Hello philosophe,
Thanks for your question.
I have been using both compactflash and smartmedia card readers for
some time and even though I have only USB 1 and not the faster USB 2
interface and have not paid much attention to the speed of the
individual brands of cards, I have not felt that I was dramatically
lacking in transfer speeds. That being said, I set out to find some
comparison information for you.
Searching - compactflash reader speed comparison - I found the
following:
Gadgetguys.com
http://www.gadgetguys.com/readreview.asp?ArticleID=24
Comparison: CompactFlash Readers
There are a few different technologies we will look at since the
performance and price change from user to user.
SanDisk's ImageMate (SDDR-31), $22
This CF reader is not the prettiest that we tested, it looks like a
flat version of SanDisk's ImageMate SDDR-05. It is the fastest, and
that is the important. The single indicator light telling you when the
drive is busy is really bright and really easy to see. We really loved
the fact that Windows 2000 had native drivers for it; less 3rd-party
drivers and small memory footprint, gott'a love it! ...
Microtech's CameraMate, $65
The biggest feature of the CameraMate is that it supports both
CompactFlash and SmartMedia. Also, unlike the other readers we tested
this drive has an eject button for the CF card and a spring-loaded
release for the SmartMedia. Windows 2000 did not have native drivers
for the drive, but a quick trip to their web site gave us the latest
drivers. (The drivers were also included with the drive). Once
installed, both your CompactFlash and SmartMedia card get their own
drive letter.
Unfortunately the CameraMate was kind of slow. We also didn't like the
location of the indicator light. Although it's a really cool purple
color, it's placement makes it hard to see what the drive is doing
unless you look directly down at it...
Lexar Media's Jump Shot, $20
Lexar Media has managed to included USB in their CompactFlash cards
without raising the cost of the card by much. This benefits consumers
since the cards can be connected, via USB, to a system with the use of
a low-cost cable. This cable is cheaper then purchasing an entire CF
card reader. The cables are available with some cards or for ~$20
separately.
The performance of the Jump Shot is slightly lower then some of the
other readers available, but what we question is the usefulness of the
built-in USB. As long as all CF cards are USB enabled one may find
this feature cost effective. If all cards are not USB enabled the
cable becomes useless since it is not compatible with non-USB CF
cards...
This page continues with charts of the performace of these readers and
concludes that the Imagemate SDDR-31 is the clear speed/cost winner.
*************************************
Digigraphica at http://digigraphica.com/oped/01/cfspeed.shtml has an
article on the speed of the media itself:
Memory Speed Matters
Dan Knight
2001:07:06
"All CompactFlash cards are not created equal. Just as some hard
drives and CD-ROMs are much faster than others, some memory cards are
faster than others.
This was news to me at last summer's Macworld Expo, where Lexar was
pushing their CompactFlash cards as 3x faster than the competition.
Fast forward to mid-2001, and we see Lexar selling cards rated as 10x
and even 12x..."
...To see if the USB adapter itself makes a difference, Galbraith also
examined the Lexar Jumpshot USB adapter, which gave speeds of
792-803K/sec on the Mac (not all CF cards were tested). Although still
10.5% slower than USB throughput on the PC, the Lexar Jumpshot was
12.5% faster than the Delkin eFilm on this test.
Of course, USB is not a particularly fast bus for moving data. For
speed, you want FireWire. Galbraith tested the Microtech FireWire
CameraMate and Lexar FireWire Reader on a Mac. The Microtech, which
was not tested with all CF cards, had a range of 2186-2665K/sec reads
-- the fastest memory provided 22% faster reads. With the Lexar
adapter, speeds ranged from 2268-2934K/sec, a difference of 29%..."
There are a number of interesting thoughts in this article and several
resources to other tests linked at the bottom of the page.
**********************************
A cached page for Dan's Data at
http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:6tMuWFigOMYC:www.dansdata.com/flashcomp.htm+compactflash+reader+speed+%2Bcomparison&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
has an interesting note:
Flash memory storage device comparison
..."USB storage device performance can vary greatly depending on the
operating system and drivers you're using - and that includes the
operating system's drivers for the motherboard USB controller
hardware. Some USB oddities in Windows PCs can be cured by connecting
a self-powered hub to a motherboard USB port, which stops the
motherboard from having to supply power to any bus-powered USB gear
you connect..."
***************************
Digital Photography Review often has excellent articles. Their Digital
Film Comparison at http://www.dpreview.com/articles/mediacompare/ may
be very informative for you.
"Much has been written about the relative performance of different
brands and types of Compact Flash card in different cameras. However,
there has never been a single definitive reference point for such
information. This article is designed to be a permanent database of
the performance of various brands, types and capacities of card.
"Behind" these pages are a database which will be updated from time to
time with the results of tests on new cards."
There is an excellent chart of firewire readers on this page, though
not the USB you requested.
Compact Flash: IEEE 1394 Card Reader performance
An IEEE 1394 (Firewire) card reader is just about the single fastest
device there is for reading / writing CF cards. It allows us to see
the absolute maximum performance of the Compact Flash card. Speeds
shown below are a more accurate representation of the actually
capability of the card, although many digital cameras are not capable
of reading / writing at these speeds (excluding some D-SLR's).
*********************************
Tom's Hardware Guide has yet another interesting article:
http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/20021028/card_readers-03.html
Does Performance Of These Devices Really Matter?
The performance of multi-format flash card reader/ writers is perhaps
the one area where you can see some difference beyond just the form
factor of these devices. As the sizes of flash cards and file sizes
increase, extracting the picture/ files from the flash card can take a
considerable amount of time.
The majority of the units that we tested use the USB 1.1 Interface,
which has a performance cap of 12Mbps, USB 2.0 units, and offers a
performance of 480Mbps, while 1394 FireWire offers a performance level
of 400Mbps. Of course, the average consumer will not realize these
kinds of transfer rates from flash memory products...
http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/20021028/card_readers-04.html
The Reviews - What Devices Did We Test?
We contacted companies whose products regularly compete in this arena.
We asked for submissions from a variety of sources that either build
or market Multi-Format flash card readers/ writers, and we received
products for evaluation from Atech-Flash, Belkin, Carry, Imation,
Kingston, PQI, and SanDisk. Several of the "usual suspects," who shall
remain unnamed (including at least two companies that we consider to
be industry leaders) did not respond to our request to submit products
for this review...
http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/20021028/card_readers-15.html
Performance Comparison Results
The performance results are given in minutes and seconds, and of
course less is better.
As you can see here in the Crucial write preformance test, the Carry
and PQI Travel Flash USB 2.0 readers are almost 50% faster than
standard USB readers. The Carry is slightly faster, which is a
surprise, because we would have thought that the USB 2.0 devices would
be ahead, but still it is very close. In the USB camp, the Belkin
turned in the best time out of all of the others reviewed on this
test. Still the gap between the fast and slowest USB reader was only a
few seconds.
http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/20021028/card_readers-16.html
Conclusion - Lots Of Good Choices & Three Clear Winners
After completing all of our testing, a few facts were clear. The
performance difference between the standard USB units was very close,
and not until we made the jump to either the USB 2.0 or 1394 FireWire
interface did the scores really start to fall. As we have pointed out
in this review, the choice of reader/ writer, as well as flash card,
can also influence the performance results. More investigation needs
to be done on the specific performance of CompactFlash modules in
general, and we will tackle that topic in our next article on
CompactFlash module performance that is coming in a few weeks...
*********************************
I trust the above articles will provide much food for thought for you
and help you decide on the best combination for your needs.
If anything above requires clarification or a link does not function,
please do request clarification.
Regards,
-=clouseau=- |
