Hello all,

My SD card driver works great with both SD and SDHC cards except I need
it to be as energy efficient as possible when writing.  So, I am
carefully aligning my storage format to match the erase/write boundaries
associated with the NAND flash built into the cards.

The SD and Toshiba specification say to use the card's "allocation unit"
(typically 4 MB) for erase efficiency in SDHC cards.  Further, they say
that for SDHC cards the "sector size" field in the CSD is always set to
127 (64KB) regardless and is meaningless for erase-boundary
determination.

BUT!!!  Later the same Toshiba specification says, oh by the way, notice
that the "sector size" field says 64KB and your efficiency will be much
better if you start writing on 64KB boundaries.

Augh!!!

Questions:

1.  Does the SDHC 4 MB "allocation unit" really mean anything at all to
normal card operation?  Is there any reason to pay the slightest
attention to it?

2.  OK, for certain Toshiba cards the Toshiba documentation tells us
that 64KB is a magic number for write boundaries.  Can one depend on
64KB being the magic number for all SDHC cards from all manufacturers?
It is not provided in any of the card information fields, unless you
count "sector size", which the SD documentation expressly says one
should ignore!

Thanks for any wisdom out there!