SanDisk Extreme FW800 Reader = AWESOME

Last week, I purchased a new CompactFlash reader for my photography stuff.  I had been using a USB reader, mostly because it was generally compatible with everything.  Some of my longer photo sessions were taking a looooong time to import, though, and I was getting tired of waiting.  I elected to go high-speed, so I got the SanDisk Extreme reader with a FW800 interface.

I didn’t have a chance to test this new gadget until today.  I went against my own advice and had a TON of things on the CF waiting for import.  At one point, I purchased two 8GB Kingston “133X” CF cards, and generally use those as my primary cards.  In the D700, I typically get 400 or more shots on a single card.  This is perfect for doing something like a theatre show where I don’t always have the ability to swap cards during the event.  It can also lead to complacency, where I’ll shoot several events before importing them.  What worries me when I do this is that I had issues with one of the two 8GB cards a while ago, to the point where it just stopped reading after a while.  I can’t find it now, which leads me to believe that I threw it away.  In any case, that could lead to disaster for several events–not good for business and not acceptable for someone who preaches data safety.  Anyway, I didn’t listen to myself, and I had about 540 images on the card ready for import.

So far, this thing seems to be awesome.  Big speed = WIN.  I’m pulling a solid 23MB/s from the “133X” CF on this interface.  I need to do a timed transfer speed check on the USB reader, but it is already a ton faster than that.  23MB/s is around 184Mbit/s, which is about as good as I think I can get from this particular flash technology.

Yay geekery.