Is it Possible to Use a Micro SD card as a primary storage and boot device?

The answer is yes.

There are people who tried this and gained great success beyond their expectations. While Solid State Drives are still the fastest boot device for computers today and mechanical Hard Drives’ SATA III capability is still awesome, you might think using a Micros SD instead will only slow your computer down. However, based on benchmarks and actual experience, Micro SD cards will still function just like your ordinary drive but with slower writing speed. This means slower speed in installing an operating system and saving files. Other than that, it is just a small and cheaper storage device.

How to Use a Micro SD card?

Latest laptops have SD card slots in front or at the sides. You can use an adapter to fit the micro SD card to the SD card slot and you can start using it. For desktop computers, we suggest you buy a USB 3.0-capable Card Reader for SDHC and compatible with Windows 7.

How to Install an OS to it?

You can use a DVD installer, USB, or even another micro SD card to install almost any kind of Operating System to it. We have seen Mac OS X Snow Leopard installed to it, Windows 7 and of course, Linux. Just be sure you connected the micro SD card to the computer and it reads it properly.

Comparisons

Based on what we have seen and read online, they reported that installing the OS to a micro SD card is a little bit slower than an SSD card, hence the write speed limit of the micro SD card. In the booting speed, SSD still leads in the fastest booting time record but a micro SD card boots just like an ordinary hard drive. When it comes to using big programs, multitasking, and accessing your files, you can hardly tell the difference.

How to speed it up?

We really believe that you can at least increase the speed of your Micro SD with some modifications especially on the controller setup. We are trying to catch the speed of the expensive SSD by using a micro SD here but it is not possible because of the controller. The controller connects the device to computer just like a bridge. SSD has a built-in controller as part of itself so it is much faster while a micro SD has no controller and you need to connect it to a slot or a reader. The slot or reader connection will affect the speed of communication from the card to the computer. So, how can you at least speed it up? The latest version of micro SD today is SDXC running at Class 10 (10 MB/s) UHS-1 (50MB/s). SanDisk has the Ultra 64 GB micro SDXC at around P2, 000 only. You can pair this with a card reader with a USB 3.0 capability to boot the transfer speed to a maximum of 5 GB/s. However, it will not attain that kind of speed because of the limitation of the card itself.

At least, with that kind of upgrade, you might get some increase on read and write speed, and even booting speed. As for now, if you have the money, SSD is still the fastest storage and boot device, but a micro SD card would be a good alternative for a mechanical hard drive.