Card reader speed: why is my built-in reader slower than USB adaptor?

[MikeyC]

I've had my Gladiator system for a few months now.

As a photographer, I specified it with heavy Photoshop use in mind (using a 64GB SSD primary and a fast 1TB secondary drive) and to that end it works great.

My issue is with the built-in card-reader panel. The installed one (which is where floppy drives used to go) takes forever to take files of my Compact Flash (CF) cards (4GB - 8GB in size) and was putting a serious dent in my workflow.

One day, I had a real rush job on, and while my desktop was slowly transferring files, I started unloading a second CF card to my partner's laptop using a £2 CF > USB adaptor. I found that it completed the transfer in about 20% of the time of my built-in reader!

I then tested it on my own machine, and sure enough the transfer of files is about 5 times faster if I plug the CF card into a cheap adaptor and use a USB port rather than the dedicated CF port on my card reader panel.

I contacted Steve @ Aria (who is normally very helpful and knowledgeable about all things techy) but he drew a blank. He suggested that that there were quite a few photographers on this forum and I should ask around.

So, if anyone can advise me how to pimp my card reader panel I'd be very grateful. The only downside of using the USB adaptor is that it sticks out of the front of my machine and prevents me being able to close the door on the space where it sits, making it quite vulnerable.

I'll say right now that I have tried and tried to find the original spec of my machine, but I cannot find anything on my email and the page for system doesn't seem to exist any more.

I believe it was called a Gladiator Splice, and the link to the page where it 'used' to be described was:

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products?search=SYI-VIDW-SPLICE-NLE

Any insights or suggestions gratefully received. Techy level pretty good, not afraid of fishing round the registry if that's what it takes.

Thank you!

[DoubleTop]

are there any noticeable model numbers on the multi-card reader. It could be a USB1 reader and/or plugged into a slow motherboard header.

It's a simple replacement in most cases, the 12in1 ones I've had tbh have all been a bit tosh, a reasonable USB extension cable and reader on the desk for me.

DT.

[MikeyC]

Thanks for your reply DT.

Nothing discernible from the front panel, and I'm not really in a position to unplug the system at the moment.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v255/mike_cooter/slow-card-reader-panel.jpg

I'm starting to wonder whether the 'USB 2.0' tag refers ONLY to the USB slot rather than the card slots.

Is there a way to check this from within Win 7?

[pobbrett]

also are you taking the photos straight off the card into a folder as i found some of the software that comes with cameras can cause the same problem

[f12f12]

are you only using one card at a time?

[MikeyC]

Yes to both:

- Straight from card to fast (7200k) Sata using Windows Explorer

- Only one CF card inserted

Plug in a cheap adaptor to the USB slot - massive speed increase.

[pobbrett]

does it do the same thing if you use the usb adapter plugged into the usb port on the card reader ??

[f12f12]

any jumpers on the back of the device ? maybe one relates to speed?

[MikeyC]

Update on this:

Just noticed that my drive letters for the SD/CF/etc slots were no longer displaying in Explorer. They did use to have static drive letters.

The LED on the front of the panel is still lit and the included USB slot works (drive letter assigned when something is inserted) but no drive letter appears if I plug a CF card straight into the slot.

Opened the case, unplugged and re-seated the card-reader cable into 'USB2_FRONT' connection on the Motherboard. Noticed that the front panel USB slot (labelled USB2) was plugged into 'USB1_FRONT' connection on motherboard.

Restarted, still no drive letters assigned to card reader.

Navigated to Start > All Programs > Admin tools > Services and checked that the "Smart Card" service was running (which it was).

Navigated to Control Panel > Device Manager
Right-clicked 'Generic USB Hub' (the first of 2 identical entries)
Clicked 'uninstall'
No mouse (as it is wireless via USB) so used PS2 keyboard to navigate to Action > Scan for hardware changes

All USB devices re-found (printer plus 6 'unknown') and drivers resolved.

Still no entry for card slots.

Plugged CF card into adaptor, did a couple of speed tests.

Using Card Reader USB port
====================
400mb images copied to fast SATA = 25secs

Using front panel USB port
====================
400mb images copied to fast SATA = 25secs

In conclusion:
- card reader is plugged into USB2 internal slot
- front panel is plugged into USB1 internal slot
- CF/USB adaptor transfers at same speed whichever port is used
- card reader is connected (usb slot works and LED is on)
- Win7 only assigns drive letter to card reader USB slot once a device is inserted
- Win7 does not assign drive letter if CF card inserted directly into card reader

Any further suggestions welcome!

[PMM]

Its the card unit itself m8y its naff

I cannot point you to review as it would fall foul of the rules as review has competitor links.

But to cut a long story short that actual unit is known to be one of the slowest readers about.

[DoubleTop]

windows7 folder view options has an option to not show empty removable media drives, that might explain why it has all of a sudden disappeared.

I wonder how many of these are produced/added to system purely to use the 3.5" slot for something :lol:

DT.

[MikeyC]

Wow - never noticed the 'Organise > Folder options > View > Hide empty drives' option, thanks.

Sadly, didn't make any difference!

Thanks PMM, looks like it's new reader time. Is it allowable to at least mention the brand name?

[PMM]

dynamode

Is one name it goes under, but often with cheap stuff like this there is a whole raft of aliases.

Added after 11 minutes:

Aria do actually do a well respected unit..

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Card+Readers/Internal+Card+Readers/Akasa+BayMaster+Card+%26+Drive+Reader+?productId=4 2157

[MikeyC]

Thanks, I have found a pic of a 'Dynamode' reader that matches what I have - and it does indeed get a 2* review.

