which one is better sd or ide

[shwoaps]

More thoughts. If you will be using compact flash, it's as convenient as sd. That is, it's really easy to remove/insert card, add more games, take out saves. And believe me, it's really important, it takes so much time and effort to add new games to my hdd, that i just don't. I do all quick adhoc testing, on sd. You know, when you have that itch to test something new.

Taking saves is really important. For me, if i'm dumping saves one by one from vmu to sd, or hdd, after few times, ds breaks up (all versions, but older ones can dump more saves before breaking). And it does not matter what application you are using for save management.
Sometimes damages file system. That way you loose all saves from sd or hdd and need to reformat everything, and put games again. Had that many times. Fortunately saves that are in vmu are not damaged.
The best way is to dump all vmu to one big bin(Ds have command for it), put SD to your pc and manage saves there, then write back big bin to vmu. That way DS *never* hangup for me.
Again, if you don't have sd or compact flash - you are screwed. I can't imagine myself removing hdd to take out saves each few days.

But, ide hdd is the best medium for speed.
For example in DragonCity compatibility list(he is using sata(no ide) hdd and compact flash), there is a lot of games where videos are lagging, and none video is lagging on my 2.5 hdd ide.
(4rc3, 4rc4, 4rc4git)

And for example in his list, Shenmue2 is running only with *sync2 no dma*, on my ide hdd it's running full throtle (*true dma*) swat in one thread confirmed that. What difference you ask? Huge. Everything loads instantly with true dma. With sync2 i would not play Shenmue2.
There is other thing, maybe DragonCity used 4rc4 from official download page. I'm using 4rc4 git build. And with Shenmue2, i can confirm that official 4rc4 worked only with sync2. Who knows, DragonCity didn't write version of DS that he used(4rc4 yes, but which? git, official?).

There is another big problem. Unfortunately we don't have *good* compatibility list, people still don't understand how it's important to write *all* testing info, ide, sata, compact flash compatibility differs. Pal, usa, jpn console differs. 4rc3, 4rc4, 4rc4gitv1,4rc4gitv2...,Everything is really important. Sure, some games will run identically on all regions, on all mediums, but there are a lot that don't.

Dark Hayabusa compatibility was really good for usa console, there where quite a lot of games, that had different settings on my pal, but still, it was good reference. But he *mashed up 4rc3 and 4rc4 results*! That's really bad. If he had written that those games are tested and run on 4rc3, and others run and tested on 4rc4 it would be fine. But now, all games are supposedly running on 4rc4 with that settings, and that's not true.

With current information, i think that best solution is sd mod for quick testing, and save management, plus ide hdd for best speed and experience.

Compact flash really looked promising, but after DragonCity compatibility list, it isn't.
I'm using 2.5 ide hdd, soon will get ide2usb converter. Maybe then sd will not be so necessary. Still, for saves SD is must have.