PC Card/Cardbus/PCMCIA CF Adaptor performance

[Luke Smith]

I have a cheap PC Card to CF adaptor that I bought from Jaycar and have never got decent performance out of it. When I’m copying images from the cards the CPU in my Dell D600 is at 100%, making any multitasking a bit frustrating. I’ve tried several cards including-

• Lexar 1Gb 80x - 74.305 MegaBytes/min. Read 74.870 MegaBytes/min. Write
• Lexar 1GB 80x in D70s over USB2 - 51.107 MegaBytes/min. Read 48.697 MegaBytes/min. Write
• Sandisk standard 256MB - 70.392 MegaBytes/min Read 74.934 MegaBytes/min. Write
• Sandisk Ultra II 1GB
• Generic 16MB one that came with my CP4500

And all run at a similar mediocre throughput. This morning I only had the top two available so I did some testing with RoboCopy and confirmed my suspicions by writing 60MB of data onto the card, ejecting it (to clear the cache), and re-reading the data back to the hard drive. As you can see the results are fairly ordinary, taking about 15 minutes to read a 1GB CF. An 80x card should in theory do 720MB/min. even in write mode, however something here is making the whole process very CPU bound.

Any suggestions of a better CF adaptor to buy would be much appreciated.

Cheers,

Luke

[gstark]

Luke,

What's the spec for the USB connection in your PC?

If your PC is only USB 1.1, that's where your bottleneck is; if the system's a desktop, you can drop in a USB 2.0 card for maybe $30.

Then, you need to make sure that your cardreader supports USB 2.0. As long as it does, and your computer does, then you'll be fine, and enjoying super-fast transfer speeds.

Does that all make any sense to you?

[Luke Smith]

The adaptor I'm talking about goes in the PC Card slot inside my notebook, sorry, I should have clarified. The only test done over USB was with the D70.

Like this - http://www.sandisk.com/retail/pca.asp

I guess that SanDisk make this http://www.sandisk.com/retail/ultra-pca.asp sugests that there are differences between adaptors.

[gstark]

Luke,

Ok, I have something like that too, and to say it's slow is being very, very kind.

But that's strongly suggestive to me that you're using a laptop; am I correct?

Regardless, what is the specification of the USB connections on your system? This is going to be the critical part of getting you faster transfer speeds, and USB 2 is what you're wanting.

[Luke Smith]

Well, I've done a bit more research and figured out that the normal notebook PC Card adaptors that everyone sells are 16 bit. This makes them capable of about 1.2MByte a second, which is roughly what I am getting. There are 32bit cardbus versions available and they will do about 5-12 MByte a second, being limited by your CF card rather than by the adaptor and use a lot less CPU according to the makers. They are also a bit more expensive and a lot rarer in the shops.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0310/03102 ... ustest.asp

A review the Delkin 32Bit card, and compares it to firewire and old PC Card adaptors like the one I have.

The going rate for a Lexar cardbus reader is about $30 including shipping so I think I'll order one of these.

Cheers,

Luke

[ozonejunkie]

I own one of the PCMCIA adapters in question, and agree that it is painful.

However,
I was in Harris Technology a (http://www.ht.com.au) the other day, and they had an adapter made by sandisk, that is designed to be used with the ultra II series CF's.

I didn't look over the specs, so I don't know if it is actually any faster, but it may be worth investigating. From memory, sandisk have a pretty good webpage.

If i am out there again (Fyshwick in Canberra) and they got it in stock, i might try it out. I recall it only being $20 or so.

Tristan

[Luke Smith]

Yep, I spotted those, however the photo doesnt show a gold connector sheild thats meant to signify a 32bit cardbus connector, like the Lexar and Delkin one does. If they will let my try it out at the Fortitude Valley store I might try it out.

L.

[ozonejunkie]

Just done some more research.
See: http://www.sandisk.com/retail/ultra-pca.asp

I can't find the specs though.

Tristan

[DVEous]

... Obsolete ...

[Yi-P]

Why would you get a PC card to CF card reader?

This will generally cost you much more than buying a USB Card reader.

You can get a 15-in-one card reader for less than $15 now.

[gstark]

Adam,

My Asus notebook is similarly configured. I just use a card reader vis the USB2 port. For around $25 you consider this option.

[DVEous]

... Obsolete ...

[DVEous]

... Obsolete ...

[gstark]

Mine is an M6Ne or somesuch.

Widescreen, 80GB, over two years old, and the battery still gives me more than 3 hours life.

I cannot recommend them too highly.

[cawdor]

A PC card adapter, on the other hand, can reside in the slot without having to be plugged in all the time without protruding from the notebook.

Anyway, I have found a Lexar 32-bit CF adapter that is available for $68 + courier. The speed of this device is similar to USB2.0 and Firewire.

I was in the same situation, I wanted something that doesn't "stick out" of the notebook and I tried the Sandisk Ultra PCMCIA adapter. It was sooooo slow. I took it back for a refund (the guy actually offered to let me try it out, cause he couldn't advise me on the speed). As far as I know, the PCMCIA speed is determined by the standard, not the device you use - but please correct me if I'm wrong, cause then I'd look into one of those for myself

PCMCIA wasn't designed for mass data transfer, unlike firewire. So if this card can pull off similar speeds, I'd be very interested.

[DVEous]

... Obsolete ...

[DVEous]

... Obsolete ...

[Glen]

Adam, this is the chart you need, gives some good hard facts