P2 card reader

P

powerdog

Veteran
I've read some posts that say the $350 Panasonic card reader offers a faster transfer rate than camera-to-ext. hard drive connection.

I can't figure out why this would be, since the limiting factor would seem to be the speed of USB2. What is it about the card reader that makes transfer faster?
 
Instructions say that one carries data and power, and the second carries power only. So it needs power from 2 USB ports. Without both, either the drive or the P2 card won't appear on the computer.

That still leaves me wondering where the bottleneck is in a camera to hard drive (host) connection.
 
At least for the 300 offloading from the camera directly to a usb drive copies everything from both cards and puts the camera off line. If you're using a buss powered usb drive it will be a 5400 rpm drive. Very slow and you can't use the camera. If you use a card reader you can remove a card, transfer data from that card and keep working. Plus, if you're using a external drive connected to a laptop, hopefully it's at least a 7200rpm firewire 8 drive and transfers will be much quicker.
 
Just off-loaded files from this morning's shoot.
14.78 GB total in 16 files

PC Device, USB cable from camera to computer (8 core 2.26 Mac w/Leopard):
1.478GB per second transfer

PCD2 Card Reader: 1.137GB per second

The winner is..... direct connect to camera. I didn't have time to redo with external USB drive, nor did I off-load to an external FW drive, I used the 4 drive RAID0 for the destination.
Ed
 
Not sure. My camera's not here at home. Can you set it to verify in PC Device mode?
I seem to remember only having that ability in PC Host mode. I'll check tomorrow.
Ed
 
I agree with Ed. I don't see any speed advantage from the PCD2. It's usefull when you're on the road and want to download your clip on a laptop. That's my opinion!
 
Eddo & Roberto, I've seen posts claiming a speed advantage for the PCD2 vs direct camera connection, but I suspect at least some of them were comparing non-verfiied to verified data transfer. And as I've said, I don't see anything in the two electronic chains that would speed up or slow down either.
 
OK, I admit in advance that this question might require a RTFM answer, but here goes:
I know you can set verify in PC Host mode, but how do you set it for PC Device Mode?
I'd like to know too if my off-load speeds were inaccurate because of the verify/non-verify difference.
Ed
 
There is no setting for verification in PC Device mode. Any verification would have to be done by the computer in that case.
 
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