Downloading compact flash card on Imac - fastest way ? cf
 

Hi all,

So I have a 16gb (300x ) cf card plugged into my USB keyboard slot via a Sandisk card reader. Took about ~45mins to transfer all data (16gb). Is this avg ? Are there faster methods ? Will using the HDMI on the camera be faster ?

Thanks

Plug the card reader into something that isn't your keyboard. Most keyboards use USB 1 only (no reason they need 2.0.) HDMI capture would be real time, so it may very well be faster, but you would need the hardware to allow you to do that.

Edward is correct that plugging into the keyboard might be a slower connection than the USB ports in the back. Not sure if you can connect any other way to the Imac. I don't know if there are any Firewire card readers

Lexar does indeed make a FireWire card reader. I believe that other companies do too, and I've seen one before, but I can't remember who made it. Anyway: Lexar - Flash memory card readers - Pro CF Reader

Firewire Card Reader
 

I recently got the Sandisk Firewire CF card reader I've been using with both my new iMac and an old Mac G5.

SanDisk | Extreme FireWire CompactFlash Card | SDDRX4-CF-901

Blazing fast compared to the USB reader I'd previously been using, esp. via Firewire 800. 8 GBs of video takes about 5 min. Reader came with both Firewire 400 and 800 cables.

Well I would be trying out these new techniques sooner but learned an early and valuable lesson about how to destroy a CF card - eject from the computer without telling the Imac, otherwise you have, like me, a $100 mini-brick (luckily, still under warranty)

I'll try plugging from the back, if no improvement i'll get one of these readers.

I've got a rocketfish udma card reader, called a rf-crswivel, and plugged into the back of my imac, or into my powered hub, I can rip my 16gb sandisk extreme III in under 15 minutes. The one time I tried to rip 16gb through my camera, the eos utility quit itself on me about 7 times over the course of the rip. Took an hour and a half altogether mostly because of that.

I wouldn't think it'd even transfer through your keyboard usb hole. Mine won't even let me use a usb thumb drive through the keyboard.

I second the vote for the SanDisk Firewire reader for my Mac. I've gotten 50MB/second download speeds with it. However using a sdhc-CF adapter doesn't result in high sdhc transfer speeds, unfortunately.

I have just an ordinary USB card reader and it only takes a few minutes to copy over a 16 gig card. I haven't timed it, but last time I went and got a cup of coffee and it was finished before I got back, maybe 3 minutes or so.

Sounds like USB 2.0
what reader do you use ?

At 30MB/s which is a very good speed, you'd finish copying 16gigs in about 9min's. To copy 16gigs in 3mins, you would need 3 times that or 90MB/s, highly unlikely.

Maybe your 16gig card wasn't full?

It was the keyboard -
I connected it to the back of the computer where there is proper voltage and speed and it transfer on par with what others are getting here. Sometimes the simplest things