Any good Compact Flash Readers - Fast & Affordable

Just as an extra thought, if this is for home rather than portable use I've found that it's better if possible to have the CF slot to be fairly deep i.e. the card has to be pushed in quite far, I've bent the pins on a couple of readers with shallow slots as the card has gone in not perfectly square. :'(
 
I have the Lexar Firewire reader, bought from one of the members and here. It is way faster at transferring than my USB 2 reader. I did a test when I first got it and couldn't actually believe how fast it was. If you have Firewire (99% of Macs do) then I would definitely recommend the Lexar Firewire Card Reader.
 
Scotty Pro said:
I have the Lexar Firewire reader, bought from one of the members and here. It is way faster at transferring than my USB 2 reader. I did a test when I first got it and couldn't actually believe how fast it was. If you have Firewire (99% of Macs do) then I would definitely recommend the Lexar Firewire Card Reader.
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That'd be me! :)

I'm surprised you found it so quick to be honest as I found it slower than my Sandisk USB2 reader, which is why I sold it. Maybe it was a problem with the firewire on my machine - regardless, glad you're happy with it :)
 
Vertigo1 said:
That'd be me! :)

I'm surprised you found it so quick to be honest as I found it slower than my Sandisk USB2 reader, which is why I sold it. Maybe it was a problem with the firewire on my machine - regardless, glad you're happy with it :)
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Thanks
definitely faster on my Mac than the USB Reader, so pleased I got it now :clap:

thanks Vertigo1, just out of curiosity are you Mac or PC based ?
 
This thread examplifies why I just stick to USB2 readers. At the end of the day, how quickly do you need to empty a card? My rubbish old USB2 card reader reads my current 35mb/s readable speed CF card at 20mb/s. Yes I could spend a bit more and get one that reads at high 20s maybe in real life speeds, or I could upgrade to USB3 or get a faster card bla bla bla, but then the bottleneck might move to any old internal disks etc etc. It can become obsessive and expensive and whilst I am all for speed normally (like my SSD), frankly, emptying an 8gb card via USB2 in 7 minutes is fast enough for me. I can't think of a single time in my life where I would benefit from it emptying in 3 minutes instead of 7 even if I was pro. It does not bottleneck the camera so for me that's enough.

As for USB2 reader, do NOT buy this leather Akasa it's awful because the CF slot has play in it and you can insert the card ot straight bending the pinds. Poor product.

3555101-7314.jpg
 
Scotty Pro said:
thanks Vertigo1, just out of curiosity are you Mac or PC based ?
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PC

clicktor said:
This thread examplifies why I just stick to USB2 readers. At the end of the day, how quickly do you need to empty a card? My rubbish old USB2 card reader reads my current 35mb/s readable speed CF card at 20mb/s. Yes I could spend a bit more and get one that reads at high 20s maybe in real life speeds, or I could upgrade to USB3 or get a faster card bla bla bla, but then the bottleneck might move to any old internal disks etc etc. It can become obsessive and expensive and whilst I am all for speed normally (like my SSD), frankly, emptying an 8gb card via USB2 in 7 minutes is fast enough for me. I can't think of a single time in my life where I would benefit from it emptying in 3 minutes instead of 7 even if I was pro. It does not bottleneck the camera so for me that's enough.
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I know what you mean but, when you get up to 32GB cards, like I have, you're talking over half an hour per card to offload all the files, which gets a bit tedious.

Sure, it's not the end of the world but if I can halve that time with a £23 USB3 reader then why on earth not? :D
 
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I've always used sandisk either usb2 or firewire but recently brought a couple of belkin F5U249 "usb 2.0 all-in-1" as cheap backups and found them pretty fast. Firewire is fastest, I do event photography so my main use is 1,000 to 4,000 images a day sized between 1.5mb to 2.5mb.

Did buy a few years ago a very cheap trust reader from 7day shop and found very slow. Interestingly though a couple of times when I've had trouble reading other photographer's own cards (usually they use mine which are all sandisk) the trust reader has read them where all others have failed, may be because it's reading them slowly (tortoise and hare syndrome :) )
 
OK, can I throw something else into the mix here?

I have decided the lexar firewire is the way forward, however, Lexar have not and discontinued it! Sandisk then? Nope, they've killed theirs off too.

Does anyone have experience of an express slot CF card reader? what's the transfer speeds like? If I use USB it's painful for CF. SD on my reader flies across, CF is snail like in comparison :(
 
Nuffles said:
I've found USB2 to work fine with my PowerMac G3 on the USB1 ports.
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In general these standards are backwards compatible so you can plug in a USB2 into a USB1 port, it will just run at USB1 rates. Same will be true of USB3 - it will be backwards compatible but wont give USB3 rates unless both ends of the connection are USB3.
 
ka$h said:
OK, can I throw something else into the mix here?

I have decided the lexar firewire is the way forward, however, Lexar have not and discontinued it! Sandisk then? Nope, they've killed theirs off too.

Does anyone have experience of an express slot CF card reader? what's the transfer speeds like? If I use USB it's painful for CF. SD on my reader flies across, CF is snail like in comparison :(
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I've not got any experence of the express card reader, but Calumet have them for sale and you can check the spec on their website.

http://www.calumetphoto.com/eng/pro...resscard_34_compactflash_card_adapter/im15981

http://www.calumetphoto.com/eng/product/delkin_expresscard_54_compactflash_adapter/im15986

HTH
 
According to that site the Delkin one is a stinking pile of poo. At least they have the honesty to admit it - 20 MB/s transfer speeds. Even my £5 Tesco CF reader beats that.

I've got the Lexar Expresscard reader and it's fantastic. Not sure on it's top speed, fastest I've got from it is 64 MB/s - with a 60 MB/s Sandisk card.
 
hollis_f said:
According to that site the Delkin one is a stinking pile of poo. At least they have the honesty to admit it - 20 MB/s transfer speeds. Even my £5 Tesco CF reader beats that.

I've got the Lexar Expresscard reader and it's fantastic. Not sure on it's top speed, fastest I've got from it is 64 MB/s - with a 60 MB/s Sandisk card.
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4 more than the card supports sounds fairly quick! Will give that one a try for £18 :)

Thanks for your answers guys

K
 
Well for those with an express card slot, the Lexar one is quick and very impressive on straightforward data transfer.

I have found another bottle neck now :( Lightroom's import is slow even with a core i7 and 8GB RAM :( :(
 
Holy thread resurrection Batman! :)

Well I finally took delivery of the (slightly less mythical now) Lexar USB3 reader today. This thing is quick!

Did a test with one of my Sandisk Extreme 32GB UDMA 60MB/s cards. Transferred 1015 files totalling 22.7GB in 6m45s at an average speed of 57.5MB/s. Rather happy with that!
 
Vertigo1 said:
Holy thread resurrection Batman! :)

Well I finally took delivery of the (slightly less mythical now) Lexar USB3 reader today. This thing is quick!

Did a test with one of my Sandisk Extreme 32GB UDMA 60MB/s cards. Transferred 1015 files totalling 22.7GB in 6m45s at an average speed of 57.5MB/s. Rather happy with that!
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thats on a USB3 equipped machine though?
 
Of course :)

You can pick up a USB3 PCI-e card for under £20 though and it's backwards compatible if and when you need to use it on a machine with only USB2.
 
I bought mine from ASDA, use it mainly on my netbook. Not the fastest but not bad for casual use, Here
 
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