[bsteinagel]

Hi All,

About a month ago I posted a thread on this forum regarding the slow download speeds I was having with my card reader. I thought I fixed the problem, but it's back again. It seems to be a random thing.

I have a USB 2.0 8-in-1 card reader from AMC (ArrowMicro) that fits in my 3.5" bay on my desktop. When I insert my Compact Flash card (SandDisk Extreme III 2.0 GB) into the reader and start DLP v1.8 the program consistently pauses while downloading images off the card. During these pauses my download rate drops to between .3 MB/sec and 1.5 MB/sec. And it does this on every single image. It doesn't seem like the computer is freezing up. It's more like the program itself is being interrupted by something. On a 2 GB card, I'd hate to see how long this process would take if it were full with 122 RAW images from an EOS 5D camera. Occasionally I'll get a good download rate of around 6.5 MB/sec and everything runs smoothly.

Here's my system specs.
Pentium 4 3.0 GHz
800 MHz FSB
2.0 GB PC3200 Memory running at Dual Channel
AMC AICR-01-BG 8-in-1 card reader
Add-On USB 2.0 expansion PCI card
Gigabyte GA-8IPE1000 Series Motherboard w/ USB 2.0


If I seem exasperated, I am. I may try switching my card reader over to one of my motherboard's usb connectors rather than using the USB 2.0 PCI card. In the meantime, has anyone had this problem or know of any suggestions that may help remedy this?

Thanks,
Brad S.

[DavidB]

Don't ask me why, but all of the 4 or 5 internal card readers I have ever used (on my own and other people's machines) have performed poorly. I have never had USB 2.0 download speeds from any of these devices, even when they claim to be USB 2.0 compatible.

I know that Chris recommends using a good external reader, and I am glad I followed this advice. External readers can also be kept in a camera or laptop bag, for use when on the move. Yes, I know that it's another lead to connect, but the price is worth paying.

I suggest that you replace the bay-mounted reader with a front USB 2.0 port if you haven't already got one, and get an external reader.

[Moz]

I've also tried a couple of front bay readers and was not impressed. I suspect they're "USB 2.0" meaning "will work if connected to a USB2 port". I've got a PSD and a disk Steno, both extremely fast USB2 devices (the PSD also does firewire) and so I haven't really bothered with a separate card reader.

Note that DLPro will pause downloading while it rotates images, and this hurts the reported download speed. I hope Chris is working on queuing the rotations in the background, because it's really annoying on a fast dual core machine to have this hiccuping.