Tutorial
Updated
PSA: Check your data!!!
Hi at all,
it is a well known fact (at least since Samsung's infamous 840 EVO scandal) that data on NAND is volatile. That means it gets harder for a controller to read "old" data.
That is the case for our SD cards in nintendo switch consoles. Last year in October 2022 I bought a large 512GB SanDisk Ultra card (NO FAKE) for 40 bucks. It worked well. Until I updated Mario Kart 8 to its last update a few days ago and was astonished by the long track loading times (40 secs). On my other switch (512GB Samsung drive) there was 9 second loading.
So I switched cards to make sure it was not the SD reader or something else. Same result. Then I refreshed the data on the faulty card (DiskFresh freeware tool by Pugan Software). Of course you can copy your data, then quick format and paste your data back which has the exact same effect: Every sector is written again.
It took me a whole day to refresh the sectors. After that the card was as fast as usual. It maxes out the switch's SD reader for sure. Since I have come by several threads complaining about slow SD cards and those being fake... this is NOT always the case as shown here. simply refresh your data once in a while and it restores your SD card speeds to maximum.
tl;dr:
Not only things in your refrigerator get old as time goes by. DATA GETS OLD AND SLOW. Please refresh your data once in a while. Since we all install our games once and never write data to that spot ever again, it gets slow over time. This is not a huge deal for SSDs (SATA or Nvme, since those have firmware which handle refreshing data accordingly). But SD cards are dumb and the switch obviously does not manage data to keep it fresh.
Best wishes!
it is a well known fact (at least since Samsung's infamous 840 EVO scandal) that data on NAND is volatile. That means it gets harder for a controller to read "old" data.
That is the case for our SD cards in nintendo switch consoles. Last year in October 2022 I bought a large 512GB SanDisk Ultra card (NO FAKE) for 40 bucks. It worked well. Until I updated Mario Kart 8 to its last update a few days ago and was astonished by the long track loading times (40 secs). On my other switch (512GB Samsung drive) there was 9 second loading.
So I switched cards to make sure it was not the SD reader or something else. Same result. Then I refreshed the data on the faulty card (DiskFresh freeware tool by Pugan Software). Of course you can copy your data, then quick format and paste your data back which has the exact same effect: Every sector is written again.
It took me a whole day to refresh the sectors. After that the card was as fast as usual. It maxes out the switch's SD reader for sure. Since I have come by several threads complaining about slow SD cards and those being fake... this is NOT always the case as shown here. simply refresh your data once in a while and it restores your SD card speeds to maximum.
tl;dr:
Not only things in your refrigerator get old as time goes by. DATA GETS OLD AND SLOW. Please refresh your data once in a while. Since we all install our games once and never write data to that spot ever again, it gets slow over time. This is not a huge deal for SSDs (SATA or Nvme, since those have firmware which handle refreshing data accordingly). But SD cards are dumb and the switch obviously does not manage data to keep it fresh.
Best wishes!
Last edited by naddel81,
