Running Accordance from a MicroSD card

[R. Mansfield]

As some of you know, I'm quite keen on at least the idea of running Accordance on a Windows tablet. It's not that I'm not appreciative of having my Accordance Library on an iPad--I use that all the time--but I like the idea of being able to carry a "full" version of Accordance in an extremely portable form factor.

 

Last year, I began putting together an outline of "tips" for running Accordance on a Windows tablet that will eventually become a blog post on the Accordance site. It hasn't come together quite as quickly as I intended because I've been trying to work through various ways to configure a tablet.

 

The greatest challenge with many Windows tablets is very limited storage. Some come with only 16 GB--I don't recommend these under any circumstance. Many come with 32 GB, and a few come with 64 GB or larger. The main problem is that Windows itself can take up a significant amount of that space. A Windows tablet with only 32 GB of storage will actually only leave the user 19 GB of free space because of the Windows installation itself. Fortunately, all of these tablets come with a micro SDXC expansion slot that will allow you to add up to 128 GB of extra storage.

 

Accordance 11 will allow you to install both the executable file and all support files (including your entire Accordance Library) to a drive other than the main internal storage. In my testing, I've determined that there's no significant benefit for placing the main Accordance executable on the micro SD card because it's only about 7 MB which is not going to impact storage space by any significant amount. In fact, placing the executable on another drive may slightly impact performance because all SD cards are slower (to varying degrees) than the internal drive.

 

Of benefit in my testing is the ability to move all support files to the micro SDXC card (Utilities: Choose Support Files Location). However, it took me well over a dozen attempts to get this to work. I ran into difficulties with the card I was using in that files would not move to it or would not install to it after a certain point. After making numerous attempts unsuccessfully, I finally gave up on the micros SDXC card I was using, thinking it might be corrupted (even though tests I ran on it said it was not).

 

As a last ditch effort before giving up, I bought a new card. This one is faster being UHS 3 compared to the slower UHS 1 card that I had been using. Now I've had success and have installed a complete Accordance Library to a micro SDXC card, and everything is running fine. Accordance (again, I have the main executable on the primary internal storage) takes a little bit longer to load--no doubt, it's reading data from the SDXC card--but once it has loaded, it works fine with no significant delay.

 

 

Does Accordance's performance take a hit because the Library, preferences, and other support files live on the micro SDXC card? There's not a significant perceptible slowdown, although it's slightly slower. In my admittedly-unscientific "Christ test," I can search the entire Accordance Library (all texts and all tools) for the English word "Christ," and I've timed it (using the stop watch on my phone) to roughly 6.5 second. That's only a couple of seconds longer than when I run the same search on my MacBook Pro. Keep in mind, too, that my current Windows tablet (a Toshiba Encore 2 Write) has a significantly less-powerful processor than my Mac.

 

I'm very pleased with Accordance's performance so far, although I haven't done thorough tests yet. But I would like to ask some of you about your experience if you've tried either running Accordance or the Accordance library (or both) from a micro SDXC card. What has your experience been so far?

[Fabian]

Hi Rick

 

I saw http://www.amazon.com/Transcend-JetDrive-Storage-Expansion-TS128GJDL130/dp/B00K73NT0S/ref=sr_1_1/185-3814044-3810156?ie=UTF8&qid=1422553305&sr=8-1&keywords=sd+card+macbook+airwould this work to?

 

Greetings

 

Fabian

[R. Mansfield]

No, the ability to move files to a secondary drive is currently a Windows-only feature in Accordance.

[Joel Brown]

You can do it on the Mac as well, but it isn't automated. You basically need to symlink the main Accordance folder to the external drive.

[Daniel Francis]

You can do it on the Mac as well, but it isn't automated. You basically need to symlink the main Accordance folder to the external drive.

 

By symlink do you mean taking the Accordance folder out of Application support and replacing it with an alias named Accordance linking it to the Accordance folder on the Hard drive/SD Card???

 

-Dan

[Joel Brown]

Yes, but I'm not sure if a normal Alias will be good enough, you may need to make a hard symlink. Feel free to try it out!

[Timothy Jenney]

O, for an iPad Pro...

[Fabian]

O.K. Thanks

[Daniel Francis]

https://gigaom.com/2011/04/27/how-to-create-and-use-symlinks-on-a-mac/I see the process here I had just not heard of that before.

 

-Dan

[ukfraser]

As some of you know, I'm quite keen on at least the idea of running Accordance on a Windows tablet. It's not that I'm not appreciative of having my Accordance Library on an iPad--I use that all the time--but I like the idea of being able to carry a "full" version of Accordance in an extremely portable form factor.

 

Rick and dr j, totally agree with you. How far can the accordance elves push this dream on ios???

 

;o)