Speedy file transfer to PC EX1/EX3 ?

[Matt San]

Has anyone found the FASTEST way to get the MP4 files off the media (SxS, SDHC) and into a PC desktop system?

I find ANY of the USB type connections to be tediously slow.

I have looked for a Firewire, eSATA, PCIe type solution which all have higher bandwidths for data transfer.

so.... has anyone got a good solution to this sloooow transfer??

thx in advance for any ideas.

[Mitchell Lewis]

A laptop with an Express Card slot has proven to be the fastest way to transfer. But then you have to move the files to your editing system.

[Matt San]

yea I am familair with this solution but I need a proper PC based solution

[Ed Kukla]

doesn't anybody make a desktop PC with express card slot?

[Piotr Wozniacki]

I have this drive in my editing PC:
PCI Express to ExpressCard 34|54 Slot Drive Read-Writer Front, Synchrotech

Works great; the only caveat being it's not hot-swappable (BIOS/OS - dependent). But if I remember to insert an SxS card while first booting, as long as I don't switch my PC off but put it to sleep instead, it's OK.

And very, very fast!

[Giroud Francois]

well you have to put numbers in perspective. As advised for this adapter :
" The PCIe 1X configuration allows for the full 250MB/s (megabytes unidirectional) throughput for PCIe based ExpressCards, while the USB 2.0 configuration allows USB 2.0 ExpressCards to operate at their 60MB/s speed"

Ok, but The SxS speed is anyway not bigger than 100MB/s, so usb at 60MB/s is not so slow. and this is even worse for SDHC,even if you got the fastest one (between 30-40MB/s), USB speed still outperform the card speed by 2x.

[Ilya Spektor]

Originally Posted by Piotr Wozniacki

I have this drive in my editing PC:
PCI Express to ExpressCard 34|54 Slot Drive Read-Writer Front, Synchrotech

Works great; the only caveat being it's not hot-swappable (BIOS/OS - dependent). But if I remember to insert an SxS card while first booting, as long as I don't switch my PC off but put it to sleep instead, it's OK.

And very, very fast!

This solution looks great!.. As I understand, it works fast with SxS cards. Will it also work as well with SDHC cards inside MxM/MxR adapters?..

[Don Greening]

Originally Posted by Ilya Spektor

Will it also work as well with SDHC cards inside MxM/MxR adapters?..

SDHC cards and their respective adapters use the USB interface which isn't as fast as the PCI interface that the SXS Pro cards use. So when it's time to transfer clips from the SDHC cards the speed bottleneck will be between the SDHC card and the adapter. I don't know how long it takes to transfer clips from a full 16 Gbyte SDHC card using an Express 34 interface but a straight drag and drop from the same sized SxS Pro card takes about 5.5 min. on my Macbook Pro.

- Don

[Piotr Wozniacki]

Originally Posted by Giroud Francois

well you have to put numbers in perspective. As advised for this adapter :
" The PCIe 1X configuration allows for the full 250MB/s (megabytes unidirectional) throughput for PCIe based ExpressCards, while the USB 2.0 configuration allows USB 2.0 ExpressCards to operate at their 60MB/s speed"

Ok, but The SxS speed is anyway not bigger than 100MB/s, so usb at 60MB/s is not so slow. and this is even worse for SDHC,even if you got the fastest one (between 30-40MB/s), USB speed still outperform the card speed by 2x.

You seem to be forgetting that it's very difficult to obtain a sustained transfer speeds of this sort from USB; some 20-30 MBps seems to be a maximum. While with PCIe, I'm getting some 95 MBps average speed when transferring large files of ca. 4GB each from my SxS cards!