MacBook Pro CF Reader

jdryan3 · December 11, 2007

I have looked at the Delkin ExpressCard/34 CF card reader and wanted to know if anyone had used one. Any suggestions for Firewire 400/800 reader? I use a Canon 5D so a CF only reader is fine by me. I currently use a ZiO USB 2.0 reader, but want a backup, plus something a little smaller.

This thread during a search was a little dated, as was the Ron Galbraith article, so hopefully someone has used some of the newer technology.

CatOne · December 11, 2007

I have a Lexar FW 400 reader and it's pretty fast.

Though the bomb-diggety-fast reader is the SanDisk USB reader... the one specifically tuned/optimized for their Extreme IV cards. It's a rippah'

Look at Reichmann's review on the luminous landscape about how fast it can read.

darkdragon · December 11, 2007

You don't mention what CF card brand/model you use. However, if you use the SanDisk Extreme or Ultra series, I HIGHLY recommend picking up the SanDisk Extreme USB reader. It is blazingly fast with the Extreme III cards, and supose to be fast with the whole line of Extreme nd Ultra cards. It is SD/CF.

When I say fast, here's what I mean: 3.47GB on/off card under 5 minutes (iMac)

I ran tests with the same group of pictures on two cards (sony vs sandisk) and two readers (generic vs sandisk). The difference was aprox 30mins vs 5min. However, there is NO speed difference between the SanDisk reader and the generic reader with non SanDisk CF cards.

Also, the Firewire version is $40 more than the USB version - but the reported speeds are same. Though, I must admit I did not test the Firewire version myself.

jdryan3 · December 11, 2007

darkdragon wrote:

You don't mention what CF card brand/model you use. However, if you use the SanDisk Extreme or Ultra series, I HIGHLY recommend picking up the SanDisk Extreme USB reader.

Thanks for the feedback

I mainly use the Ultra II 2GB cards. When the Extremes came out, Canon said that the write was no faster with the Extreme vs the Ultra - the camera was the choke point. So I stuck with those. Ironically the USB 2 download speed of my MBP for a full card was is faster than my old PC, same card and reader.

So with the MBP and the $/GB price point of the 4GB and 8GB Extreme cards dropping, I thought I may start getting those. And a new reader. Hence the question.

wxwax · December 12, 2007

I've never used a Firewire card reader.

But I have used a hard drive that has both USB2 and Firewire 800.

And when moving the same very large file, Firewire absolutely freaking smoked the USB. Almost twice as fast.

Which makes me think that a Firewire 800 card reader would be superior to a USB card reader.

colourbox · December 12, 2007

I have Ultra II cards. I used to use a PC Card slot CF adapter where I would walk away and come back later. Now with a Lexar Firewire 400 reader, it's like the others say, it can download a 1GB card in seconds.

BradfordBenn · December 12, 2007

Firewire 800 is going to be faster than USB 2.0. From my understanding USB2.0 is 400Megabits per second where as Firewire 800 is 800Megabits per second. So double the speed. However at some point it is just wasting money to get faster transport cause there are two other limiting factors, 1) the speed of the CF and 2) the speed of the receiving drive. I did a quick little test with a friends' FW800 and a USB CF Reader and with an Ultra II 4Gig card the speed was within seconds. Not enough to be worth the extra money for Firewire as I could only find it with the CF card -which I already own.

wxwax · December 12, 2007

BradfordBenn wrote:

Firewire 800 is going to be faster than USB 2.0. From my understanding USB2.0 is 400Megabits per second where as Firewire 800 is 800Megabits per second. So double the speed. However at some point it is just wasting money to get faster transport cause there are two other limiting factors, 1) the speed of the CF and 2) the speed of the receiving drive. I did a quick little test with a friends' FW800 and a USB CF Reader and with an Ultra II 4Gig card the speed was within seconds. Not enough to be worth the extra money for Firewire as I could only find it with the CF card -which I already own.

Thanks, I'd been wondering about that.

colourbox · December 12, 2007

It's more complicated than that.

