Topic: Fast CF card download (Read 3160 times)

oolic · « **on:** April 04, 2009, 01:28:18 pm »

Hi folks,

Planning another trip to Alaska, Yukon and Arctic Ocean again this year. Wanting to quickly read and store photos from a compact flash card to DVD and external hard drive, I came up with this solution. A reasonbly fast PC laptop; http://explore.toshiba.com/laptops/tecra/A10 and use this LaCie fireWire 800 pc card; http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10482 with this card reader; http://www.lexar.com/readers/pro_udma_reader.html and burn to this hard drive; http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=11135 . I don't want to slow down the laptop by storing my images on the internal hard drive therefor the reason for the storage on DVD and the external drive.
Any thoughts about this route.

Thanks, Richard

Bob Peterson · « **Reply #1 on:** April 05, 2009, 01:22:24 pm »

Quote from: oolic

Hi folks,

Planning another trip to Alaska, Yukon and Arctic Ocean again this year. Wanting to quickly read and store photos from a compact flash card to DVD and external hard drive, I came up with this solution. A reasonbly fast PC laptop; http://explore.toshiba.com/laptops/tecra/A10 and use this LaCie fireWire 800 pc card; http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10482 with this card reader; http://www.lexar.com/readers/pro_udma_reader.html and burn to this hard drive; http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=11135 . I don't want to slow down the laptop by storing my images on the internal hard drive therefor the reason for the storage on DVD and the external drive.
Any thoughts about this route.

Thanks, Richard

Even a relatively slow laptop will easily keep up with the transfers. I participated in the recent LL Antarctica cruise and, because Dell screwed up, had to take my 5 year old laptop. I connected my SanDisk Firewire reader to a Firewire 400 PC Card and wrote to two external drives which I also connected via Firewire. Other than the hassle of connecting all the wires, the transfers happened quickly and smoothly.

I executed the transfers with Breeze Systems' Downloader Pro, which I configured to simultaneously write to the two external drives.

One of the best accessories I used was the Wonpro 6 position universal power strip, with an additional WE-109-6ft power cord for the ship's UK style power outlets. The long power cord allowed me to move away from the only power outlet in the cabin, and enabled one of my two roommates, who hails from Finland, to use the power strip.

Bob

pss · « **Reply #2 on:** April 05, 2009, 01:59:13 pm »

Quote from: oolic

Hi folks,

Planning another trip to Alaska, Yukon and Arctic Ocean again this year. Wanting to quickly read and store photos from a compact flash card to DVD and external hard drive, I came up with this solution. A reasonbly fast PC laptop; http://explore.toshiba.com/laptops/tecra/A10 and use this LaCie fireWire 800 pc card; http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10482 with this card reader; http://www.lexar.com/readers/pro_udma_reader.html and burn to this hard drive; http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=11135 . I don't want to slow down the laptop by storing my images on the internal hard drive therefor the reason for the storage on DVD and the external drive.
Any thoughts about this route.

Thanks, Richard

i would spend my money on huge fast CF cards, so you never have to erase one....and the lacie little big disk in mirrored array mode (or just 2 portable HDs with a software array....)...either way get something port powered so you don't have to deal with poweradapters/plugs....DVDs are slow, don't hold much, take up a lot of room and you can't trust them....
think about how much you might shoot, double it and go from there.....

Jack Flesher · « **Reply #3 on:** April 05, 2009, 06:41:50 pm »

Quote from: pss

i would spend my money on huge fast CF cards, so you never have to erase one....and the lacie little big disk in mirrored array mode (or just 2 portable HDs with a software array....)...either way get something port powered so you don't have to deal with poweradapters/plugs....DVDs are slow, don't hold much, take up a lot of room and you can't trust them....

x 2

oolic · « **Reply #4 on:** April 05, 2009, 08:29:42 pm »

Hi guys,

Since I posted this query I have been doing a bit of research. What I'm finding, and what is confusing is the different nomenclature for the same I/O ports, PC cards etc. and what needs power to operate.

One thing that I did find of interest is that some of the latest laptops have a eSATA port that will allow one to use a 2.5 or 3.5 internal hard drive in an external case. Of course this has to be externally powered but I have a small portable 2KW generater that supplies clean power if I need it. So when I work on photos I can do it from the external HD and still have the speed of a 7200 or 10 K hard drve. Also the computers motherboard that I just built has a eSATA external port. So, it will be easy and quick to exchange images from my externall HD to my main number cruncher.

Thanks for the link to the SanDisk FireWire CF card reader link. Looks like it will play nice with my Vista 64 machine.

Thanks again for the info. I'll go through all the links and think about what was said.

Thanks again, Richard

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