Downloading photos to PC - how long should it take?

[daveb975]

Apologies if this been asked before!

I have recently bought a Sandisk Ultra PC card CF reader to try to speed up the transfer of my images - I was previously using my 400D via USB2.

I put a 4Gb Sandisk Extreme III card in there last night, and downloaded 3.75Gb of RAW and Jpeg files. It took 1 hour, 25 minutes. This is under 1Mb per second if I am calculating correctly.

What sort of speed should I expect from this type of set up? (PC is a new Core2Duo laptop BTW)

[Coolhand]

should be faster than that - I would guess your card reader is connecting at USB1.1 rather than USB2 speeds.

I've got the same reader and get around 15MB/s on a Dell D620 laptop.

[puddleduck]

Seems very slow.

I use el cheapo 7DayShop 4 gig cards (£17.99 Dane Elec) and I get about 13-15megs/s transfer, takes about 5 minutes (approx I've not been bored enough to time it) to transfer a full card.

[daveb975]

should be faster than that - I would guess your card reader is connecting at USB1.1 rather than USB2 speeds.

I've got the same reader and get around 15MB/s on a Dell D620 laptop.

Thanks for the reply. Mine is a PC card (PCMCIA) reader, not USB, so I cannot alter the connection speed.

[rambler]

I have the same card reader, and also find it very slow. I also used a PQI one, and it was no faster. So it's eaither a limitation of PC Card readers, or the way my laptop is configured. I tend to stick with a USB2 card reader now.

[DeadKenny]

I would expect a PCMCIA card to be very slow compared to USB2. Not to mention very expensive. I just stick to USB. PCMCIA is becoming old-hat and redundant in my opinion.

[silverpenguin7]

I have recently bought a Sandisk Ultra PC card CF reader...

I put a 4Gb Sandisk Extreme III card in there last night, and downloaded 3.75Gb of RAW and Jpeg files. It took 1 hour, 25 minutes. This is under 1Mb per second if I am calculating correctly.

What sort of speed should I expect from this type of set up? (PC is a new Core2Duo laptop BTW)
:eek: exactly what card reader did you get? Sounds like its not one that optimised to make use of the Extreme 3 speeds. There is one specifically for the faster cards. My transfer to pc speeds is 1 compressed RAW per second - well, a fraction under a second I'd say. Thats apprc 10.6MB per image with a D2x RAW file, so something isn't working right for you! I usually start the transfer and start looking at the images straight away as they download way faster than I can look at them.

EDIT: Just read your not using USB2, so I;d say get the Sandisk USB card reader that, it about £15 I think and it makes use of the fast card speeds.

[pauls2]

Apologies if this been asked before!

I have recently bought a Sandisk Ultra PC card CF reader to try to speed up the transfer of my images - I was previously using my 400D via USB2.



As others have already said - you should just buy a USB2 card reader. The one I have is Iwill Media Reader (http://www.pcreview.co.uk/reviews/Miscellaneous/IWill_CR620_6_in_1_Card_Reader/)

[daveb975]

Thanks for all of the advice.

The actual reader that I have got is this one:

http://www.sandisk.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.aspx?ID=1143

I guess that I just assumed it would be quite fast because it is an 'Ultra' one. I dread to think how slow the standard one is!

One of these is now on the way:
http://www.sandisk.co.uk/Products/Item(2012)-SDDRX3-3in1-SanDisk_Extreme_20_USB_Reader.aspx

Hopefully that will be better!

[silverpenguin7]

I'm sure that'll do fine. I have this one:

http://www.sandisk.co.uk/Products/Item(1147)-SDDR-92-SanDisk_ImageMate_CompactFlash_ReaderWriter.aspx

[DeadKenny]

I bought a Lexar Compact Flash card once and that included a USB card reader in the pack. Don't think it was much more in price than one without. In fact I didn't even know it had one until opening the pack.