Ok...newb question here so bear with me. Do all card readers use firewire and usb, or is there just a firewire specific reader? Is there that big of a difference between usb and firewire?
Micah Burns wrote:
Ok...newb question here so bear with me. Do all card readers use firewire and usb, or is there just a firewire specific reader? Is there that big of a difference between usb and firewire?
Nope. Firewire or USB. I have not seen a dual or multi interface reader but I have not looked either.
You gotta really want FW 800 to get it on a PC because you will need to get the hardware to support it. I run it but it cost me.
To optimize USB avoid connecting hubs. When you use a shared bus it takes away.
I have never seen nor found an SD FireWire Reader. Firewire is a term trademarked by Apple. 1394 A & B are the actual terms, depending on whether you are referring to 400 or 800 MB/s.
You will not be able to achieve anything faster than USB 2.0, with regard to SD. If you have both SD & CF cards, and would like to keep it simple, then the USB Extreme Reader is a good option. It has both SD & CF slots, and connects to any device that has a USB port.
I myself use the Sandisk Firewire Extreme Reader, but I only use CF cards. I rarely need dual backup. And I have never had a Genuine Sandisk card corrupt on me. I bought a non-genuine once, and it failed inside of a week. But, I was able to send it back, and get my money back.
The Sandisk Firewire reader is so much faster than any SD reader, that it almost justifies upgrading to a camera with CF alone. For SD I'd just get any Sandisk reader, I think the Extreme III cards are even supplied with a reader now.
I have the Sandisc USB and Delkin Firewire. I prefer the Firewire - btw, Apple is not the only company that makes Firewire compliant devices. They are all over the place - even external hardrives. What would I like to see? An eSATA CF card-reader!!!
Hendrik wrote:
I use the Sandisk Extreme usb 2.0 reader
I have this reader too and it works great, except it does not work with SDHC even though the faceplate indicates it does. For 2GB or less SD it is fine. For SDHC, I like my Micromate which is even faster than the Extreme reader. But being wide it might not fit some tight spots.
I had a Lexar FireWire CF reader, but recently replaced it with Lexar's latest & greatest USB2 CF/SD reader because I needed SD capability. Rob Galbraith's benchmarks show it is the fastest, or nearly the fastest, card reader around. So far I'm very happy with it.
I got 4 of the Lexar CF readers with the hub all USB. I like it I just wished Lexar would get smart and release a firmware upgrade for the setup so that it would appear as a single drive instead of four. That way every program could download from the four readers at once since the job of the hub is to allow you to download from the four readers at once.
Thats the way USB works, each device on the bus is enumerated and assigned a device letter. What you really need is a software solution that will copy from all the drives at once.
I think luminous landscape had a reference to Downloader Pro (from Breeze software) in an article on safari trips being able to do that. They come back from a day of shooting, connect 4 or 5 cards to the laptop and walk away as the software copies all the photos to multiple hard drives for backup.
I use to use DL Pro all the time but Light room and Bridge are allowing the naming system that I prefer that I use to use DL Pro to get. I will still probably use it as My Card reader software saince it is the best for the naming system I use. Lightroom has really changed things for me. ALthough the Develop module is basically ACR but I like having a offline database I I was using Portfolio I wish I would have waited a few months to get it I would have bought Lightroom instead now I I have both.