Unfortunately, while that Akasa looks good - the product description (http://www.akasa.co.uk/update.php?tpl=product/product.detail.tpl&no=181&type=Card%20Reader/Hub&type_sub=Card%20Reader&model=AK-ICR-10) for that code (AK-ICR-10) doesn't include a CF card slot.

Seems like the Akasa AK-ICR-07 is a perfect replacement, so I'll have to shop elsewhere.

Thanks for all your help - looks like a it's all down to a sub-standard component on an otherwise highly spec'd PC.

[MikeyC]

A little post-script to this in case someone has the same problem in the future.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Windows 7 has become quite unstable in the last few days. I have found that if the PC is left idle for more than a couple of hours, the screen will become unresponsive to mouse or keyboard prompts to 'wake it up'.

I edited my screen-saver settings to remove any 'put disks to sleep' entries, but the problem still occurred. I also noticed that there was increased fan (or disk?) noise when this happened, similar to when the PC is first started. The only thing I could do was to hold down the power button and force a restart.

I used safe mode, didn't really see anything wrong and rebooted to Win7. The PC suddenly quit on me (while trying to submit a 'HijackThis' log) and I had to reboot - but couldn't get past safe mode. I decided to use the recovery disk I made earlier to restore to an earlier time.

However, when trying to do so, I received a message (on the recovery console screen) that said 'Unexpected I/O error has occurred'. I browsed the error message on my iPhone, and found a solution that recommended disabling all USB devices prior to re-start.

I did this, and thankfully I was able to boot back into Win7. But even more surprising - the drive letters for card reader were all present!

I turned on my USB devices one by one (2 external Freecom drives) and ran checkdisk on them (no problems found). I then plugged a CF card into my reader slot - and it was detected.

In conclusion:
==========
- Some conflict in Win7 was causing the card reader not to be found (not a hardware fault as it is now working)
- Something to do with my external USB drives was causing a fault in Window 7, causing black unresponsive screens and sudden stoppages to the system
- Starting Windows 7 WITHOUT power to the external USB drives (or USB printer) enabled Windows 7 to start, and allowed the drive letters of the card reader to register in Windows Explorer.


Hopefully this is then end of this little saga, but I will report on any further findings if I think they might be helpful to future forum searchers.

[MikeyC]

Ok, last word on this just to complete the thread.

Still been having problems with freezes / shutdowns and came across this thread:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-system/windows-has-recovered-from-an-unexpected-shutdown/578a76d0-6cdb-4086-85ca-da0c5a2cdb84?tm=1305716301860

One of the pieces of advice was to go to:

Action Center (on the taskbar) > Maintenance > View reliability history

When I did that, I noticed a recurrent problem (that wasn't showing up in Admin tools > Event Viewer) with a USB device driver, listed as 'Alcor Micro USB 2.0 Card Reader'. I don't have any other card readers installed, so it must be the Dynamode.

The Akasa card reader arrived today, and as a comparison, I did the following:

Dynamode
=======
100MB images > HD via CF slot = 38.5 secs
100MB images > HD via USB adaptor (card reader USB slot) = 6.5 secs
100MB images > HD via USB adaptor (PC USB slot) = 6.5 secs

Akasa
=====
100MB images > HD via CF slot = 5 secs
100MB images > HD via USB adaptor (card reader USB slot) = 5 secs
100MB images > HD via USB adaptor (PC USB slot) = 6.5 secs

Absolutely no competition. It is possible that the driver problem had something to do with the devastatingly slow transfer speeds, but it has never been fast from day 1 and this only backs up reviews from elsewhere.

At this point, all USB issues seems sorted (Akasa installed automatically first go) and no shutdowns.

Conclusion: get a decent card reader without buggy drivers and terrible internal engineering.

[MikeyC]

Update
======
Still getting lots of sudden freezes in Win7.

Specifically, when using the machine, the monitor would suddenly go black. The power LED was still lit on the case and there was lots of 'fan' (or hard disk?) noise, but the system was totally unresponsive and needed a hard reboot.

Win7 event viewer only showing 'unplanned shut down' - not helpful.

Action centre > maintenance > reliability history reported "Video hardware error"

Video card is Nvidia GTX 460 - I made sure drivers were up to date, problem still exists.

Downloaded Furmark (http://www.ozone3d.net/benchmarks/fur/) GPU stress tester to stress the test the video card to reveal errors.

The PC quit as soon as I started to use it, indicating a fault on the video card.

Called Aria (talked to Lars - very helpful) and described the problem - he agreed that it looked like a video card problem but suggested stressing the whole machine.

Downloaded LinX (http://www.youwatched.com/datajay/linx-setup.exe) CPU stress tester - no problems found.

Used Win 7 'Windows Memory Diagnostic' tool - no problems found.

Ran Furmark again, temperature climbed to 68 degrees and machine cut out.

Re-ran Furmark three time, same result.

Decided it must be the video card.

Removed video card, noticed it was a little dusty so gave it a good blow and clean and re-seated it.

Re-ran Furmark - temperature climbed to 71 degrees - and the machine remained on.

Left Furmark running for 10 minutes- machine still running steadily.

Conclusion
========
If you are asking 'Why is Windows 7 cutting out for no reason?' or 'Why is Windows 7 freezing?' then check your Action Centre > maintenance > reliability history logs.

If there is anything to do with 'Video Hardware Error', then try running Furmark (http://www.ozone3d.net/benchmarks/fur/). If your freeze happens during the graphics stress test, then try cleaning and re-seating your card, or use a substitute from an old machine to see if that cures the problem (which would have been my next move).