MrMophoto Loc: Rhode Island "The biggest little"

I teach high school digital photography (is there any other kind?), I have a computer lab w/ 26 computers and 26 small Canons (Powershot SX170 IS), thus every student gets a numbered camera to use during class. At the end of every class students should download all their photos to their computer via charging cable directly from camera mini USB to computer USB. I have showed them how to do this in a batch to save time and most students quickly become adept at this process. Occasionally, some students leave copies of their photos in the SD card but this is usually not a problem.
Recently I have noticed that during the transfer process which usually took a minute or two now reads it will take 20 - 45+ minutes, according to a small pop up window. This doesn't happen on everyone's computer or with every camera, but it is happening more frequently. I have taken to using a card reader for each student but since I only have one, which I bought for emergencies, this takes time as well.
My call for help:
Does anyone in UHH land have any idea why this is happening? Better yet does anyone have a solution? other than buy a card reader for each student.
ps Please just post your replies, I probably won't respond to each since I don't live through my computer and I only check this site once (maybe twice) a day
Thanks

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

There's a lot of variables / possibilities. A few areas I'd look at: are all the SD cards new / the same speed? Are all the SD cards formatted in the camera? Are some of the computers running a different virus scan software as the files are copied? Do you have an IT staff that can add another set of eyes on the problem? It will help if you can isolate the issue to a camera or card or computer that are consistently 'slow' for detailed analysis.

MrMophoto Loc: Rhode Island "The biggest little"

Thanks for the input, to clarify some of your questions, The SD cards were purchased with the cameras, about 4-5 years ago and are used every year, formatted in the camera at the beginning of each semester. All computers are school property, all are fairly new 3-4 years old, the school dept does have an IT dept, (but they're very busy, district has 1 HS 1500 students, 2 middle schools w/ 700+ each and a lot of elementary schools) They do maintain a district wide virus program. I have been trying to isolate the issue but as I've said it seems to be random, or at least I haven't seem any commonality yet. My next move would be to reformat all the SD cards in the cameras.

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

You say it does not happen with every computer. What have you done to narrow down the possible bottleneck? Have you tried the problem camera/cards with a different computer to determine if it is the camera or the computer? Have you tried swapping the cards to other cameras (that do not have the problem) to see if the computer with the problem behaves differently? Is there anything that has changed in the computers that have the problem? Are the files stored on local drives or on a network/ (Wondering about available space)?

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

The technology involved: the computer OS, the speed of the USB port, virus checking / rules, the speed of the card in the camera, the software performing the transfer. If I'm missing something, others will chime in. Everything should be standardized, and of course, that may / may not be accurate in practice. There was a UHH discussion a few weeks of the 'OS' that exists on SD cards and someone posted some documentation that indicated formatting the cards is beneficial. Hopefully, the next time the issue occurs, you at least can record the PC, camera and card for closer examination.

MrMophoto Loc: Rhode Island "The biggest little"

Yeah, Thanks for more input. It has made me realize that I'll have to standardize my investigation to determine a source. There are 26 computers, 26 cameras I assign a different camera# to each student so they use the same camera class after class and they sit in the same seat each class but camera #? may be used by student in one seat in one class and another in a different class. You can see with the number of variable combinations it will be hard to track. Thanks again for the suggestions, I was hoping someone would log in with "Oh yeah I had that problem and this is how I fixed it", it's all part of the fun of technology.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

First suggestion: Camera # and Computer # should be the same.
Student A uses Camera & Computer #1, Student B uses #2 etc. Then keep a set of notes as to which ones are slow.
Not knowing how slow, fast etc your computers are: Are they running anything else at the same time? Some computers, esp the ones bought by schools don't have the power to multi-task very well.

Some more thoughts, you say the cameras and cards are 4-5 years old. They are getting a lot of write, erase, write, format - SD cards do wear and go bad. Also if cards get nearly full they slow because they have no "work space" for processes. Your solution may be a new set of cards. Another one is the camera batteries, they do have a limited life (recharge cycles) you may need new batteries as some begin to die and deliver less power. And #3, cables and contacts - cables go bad, contacts need cleaning.

I taught for LA Unified for 35 years and their computers were NOT the fastest or most powerful. At the last school where I taught (13 years) I used my personal laptops most of the time, faster, even when on wifi as opposed to the hard wired school devices. Well the head tech had an Apple and PC setup for testing etc in his office - those were top of the line and fast (I lusted after his 32" Mac monitor which was hooked to both his Mac and his PC). This school was on the Federal "Digital High School" grant program, fiber optics all over campus, 3 mi range wifi for students to work from home, several computer labs and every class room had at least a desktop for the teacher and most had 2-6 other desktops for student use. And laptops for all staff members. I used my own-better and faster plus I didn't have to put up with what the last person had done to it. Once I found over 600 viruses etc on the first day of the semester-seems the teacher in the room before me allowed students to use the teacher's desktop-to play games and surf the web. That school had over 500 PCs, 300 or so laptops and about 100 Apple/Macs. Two years after I retired they started issuing tablets to all students under some special grant. Let your imagination come up with disasters and it was worse than that according to reporters who followed that experiment. Lots of tablets available at area swap meets and flea markets. Plus it was less than 24 hours after issue that the first students had hacked the security software and were going onto porn sites etc.
A large school (4100 to 5100 students on three tracks the 13 years I was there

MrMophoto Loc: Rhode Island "The biggest little"

With the amount of variables I have it would be a monumental task to track each camera's speed, honestly I have more pressing matters to attend to, like teaching, grading, etc. I really don't think the computers or cables are the problem, but I have suspected the SD cards. I hadn't thought about the constant write, delete, write, format, write, delete would have an affect on performance but that might make sense since all the cards were new with the cameras and some cameras are used more than others. At least this gives me an area to focus on, thanks for your thoughts.

Photoguy120

Do you have maintenance software such as System Mechanic that can diagnose problems with the drives and memory. The drives might be approaching capacity. Drives also might be highly fragmented. I have seen these maintenance issues bring heavy hardware to its knees.

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

Great idea. If you do the equipment numbering (including the serial numbers of the memory cards and tag the cables for tracking as well) and only keep a record of the what equipment was involved in a problem download, you will soon narrow down the likely causes. If it is the same computers or the same cameras or cards that is great. Even if it is some combination of equipment, it will soon surface.

Don, the 2nd son Loc: Crowded Florida

I have had a similar problem which boiled down to a faulty cable. Those fine wires inside make them a target for failure. My grandson can't get it through his head that they are very delicate and not bull whips LOL!

gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

Make sure they each "copy" the files and not "move" them from the SD card, then have them format each of their cards in their camera so they don’t build up a large number of files on the card.

nadelewitz Loc: Ithaca NY

Have camera settings been changed to higher resolution/quality on some cameras, making the files much larger, taking longer to download?

MrMophoto Loc: Rhode Island "The biggest little"

This is an interesting view, For the most part the school district uses a Google platform for email, Google Classroom, etc. I've been told they like it for the unlimited storage. However the lab I have is all PC machines and the school has servers and that is where all students save their work. We refer to it as the "school" drive as opposed to the Google drive. I am sure the school drive does not have unlimited storage so I do think contacting the district IT dept will be on my list.
Thanks

MrMophoto Loc: Rhode Island "The biggest little"

Sounds like most respondents are focusing on either the SD cards or the cables. I instruct students to "cut" their photos from the SD cards and paste them in their individual folders, I talk about protecting their work, etc. I do have a lot of extra cables and a few extra SD cards so I can swap them out to see if the problem persists. I have also noticed that a new camera, purchased this year, is also misbehaving.
I do want to thank everybody for their input