16 Gb SDHC w/reader $65.00

KatManDEW said:

Thanks for the links.

At the bottom of the page for that reader you refered to, and some of
the others, it says "Transfer rate: Up to 480 Mb/sec via USB 2.0. Up
to 12 Mb/sec via USB 1.1".

Click to expand...

The 480mbs is just the theoretical max speed of the USB 2.0 interface design. Device transfer rates do to overhead and such actually don't come anywhere near that speed in the real world. It's interesting that the Firewire spec is only 400mbs but actually out performs USB 2.0 by about 20% in real world benchmarks. If I do the math correctly, The fastest external hard drives can transfer over the USB 2.0 interface at about 33MBs, multiply that by 8 and you get 264mbs... Far below the 480mbs. Firewire can transfer closer to 40MBs or 320mbs. LOL, I've gotten a bit off topic with this now, so I'm going to just stop... BUT in closing:

Any device that lists the 480mbs is actually telling you nothing about its real performance, and using that number is a rather deceptive practice used by many manufacturers of slower hardware.

Bob

You can get a reader from eBay...very cheap. SDHCs have new specs, the rated speed is set and will never fall below it. Regular and Xtreme SD cards have variable speed ratings and thus isn't very accurate.

tocar said:

You can get a reader from eBay...very cheap. SDHCs have new specs,
the rated speed is set and will never fall below it. Regular and
Xtreme SD cards have variable speed ratings and thus isn't very
accurate.

Click to expand...

The only problem with the new speed ratings for SDHC is that the highest rating currently defined or available is class 6, which is a minimum write speed of 6 MBps. That is far below what card manufacturers are capable of creating now, and gives you no idea of what the cards read speed is. A few manufacturers still list the read speed along with the class 6 write speed, so you can find a few 133X class 6 cards. You still don't know if the even those cards are capable of writing faster than 40X, unless you can find a review that benchmarked them.

Bob

I think we're beating dead horses here because the cards, and (many) card readers, are both faster than what USB is capable of, which make it all a mute point.

What exactly does "1X" refer to?

I just looked at about a dozen of the ones on EBay, and none of them look like they will do SDHC, which means they're limited to

Have you seen any on EBAY that list SDHC support?

A internal reader for a 3.5 inch bay would be fine for me, but I would also be ticklend pink with one for a 5.25 inch bay, with more ports on it (USB, Firewire, SATA, etc). But I need SDHC support.

1X = 150kbs. so you multiply 150 times what ever speed rating is on the memory card. So a 133X card would transfer at 133 X 150kbs = 19950kbs or just about 20mbs. A USB port is capable of transfer speeds of around 33000kbs which would be about a 220X card. I don't think any card has reached that speed yet, so USB 2.0 is still capable of transfering faster than the fastest cards available today. I've never searched around on ebay for a high speed card readers. I doubt your going to find them listing that level of detail on the specs. If you get a generic reader I think most of them max out at speeds of 60X or less. There' just no way to tell until you get it home and benchmark it.

Bob

I just ordered one of these;

http://cgi.ebay.com/5-25-Internal-Card-Reader-USB-1394-ESATA-Mic-Audio-NEW_W0QQitemZ170204891515QQihZ007QQcategoryZ51082QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem#ebayphotohosting

It says SDHC 2.0 supported, so we'll see....... Any suggestions on how to benchmark test it?

I can use the extra USB ports, since the &*$%@* ones on the front of my Antec case won't work no way no how with USB 2.0 devices, even though I've tried connecting them internally to known good USB 2.0 ports #@ &^!!!

The Firewire connector on the front of my Antec case is also only for show.....

HDTach is a free program that will benchmark the reading speed. I haven't found an easy to use free program to test the write speed. Here's the link:

http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach

Bob

Thanks again for the info. They don't sell a registered version of that anymore, for write testing. I'm sure there are others. I'll bet SiSoftware Sandra would work.

Read testing would prolly be enough, since my main concern is pulling data off the cards.

I agree. No matter how fast your card is it's the USB connection speed that will determine the actual speed of downloading or uploading. At least the SDHC cards will give you a consistent "rated" speed for it's class and will not deviate. XTreme cards of less than 4gb have too many variable speed. You don't actually know how "fast" or "slow" it's behaving. For cameras a sustained speed rating is crucial for videos and for taking images. So a claim of up to 1x, 2x, etc is not very accurate in determining the actual speed.

As for eBay do a search of "SDHC card reader". There are plenty available and different sizes too. For me I bought a Sandisk SDHC with a reader and a couple more SDHC cards. Both my laptops (HP, Dell) and both my desktops (HP) can read the SDHC cards after updating the Ricoh card reader driver (Vista does this automatically). Data transfer is fast especially if I'm doing it from the camera instead of a reader.

The Xtrastor card reader does work with my 8 gig and 16 gig SDHC cards. I haven't had a chance the do a speed test.

In most card readers, the actual maximum transfer rate depends on the controller chip that's used in the readers themselves. Many current multi-card readers are capped at about 18 MB/s, which is quite a bit below what USB 2.0 can sustain.

RJL65 said:

In most card readers, the actual maximum transfer rate depends on the
controller chip that's used in the readers themselves. Many current
multi-card readers are capped at about 18 MB/s, which is quite a bit
below what USB 2.0 can sustain.

Click to expand...

I bought a $3 150X external reader that works at over 20MB/s for me.
http://www.ledshoppe.com/Product/com/CA2029.htm

I think manufacturers have a lot of older slower internal readers to unload, because high speed SDHC compatible interal readers are still hard to find.

Bob

I haven't run any quantitative tests, but just doing some quick comparisons, the Xtrastor card reader is at least twice as fast as my old card reader when reading my old CF cards, which are not the fastest CF cards available.

bfollett said:

I think manufacturers have a lot of older slower internal readers to
unload, because high speed SDHC compatible interal readers are still
hard to find.

Bob

Click to expand...

I managed to find one (SDHC-compatible, internal, high-speed) at a Micro Center (in-store only; it's not listed on their website) for about $18. It is about as fast (read or write) as any recent external card reader I used.