SD carry case/USB drive

[UnknownVT]

Like many I use SD flashcards in my digicams.

Normally to be on the safe side I like to carry a spare SD card - that is despite using a SD card of high enough capacity that I would not run out of space - a spare/backup is a good thing.

Occassionally I also want to have a USB flashdrive/thumb-drive.

That's when I came up with the idea of combining the two things.

Get a compact USB 2.0 SD card reader and carry the spare SD card in it and use as a thumb drive.

the spare 2Gb SD card I carry in the USB reader is actually quite a fast one at a claimed 150x (150x 0.15Mb/s = 22.5Mb/s) - and the combination in the SDHC class 6 USB 2.0 reader is almost twice as fast as the Kingston 1Gb DataTraveler (which is pretty fast to begin with)

Now flashcard readers used to be relatively expensive...
but recently I found some USB 2.0 SDHC (class 6 - the fastest class) readers at very low prices.

Deal/auction spotting is not allowed on BFC.

Ken C.
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[demon tessu]

Deal spotting is not allowed on BFC.

Ken C.

 

[jacktrades_nbk]

yeah, nice thing, but the speed of a flashdrive like corsairGT, or any other respectable flashdrive, is much greater than a sdhc is, whatever the class
the kingston data traveler has normal/medium access read/write speed.
anyway, its good to have that one to

 

[UnknownVT]

the speed of a flashdrive like corsairGT, or any other respectable flashdrive, is much greater than a sdhc is, whatever the class

No doubts about that - the Corsair GT I believe tested at some 35Mb/s - and that's really fast.

However most USB thumbdrives rate at 6-10Mb/s - if one is lucky - even ones that claim "Hi-Speed" - they often are merely quoting the USB2.0 specs of upto 45Mb/s - but the overall performance comes no where near that.

The fastest SD cards currently are the SanDisk Extreme III at 30Mb/s - and that may be hampered by the USB reader - many also quote the USB2.0 spec of upto 45Mb/s - but come no where near that.

For example I have a Lexar multi-card reader that claims to be USB2.0 - the "best" read speed I managed to get out of it using a 150x SD card was still well under 7Mb/s - where "potentially" it should have been closer to 22.5Mb/s - if both the card and reader's specs were "honest".

These cheapo USB readers can do sustained 11.5Mb/s with burst speeds of about 18Mb/s using the same 150x SD card - so despite being cheap they at least perform better than the Lexar (v. reputable brand) multi-reader.

However back to practicalities - at the really extreme end I might take upto about 500Mb worth of photos - at 11.5Mb/s - that would take 43 seconds to upload. 500Mb on a Corsair GT would only take 14.3 secs - a savings of some 30 secs -
but really as long as the upload happens in less than a couple of minutes it probably would be acceptable to me.
For example with my Lexar multi-reader would take about 1 min 12 secs - that's still acceptable - as most of the time I am only uploading less than 200Mb worth of photos - so less than 30 seconds - with the cheapo USB reader now less than 20 secs (saving of 10 secs - which in reality is not that significant)

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