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Fastest Download CF Card to PC?

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DaveMcKeen

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During a model shoot we stop at logical points and get the images into the PC to review our progress. Could be 150 images (best JPEG from a 20D ~ 2.5MB each). I need the fastest possible download time from the CF card to the hard drive out of courtesy to the model. The card I have now is a Lexar 1GB 40X "High Speed Compact Flash" with WA (write acceleration technology)" and a Lexar "USB 2.0 Multi-Card Reader" connected to a USB2 port on my PC's motherboard. I'm running WinXP Pro SP2 if that makes any difference.

I'm researching parts to build a new PC. Is there anything I can do to make the downloads faster? Right now they are moving at about one per second. I tired a Lexar Firewire reader, but the system wasn't happy with it. It never worked satisfactorily.

Thanks!

--
  • Dave
 
Hi,

I already had one serious "fight" here with somebody referring to old reviews. Read the date for the FireWire report: "March 2001". The CardBus article is Tuesday, 21 October 2003.

With time, USB 2.0 card readers and CF specs were improved. Current top notch USB 2.0 readers can easily read at 17MB/s, which is above the official ATA specs for the PIO/MDMA modes used by CF cards. This means that neither FireWire nor CardBus running the CF in IDE mode can catch up with this speed.

Get the Transcend 13 in 1 USB 2.0 reader.

Hans-Jürgen
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CARDSPEED - Card Readers and Memory Cards - http://www.hjreggel.net/cardspeed/
HD-Info - Harddisk Information - http://www.hjreggel.net/hdinfo/
 
I have many CF readers in a box called "junk". The only two that I have found that are fast are:

ZiO CameraMate DM-25000 - CF only card reader - USB 2.0 about $20 US (Laptop computer)
Sandisk IMage mate 12-1 card reader (desktop computer) USB 2.0

Both are as fast as my older Firewire reader
Takes about 2 minutes to DL a 1 gig CF card regardless of file type or size

Other types i have tried take up to 10 minutes. This includes laptop PCMIA cards.

robert Strom
 
absolutely agree, those figures are WAY out of date and misleading.
 
Hans-Jürgen:

Any particular reason why you recommend the transcend reader? Have you done any testing on it?

By the way - thanks very much for the tesing you have done to date, good to see someone is keeping up in this area. Robgalbraith's site does some nice testing but isn't current.
 
Hi,

My site shows the results for the Hama 19 in 1 V.2. That reader is available in Germany and some other European countries.

I've checked a Transcend 13 in 1 that has the same controller (GL819) with a slightly higher Firmware revision than my pre-series sample of the Hama 19 in 1 V.2, and therefore seems to work more stable than my pre-series sample. The Transcend should be available in the U.S., which should be interesting for the majority of the readers. The only catch is that it does not support SmartMedia.

Hans-Jürgen
--
CARDSPEED - Card Readers and Memory Cards - http://www.hjreggel.net/cardspeed/
HD-Info - Harddisk Information - http://www.hjreggel.net/hdinfo/
 
I recently built a new PC using a Lian-li case. I purchased a matching Lian-li 8-in-1 card reader that fits into a 3.5" bay (or 5.25" with adapter) on a whim (and because it had the same brushed aluminium finish as the case. Turns out that it's a rather fast downloader. I get 7.5MB/s from my Sandisk Extreme II 4GB CF cards and 9.2MB/s from my generic 1GB SD cards. On par with the faster readers at http://www.hjreggel.net/cardspeed/ . A lucky find on my part.

My PC build is described at the link below (including pictures of the brushed aluminium card reader):

http://www.kevinmillsphoto.com/Articles/WorkstationArticle.html

--
Kevin
http://blog.kevinmillsphoto.com
 
I received the Transcend 13 in 1 reader today and did some limited testing. Currently the fastest card on the market is, I believe, the transcend 4GB 150x SD card. The reader reads from this at sllightly faster than 1GB per minute (I got about 19 megabytes per second). In comparison an older Lexar USB2 reader (5 in 1?) reads this card at about .5 GB per minute. I also tested a Sandisk 4GB ultra II, the entire card was read in less than 7 minutes on the transcend 13 in 1, versus almost 30 minutes for the Lexar reader, and 15 minutes on a Verbatim CF pocket reader.

In short, the Transcend 13 in 1 looks like a very fast reader, thanks Hans-Jürgen for the recommendation.
 
Hi William,

Thanks for reporting. This should prove that there's no need for spending lots of money for 'exclusive' FireWire or CardBus adapters (except maybe for the Panasonic CardBus SD, which is at least fast in return for being expensive).

Your figures show that you can get excellent results when using fast cards in fast readers.

It's totally useless testing fast cards in slow readers and then blaming the card or testing slow readers against even slower ones to prove that they are "fast".

Hans-Jürgen
--
CARDSPEED - Card Readers and Memory Cards - http://www.hjreggel.net/cardspeed/
HD-Info - Harddisk Information - http://www.hjreggel.net/hdinfo/
 
I bought a Dazzle Thunderbolt at CompUSA. It easily outperformed my Sandisk multicard reader. Both are supposed to be USB2.
 
William Belvin said:
I received the Transcend 13 in 1 reader today and did some limited
testing. Currently the fastest card on the market is, I believe,
the transcend 4GB 150x SD card. The reader reads from this at
sllightly faster than 1GB per minute (I got about 19 megabytes per
second). In comparison an older Lexar USB2 reader (5 in 1?) reads
this card at about .5 GB per minute. I also tested a Sandisk 4GB
ultra II, the entire card was read in less than 7 minutes on the
transcend 13 in 1, versus almost 30 minutes for the Lexar reader,
and 15 minutes on a Verbatim CF pocket reader.

In short, the Transcend 13 in 1 looks like a very fast reader,
thanks Hans-Jürgen for the recommendation.
Click to expand...
William, did you find a distributor in the US? I can't seem to locate this reader. Please advise.
 
Hans-Jurgen,

Any recommendations for an internal card reader with the same performance as the Transcend 13 in 1?

Thanks,
Wilfred
 
William Belvin said:
http://ec.transcendusa.com/product/product_memory.asp?chtype=Peripherals&Cid=13&indexnum=7

for about $22.
Click to expand...
Transcend part number appears to be TS-RD13B, available in either blue or orange.

Transcend's site today wants $20.40 for the reader plus $5.00 for UPS ground.

Zipzoomfly wants $24.99, with "free" second-day shipping included.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=83147

Think I'll try one of these--thanks to previous posters.

By the way, ZipZoomfly is the old GoogleGear.com
--
new 350D user July 1, 2005
 
Hi,

I don't know of any internal model using the GL819 controller, maybe others can help. Internal readers usually have no cover, so it's wasy to see the controller.

If you can get a hand on the Hama 19 in 1 "V.2", you could remove the PCB fomr the Hama shell and modify a slot cover to make it "internal". Unfortunately, this does not work with the Transcend PCB, since the slots are on two adjacent edges - unless you sacrifice the MS and xD slots...

Hans-Jürgen
--
CARDSPEED - Card Readers and Memory Cards - http://www.hjreggel.net/cardspeed/
HD-Info - Harddisk Information - http://www.hjreggel.net/hdinfo/
 
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