Card reader question and recommendations, please (Page 3): One more consideration if you are a Mac user. My system is just a year old and it does not support USB port 3. However, there...

BermBuster Loc: Hi Desert S.Cal

One more consideration if you are a Mac user. My system is just a year old and it does not support USB port 3. However, there is a firewire CF card reader that I found from Germany that ships by way of Canada. It is reasonably priced compared to those I found on various sites that are around 150.00. If anyone knows something I might have overlooked with faster card readers for Macs, I hope you will weigh in.

BermBuster wrote:

Possbly referring to this ?
http://fstoppers.com/gear-fw800-cardreader

wowbmw Loc: Grant, Colorado

This is the site I found for the firewire reader: http://www.memorydepot.com

jerryc41 wrote:

wowbmw wrote:

One more consideration if you are a Mac user. My system is just a year old and it does not support USB port 3. However, there is a firewire CF card reader that I found from Germany that ships by way of Canada. It is reasonably priced compared to those I found on various sites that are around 150.00. If anyone knows something I might have overlooked with faster card readers for Macs, I hope you will weigh in.

CAn you give us some details about this?

RichardSM Loc: Back in Texas

LindaChaplin wrote:

Hi friends. I did a search on UHH about card readers, but didn't see this question addressed specifically. I've been using a Sandisk card reader (several years old). It works, but takes quite awhile to upload files from my 7D. Is this because the files are large or would it be a good idea to purchase a newer c.r? If you use a c.r. would you have a recommendation for me? Thanks.

Hi Linda

This could be a lot of things causing you the slow down I would start with your computer find out if it's performing correctly clean up all of those left over's maybe even defrag your computer. ect ect.

Festina Lente Loc: Florida & Missouri

BermBuster wrote:

Possbly referring to this ?
http://fstoppers.com/gear-fw800-cardreader

Yes, I was! Thanks.
And for $50 MSRP, it is a good solution for any Apple legacy USB 2.0 laptop!

Screamin Scott Loc: Marshfield Wi, Baltimore Md, now Dallas Ga

Are you using UDMA cards & a UDMA reader? A UDMA card in a non-UDMA reader will be slow.

LindaChaplin wrote:

Thank you, all. I think my computer has the 2.0 USB ports. It is a 3 year old computer, but I recently had a new hard drive and more memory installed so I hope to use it for awhile. I keep hearing good things about the Lexar...I'll look into it. Thanks again. I really appreciate being able to throw my questions out there to all of you.

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

One thing that everyone has forgotten to meantion is card speed. You 7D takes CF cards and the speed of your card also determines how fast it can be read from and written to. A 133x speed card compared to a 600x card is much slower in terms of how fast the card can be read by the card reader.

All three of these are important.
1. Card reader speed rating
2. USB or other computer port speed (Firewire etc.)
3. Speed rating of CF card

jdventer Loc: Wallingford, CT, USA

MT Shooter wrote:

Your card reader speed is dependent upon the USB p... (show quote)

To get faster read write time of a USB 3 port you need a USB 3 card reader.

Festina Lente Loc: Florida & Missouri

jeep_daddy wrote:

One thing that everyone has forgotten to meantion is card speed. You 7D takes CF cards and the speed of your card also determines how fast it can be read from and written to. A 133x speed card compared to a 600x card is much slower in terms of how fast the card can be read by the card reader.
All three of these are important.
1. Card reader speed rating
2. USB or other computer port speed (Firewire etc.)
3. Speed rating of CF card

Good synopsis. :thumbup:

LindaChaplin Loc: South Dakota

Hi Jeep Daddy. Thanks.. My card is a Delkin - 8GB (18MB)(125x) card. I take that this a slow card? (When I ordered my first CF card, I really didn't know anything about "speed" etc. (I'm still not too knowledgeable!) My Scan-Disk card reader is probably at least 10 years old and I don't see any speed rating on it. I have a Dell laptop that is 3 years old...I think it has 2.0 USB ports. Thanks for your help and suggestions.

larryzplace Loc: Elk Grove Village Illinois

I just bought a usb card at Tiger Direct if your computer has a spare slot you can drop another card in for faster results....The cards are pretty cheap... less than 20 bucks for a usb 2 card... That is the easiest solution and gives you a few more ports to boot.

Weslfrazier Loc: Culver, OR

I don't know about readers mine are build into my computer & my HP Photosmart scaner / printer

Brian in Whitby Loc: Whitby, Ontario, Canada

Another factor affecting the speed of file transfer is the speed of the memory card. In my old camera, I used class 1 and 4 cards. The class one cards, although I can still use them with my new camera ares so painfully slow, I gave them to my son who shoots in JPG. With the much smaller JPG files, the slow transfer rate is not such a big deal.

Before you go changing the card reader, and adding a USB 3,0 port, check the speed of the memory card.

picpiper Loc: California

ioptfm wrote:

How can you tell if you have a 1.0, 2.0 or 3.0 port on the computer?

If you have a Windows computer this should help: http://kb.iupui.edu/data/aout.html

Quickest way to open device manager is to press F1 from the desktop - search for device manager.

Also noticed on my Windows 7 machine that I had to double - click on USB Root Hub to see the properties.

BHC Loc: Strawberry Valley, JF, USA

LindaChaplin wrote:

Hi friends. I did a search on UHH about card readers, but didn't see this question addressed specifically. I've been using a Sandisk card reader (several years old). It works, but takes quite awhile to upload files from my 7D. Is this because the files are large or would it be a good idea to purchase a newer c.r? If you use a c.r. would you have a recommendation for me? Thanks.

Please tell us about your computer. RAM? Age? Processor? HDD speed? Ports available? Operating system?

LindaChaplin Loc: South Dakota

Hi Mogul...My computer is a Dell laptop -3 years old...but I just had a new hard drive (256GB) installed and 8 GB of RAM. I'm not sure how to find the Hard Disk Drive properties, but it uses a 2.0 USB and the OS is Windows 7.