View Full Version : Do Firewire SD card readers exist?


Aaron Dunlap
April 14th, 2010, 11:44 AM
I figure if a few hours of Google searching turns up nothing, then the product doesn't exist, but I could be wrong. Why does something like this not exist, or if it does, why is it so hard to find??

Joel Peregrine
April 14th, 2010, 12:43 PM
Hi Aaron,

Even Class 10 SDHC cards are slower than USB 2.0 so there doesn't seem to be an advantage to having a faster interface. UDMA CF cards are inherently much faster, making a the Lexar FireWire 800 reader or an ExpressCard reader worthwhile. They make SD to CF adapters, but you're still only going to be able to transfer at the fastest SD cards are capable of, roughly 15 - 25 MB/sec.

Aaron Dunlap
April 14th, 2010, 12:51 PM
Perfect, this is exactly the explanation I needed. Thanks!

Sean Vergara
May 4th, 2011, 11:45 PM
This helped me as well!

Spiros Zaharakis
May 5th, 2011, 01:50 PM
Not so usefull at the moment for SD cards but if you want the fastest card reader available that will also take advantage of faster future cards then this is a good choice delkin card reader usb 3.0 (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=delkin+card+reader+usb+3.0&N=0&InitialSearch=yes)

Galen Rath
May 5th, 2011, 05:07 PM
Thanks, Joel, for finally making me happy with my USB 2.0 and SD cards. I have a USB 3.0 port on my computer and was itching to get a USB 3.0 card reader. No point in that. I have ESATA also, and I had gotten a combo card reader/SATA disk reader/ cloner that was advertised with an ESATA or USB 2.0 hookup. I was disappointed to find the ESATA cable hookup must connect only to SATA hard drives, and does nothing for the card reader part of the unit (hard to interpret the Chinese advertisment!).

Sean Vergara
May 11th, 2011, 05:30 AM
Not so usefull at the moment for SD cards but if you want the fastest card reader available that will also take advantage of faster future cards then this is a good choice delkin card reader usb 3.0 (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=delkin+card+reader+usb+3.0&N=0&InitialSearch=yes)

I really like that Delkin Card reader, with most of these card readers I feel that they are always cheaply made.
Does this one have some nice weight to it and does the backwards compatibility slow it down a lot or just a little?

Spiros Zaharakis
May 11th, 2011, 08:43 AM
I Greece where I live the Delkin card reader is not available.
I have two Pretec P240 USB 3.0 card readers. They are tiny, their build quality seems to be good (but not exceptional) and they are extremely fast with CF cards and as fast as it gets with SD cards. I have not plug them on USB 2.0 port so I don't know if they are any slower than regular USB 2.0 card readers but I would guess that they will be at least as fast as my other USB 2.0 card readers when used on a USB 2.0 port.
Honestly though a PCI USB 3.0 add on card costs less than $15 so no point not to get one.