablets are going to notice a much bigger speed drop than those with relatively slow tablets).
The size of the library (large libraries cache less well in RAM, and tend to need updating more often, which makes indexing more frequent).

Keep Smiling 4 Jesus :)

You can selectively move parts of Logos onto other drives. It's officially unsupported, but works fine. SD cards are slow, though, and moving to a removable drive is more risky than moving to a normal drive.

Personally have a MacBook Air (MBA) that does not have enough internal space on Solid State Disk (SSD) for my library so am using a fast USB 3 drive (128 GB) for resource file storage, which is symbolically linked into my Logos installation. Internal SSD uses 16.8 GB for my Logos application files while USB drive has 66.0 GB of resource files. Using internal SSD for most of my Logos files avoids known USB and SD issues when writing to application database files.

Caveat: carrying around MBA with external USB provides opportunity for USB drive to be bumped so am learning to handle carefully. Thankful for USB still working after MBA quick exit from car to ground a couple times, including one where USB drive cover split up into several pieces.

Fast USB 3 drive has over 120 MB/second read that is a bit faster than UHS SD and microSD cards with up to 95 MB/second read.

Keep Smiling [:)]

John Weers

I'm planning to start putting parts of the library on the SD card this weekend...

Bob Schaefer

KS4J pointed us in a helpful direction. I didn't realize that the SD reader in the SP3 and SP4 is significantly slower than what a USB 3.0 flash drive is capable of. (Newer computers may have readers capable of using the fastest cards on the market - YMMV.)

After doing some research, I settled on the SanDisk Ultra Fit 64GB as a good candidate for testing - it's got a rated speed of 150 MB/s, which is two to three times as fast as my SD card. There are USB drives that are faster, but this one is small enough that I might not mind it constantly bulging out the side of my tablet.

I'm pleased to report that Logos runs nicely off the SanDisk. Indexing takes time, but it is able to complete (which never happened off the SD card). The program itself is snappy enough for my needs. Sometimes the USB drive wigs out and disconnects, but Logos manages to crash gracefully and runs properly once the drive is reinserted. All things considered, it's the best solution to my storage conundrum.

Which doesn't mean it's great. It's still using an unsupported method of installing the software. It requires a USB nubbin sticking out of a tablet, which is clunky and prone to damage. It ties up the single USB port on my SP3 unless I'm docked.

But it works. So I'm better than I was before. Many thanks to KS4J for pointing me in this direction! Hopefully in some release of L7 the selective download feature can finally be added to alleviate this pain for good.

Dave Thomson

Thanks guys for your feedback.