SD versus SDHD

Ref SD versus SDHD.

Here is one for you computer experts

I note that SD cards are rated upto 133X but SDHD cards are only rated upto 6X. Is this against the same base? In other words, are SD cards 20 times faster than SDHD cards?

I have just got a DELL 6400 Laptop for storing my K10 images whilst away from home. This came loaded with Vista and I want to use the Ready Boost facility.

I have successfully tried it with an ordinary 2GB SD card, but I wonder if it would work with a 4GB SDHD card, and if so, if it would be better or worse performance.

Also, although it works with an ordinary SD card, would there be any operational advantages (speed etc) in using a flash drive instead.

I do not want to waste money on SDHD if I would be better sticking with SD. I know that I could always use it in the K10, but 4GB in camera is a bit much for me.

AFAIK the base is the same. So SDHD are pretty yucky slow.
There are some faster ones coming out around now (think it was Sandisk Extreme and running at 50x).
I could dig out the spec...

No idea about Vista... I'm giving it a miss until SP1 arrives

Matt

SD was artificially limited to 4GB so they could launch a whole new family of SDHC (High Capacity). There are non SDHC 8GB cards by some smaller manufacturers, but none are particularly fast. SDHC is currently a slow format but with an Extreme II and III card in 4GB flavours due of release soon that will change.

I must say that I am of the opinion that 2GB is about the right size for a card. It's big enough that you don't have to keep changing cards, but not so big that if it fails you will be driven to suicide.

G

I'll second that from George
With the cost of a 133x Sandisk 2G at less than £18, it's a financial no-brainer as well
Just buy more cards...
Matt

I'd agree with that, two 2GB Extreme III cards are £38 where as a 4GB card is at least £45.

In principle, I would agree. Indeed I would go down to 1GB for my style of photography.

But now I have a conflict of interest. To maximise the benefits of Vista Ready Boost and Prefetch, I really need 3-4GB, but would the extra capacity outweigh the slower speed? Using a 2GB Sandisk Extreme III already gives a significant boost.

Thanks for the input

I will probably play safe rather than waste money. After all, it is not as though I am going to be working it hard when I am on holiday

I agree in terms of cameras, but he's looking at using it for Vista's clever bits, perhaps there is a benefit to having more storage from that point of view?

When I started with the K10 I used a 1Gb card that I'd had hanging around in an old PDA for about 2 years. No idea what the speed would be - it's not marked, and I think it predates all these supposedly super fast ones.

Anyway, having seen the prices in Jessops of the fast cards, I thought I'd test the K10D with the old card, just to see what all the fuss was about.

In continuous mode, in JPG at max quality, I got to 38 shots and it was showing no signs at all of slowing down. In RAW, it got to 8 before slowing right down.

Now, the likelihood of my needing continuous, in RAW, for more than 8 shots at a time is so nearly zero that I concluded that I'd never need to spend money on fast SD cards.

I now have a couple of standard 2 Gb Kingston cards which I alternate (long before filling them, I might add), and they're fine. They were about £10 each.

I certainly don't see the need to spend any more than that.

Ok, some Google'ing...
http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarcher/archive/2006/06/02/615199.aspx
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=186
and http://www.grantgibson.co.uk/misc/readyboost/

Personally, I'd probably go with the 2Gb Sandisk Extreme III so I could use for either camera or Vista
HTH!
Matt

the reason for this is that the K10D has a pretty big buffer. Large enough in fact that Pentax figure it will never be filled by JPEGs as long as the card used is a reasonable one (I once took a 60 frame burst to test this with my 60x no name card and concluded that if it's not infinite then it's as close to as makes no difference).

Until that buffer is full, the performance of the card doesn't come in to play.

For this reason if I'm taking both my DSLRs to shoot fast action, I put my fastest cards in the *ist DL2. It's small buffer means it sees more benefit from them than K10D does.

In the end that was my conclusion too.

More so, having read the web sites - apparently there is reason to believe that a later mod will enable Vista to use two devices at once (it can only use one at the moment )

Thanks Matt for the effort - I have come to the conclusion that there is as much skill and experience required for googling as for photography (heresy, I hear you say)