File transfer: USB cable or remove SD card?

I always use the cable with my Kx, because I tend to find that SD card readers don't last all that long. With my point and shoot I remove the card and use a reader, because either it didn't come with a cable, or I don't know where I put it.

I've never had a SD card reader fail, the one I use on the desktop actually cost under 50p including postage the plastic covers come off it but it still works fine. it's actually slightly easier to get the cards in without the outer cover
Any of the half dozen laptops I use have a built in reader for the ultimate in convenience.

CF cards on the other hand are a right pain - I've known several adapters & one camera get killed by bent pins so I'd much rather use a cable if faced by one of those at workshop sessions. I've avoided them for my own hardware since my first digital camera ~2001.

p..c.. - with you on SD card readers!

CARD OUT!

2 reasons......

No1 Because I can! (my pc has a built in reader)
No2 Because gradually over time the day to day micro-vibrations will cause micro-products of wear to accumulate between the contacts leading, one day, to the failure to save that perfect image! Every Time you remove the card this process resets itself!

This is the same process that causes your engine management light to randomly pop up on your car!

Why risk it!

Cheers MZ

Micro-vibrations? Care to expand on this?

has anybody tested card readers vs cable?
I use a usb-c to usb-3 cable with my MBP and to be honest it's the speeds of the cards that make a noticible difference...
in practice, for me...
I can dump BOTH cards using the cable from the camera in about the same time it takes to dump one card with a card reader...
so it seems to me there's three variables..
What gen usb port are you using?
How fast is the card reader?
how fast is the card?
I believe the usb 3 port is rated for higher number of plug-ins than the sd cards are, but it's also non replaceable.. so it should be much more durable.

I always use Teracopy for file copying mostly because it will do a full verify after the copy. I use the free version and still prefer v2.3 although I haven't properly tried the final of v3.

It can be set up to give an option of Windows or Teracopy on drag drop operations which is how I use it. I usually get 50-100 MB/sec on USB3, Verify usually takes about half the copy time.

I've just copied over 200 DVD-RAM archive disks back onto hard drives without a single error.

See...

https://www.howtogeek.com/80036/geek-reviews-use-teracopy-to-speed-up-file-copyi...

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I use the PC's inbuilt card slot. Touching wood I never experience any file transfer errors. Doesn't windows check for those Algi?

Windows file copy is pretty dumb It doesn't verify the copy, but to be honest copy errors are very rare. I'm not sure about the latest Windows, but earlier versions just made up how long was left for the copy to finish It used to show something like 2 mins left the 30 seconds left then 5 mins left etc.

The last decent Filemanager program was in Windows NT 4.0. Still works in W7.

Fileman_Link

Some_History

Teracopy doesn't work with Winfile so I use Explorer
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It doesn't just make it up but it does a VERY poor job of estimating it. From the behavior I've witnessed it seems to periodically update it's estimate based om the amount remaining to transfer & the recent transfer rate of that transfer. The sudden increase in time remaining you illustrated implies the transfer rate has dropped either due to other things the PC is doing at the same time or just from non continuous data making the file system jump around much more.

Another one here using the laptop card slot for transfer. John mentioned SD cards not being permanent for long-term storage; I've also had the same issues with DVDs created in the early noughties - not with photos but with sound recordings that I've lost because the discs have become unreadable. I use redundant external hard drives now.

You should have used either archival DVD's or DVD-RAM which I have never had any problems with. I've always used Taiyo Yuden DVD's or Panasonic DVD-RAM.

I once had trouble reading another make of DVD but found that an old LG drive had no problems with it. (LG drives were never considered to be top quality).

Sadly DVD writers sold now days aren't very good.

A DVD media seller at a computer fair once told me that there was only one DVD manufacturer in the World, when I asked him for Taiyo Yuden DVD's.... I replied! ....... Your Wrong! ..... There are in fact TWO ... One who makes the good stuff and one who makes ALL THE CRAP YOU SELL

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Yes....




My issue with card readers (which have generally also been very cheap, and of the "reads 300 different types of card" variety, but also sometimes brand name products) is not with the copying, but with the deleting afterwards. The thing that reads the write-protect tab on an SD card seems to not last as long as the rest of it, and then refuses to delete anything after I've copied it.

Ha! Ha! That's funny

Firefox also can't work out how long a download will take even though I can do it myself using a calculator.

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Joking aside, I think it's generally calculated based on how long it takes to download the first x bytes, then divided into the total file size. But it's calculated dynamically, so if the download suddenly goes slow, then it's recalculated because it can't predict whether it will speed up again. So you get 1 minute, 3 minutes, 1 minute, 3 minutes until it's all done. The myriad of things that can cause the download speed to fluctuate means it can't be accurately predicted - there's a load of stuff just on your PC that can cause changes in download speed, even before you start to include all the stuff on the internet between you and the server.