Card Reader Interface & Speed

G

Gregory Douglas

New member
I'm looking for a card reader to ingest 150 footage into my computer. Looks like most on the market are USB 2.0 either internal or external. Should I consider another interface such as eSATA? Will that give me significantly more transfer speed?
 
I don't think something like that is available.

However, you can't get more speed than the card itself have.
Your speed is limited to the class of your card.

If you get class 10 card, I think you will get what you want.
 
I found an eSATA card reader at NewEgg but what you're saying is that the transfer speed is limited more by the card itself. So transferring a Class 6 card via eSATA would be no faster than USB 2.0, correct?
 
Your limited to the read spead of the SDHC card... usb is 480mbs or 60MB/s... sata is 3.0gbs... both much faster then the actual card can read (class 6 is 15-20MBs).

I would like to see a read test done on a new class 10 card...
 
Real world USB speed is closer to 40MB/s after taking the protocol over head in to account. Even so, this is much faster than the card can be read.

However, not all USB2 readers are created equal, and the speed of transfer is limited by the reader's embedded micro-controller, which could be different from one brand of reader to the next. USB itself has no way to read cards directly, there are some smart electronics in between the card and USB that know how to talk to SD cards on one side and USB (or firewire or eSATA etc) on the other. This is by far the most limiting factor - i.e. how efficient is this intermediary chipset.

I have a USB2 reader that reads cards and transfers data at pretty much their quoted card read speeds, and another that is much slower, regardless of the card I put in it. Unfortunately the fast one is a generic no-name reader so I can't tell you what to look out for :(
 
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