USB 2.0 should be the slowest because its architecture limits its sustained data rate, so the real world rate it achieves is slower than the real world sustained rates of Firewire 400. The specs only list the theoretical top speeds.

FireWire 800 also doesn't usually reach 800 Mbps in real world use, but still has a sustained data rate significantly higher than FW 400 or USB 2, where it isn't limited by the card, the throughput of the disk being copied to, or the interface.

The Rob Galbraith tests have shown that the port interface on a specific computer can sometimes make a reader faster on one computer compared to another. A bad implementation of FireWire on one computer could be slower than USB 2 on another computer.

CatOne · December 13, 2007

BradfordBenn wrote:

Firewire 800 is going to be faster than USB 2.0. From my understanding USB2.0 is 400Megabits per second where as Firewire 800 is 800Megabits per second. So double the speed. However at some point it is just wasting money to get faster transport cause there are two other limiting factors, 1) the speed of the CF and 2) the speed of the receiving drive. I did a quick little test with a friends' FW800 and a USB CF Reader and with an Ultra II 4Gig card the speed was within seconds. Not enough to be worth the extra money for Firewire as I could only find it with the CF card -which I already own.

Yes, the bus speed of FW 800 (800 Mbits/sec) is faster than that of USB2 (480 Mbits/sec). But that's not really the whole story. In fact, FW400 (400 Mbits/sec) is nearly always faster than USB2, because, well, USB sucks for data transfer, generally.

THAT SAID, again, SanDisk's extreme IV USB reader with their Extreme IV cards is VERY fast. It's faster than my FW400 Lexar reader. The two are tuned together.

Again, go read Reichman's article on the Luminous Landscape. He benchmarks all of this stuff with readers. Having a forum cripple fight (er, discussion) is silly when the numbers are out there. For speed+price+performance the best combo is the SanDisk package. Q.E.D.

wxwax · December 13, 2007

CatOne wrote:

For speed+price+performance the best combo is the SanDisk package. Q.E.D.

Maybe in a year, when the prices come down.

darkdragon · December 13, 2007

wxwax wrote:

Maybe in a year, when the prices come down.

Really? How low do you want the prices? I mean, they'll always fall every year but right now an Extreme III 4GB card is only around $65 and the USB Extreme IV reader is only about $20.

wxwax · December 13, 2007

darkdragon wrote:

Really? How low do you want the prices? I mean, they'll always fall every year but right now an Extreme III 4GB card is only around $65 and the USB Extreme IV reader is only about $20.

Extreme IV 8 GB is $250 on SanDisk's site.

The Extreme III is $120. So you're paying more than twice as much for a card that's a luxury, not a necessity.

Right now I have plenty of memory. I don't need to be churning cards to get a bit more speed. So I'll wait until the price is convenient.

Even then, I may not buy one. I quite like sticking a 16GB card in the camera and not worrying about running out of space.

darkdragon · December 13, 2007

wxwax wrote:

Extreme IV 8 GB is $250 on SanDisk's site.

The Extreme III is $120. So you're paying more than twice as much for a card that's a luxury, not a necessity.

Right now I have plenty of memory. I don't need to be churning cards to get a bit more speed. So I'll wait until the price is convenient.

Even then, I may not buy one. I quite like sticking a 16GB card in the camera and not worrying about running out of space.

\

Ah ok, I get it. I like using all 4GB cards. That way if one gets lost or crashes (both very unlikely) then I'll only lose 300 photos instead of 600 or 1200. I think 4GB is also where the cost/permormance hits its best ratio right now. I'd imagine in a couple years it will be the 8GB that are in the same cost/performance.

I love the fast download of the Sandisk Extreme, and that is really the only reason I moved to those is for downloading to my computer. I notice no difference in the camera read/write between the Sandisk and the Sony I was using before.

BradfordBenn · December 13, 2007

CatOne wrote:

Again, go read Reichman's article on the Luminous Landscape. He benchmarks all of this stuff with readers. Having a forum cripple fight (er, discussion) is silly when the numbers are out there. For speed+price+performance the best combo is the SanDisk package. Q.E.D.

Can you provide a link to the article? I went over to http://www.luminous-landscape.com/ and after poking around for a few minutes I could not find it.

wxwax · December 13, 2007

BradfordBenn wrote:

Can you provide a link to the article? I went over to http://www.luminous-landscape.com/ and after poking around for a few minutes I could not find it.

I think this is it, Brad.

wxwax · December 13, 2007

darkdragon wrote:

\

Ah ok, I get it. I like using all 4GB cards. That way if one gets lost or crashes (both very unlikely) then I'll only lose 300 photos instead of 600 or 1200. I think 4GB is also where the cost/permormance hits its best ratio right now. I'd imagine in a couple years it will be the 8GB that are in the same cost/performance.

I love the fast download of the Sandisk Extreme, and that is really the only reason I moved to those is for downloading to my computer. I notice no difference in the camera read/write between the Sandisk and the Sony I was using before.

Yes, I know folks who prefer the safety of multiple cards.

Maybe I'm dumb. I'm certainly lazy.

I've rarely had trouble with CF cards, and when I have, it's been because I deleted images in-camera.

I can see where the 4GB card really isn't that pricey. And I must admit, the Extreme IV-Firewire 800 times are pretty impressive.

Mike Lane · December 13, 2007

I've got the expresscard 34 CF reader which I use for my extreme IV CF cards on my MBP and it's great. I definitely recommend it as an extremely portable and fast way to read your CF cards.

BradfordBenn · December 14, 2007

wxwax wrote:

I think this is it, Brad.

Thanks. I did some testing last night using SD cards and my Mac. I will post the results once I get them tabulated. (Basically the Excel sheet is on the home computer and I am at the office)

jdryan3 · December 14, 2007

Mike Lane wrote:

I've got the expresscard 34 CF reader which I use for my extreme IV CF cards on my MBP and it's great. I definitely recommend it as an extremely portable and fast way to read your CF cards.

Mike -
The Delkin I originally mentioned? I see SanDisk has an ExpressCard/34 reader It does everything BUT CF.

Mike Lane · December 14, 2007

jdryan3 wrote:

Mike -
The Delkin I originally mentioned? I see SanDisk has an ExpressCard/34 reader It does everything BUT CF.

Yup, I've got the Delkin. It works great

Andy · December 19, 2007

CatOne wrote:

Though the bomb-diggety-fast reader is the SanDisk USB reader... the one specifically tuned/optimized for their Extreme IV cards. It's a rippah'

:jawdrop yeah it is.

sit · January 2, 2008

slow usb 2.0 on a macbook?
I'm using a SanDisk 6-in-1 reader that claims to support USB 2.0 to read a SanDisk Ultra II 1GB card to a MacBook (OS X 10.4.x) but am only getting 2.3 MB/s. Anyone know of any reasons why that might be? Should I just buy a newer/faster reader?

ivar · January 2, 2008

One of my machines has a FW800 port on it, combined with the above mentioned Sandisk FW800 card reader, it's the fastest that I've seen/used so far.

jdryan3 · January 5, 2008

sit wrote:

I'm using a SanDisk 6-in-1 reader that claims to support USB 2.0 to read a SanDisk Ultra II 1GB card to a MacBook (OS X 10.4.x) but am only getting 2.3 MB/s. Anyone know of any reasons why that might be? Should I just buy a newer/faster reader?

I ended up getting the Extreme USB 2.0 reader, mainly because they were in stock and only $27. (Still may get the ExpressCard/34).

When I first plugged it in and tried to use it - 42 minutes for a 2GB Ultra II.

I killed the transfer about 1/2 thru, and reconnected everything. I discovered on the cable connector into the actual reader it was seated, even snug, but NOT pushed in all the way. Cable to MBP was fine. After that, it rocked. 2 minutes

MacBook Pro CF Reader

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