Copying files from SD to CF is very slow

[jrobbo]

Hi all,

I spend the last hour searching the forum to see if this had been answered before (and i'm sure that it has), but I didn't turn anything up.

I bought my Axim X51v a few months back, and I bought a seagate 8GB microdrive as well. One of the reasons for this combo is that I planned to backup the photos taken with my digital camera while on holidays to the 8GB microdrive. I use a Ridata 1GB SD card in my camera.

I went on holidays to China last month, and it all worked very well, except that transfering files from the SD card to the microdrive is very very slow. It takes about 1 min to transfer each photo, which are about 1.5Mb per photo. Given that I can take about 600 photos on a single card, it takes about 10 hours to transfer!!!

I know that the card and microdrive are a lot faster than that, because if I put both cards into the card reader on my PC and copy them there, it takes less than half an hour.

Are there any cache settings on the axim that I can tweak to speed this up, or is the problem just inherent in the design of the axim.

It's not a major problem, I can just leave it running overnight to do the copy, but if I can speed it up a little, even better!

Many thanks for any help

Regards

John

Not that I am aware of. You will always be better off tranferring through a card reader. JMHO

[jrobbo]

Yeah, I figured that would be the case, I was hoping that there would be be an easy fix for this as I don't want to take my laptop on holidays with me. Oh well, I guess I can just leave it running overnight.

Thanks heaps for your help

Regards

John

[kalahari]

it is faster if you turn off power save mode and put the unit on fastest setting. Still too slow though. I missed a sunset shot because of this.

Also, you can not take a labtop with u in your pocket. ;)

Ahhh... that's the exact reason why I just ordered my 8gb microdrive. Seems like I have to think of doing it in some other way. Really don't wanna be bringing my laptop around.

yeah i have a similar setup & it takes FOREVER...SD to CF is a nono :(

[jnev]

hmm, that's wierd. I do the same thing and it takes MUCH less time. sure it's slower than it would be on a computer, but it only takes maybe an hour or two for me to transfer 1gb. I didn't change any settings, either.

Alright, I just did some tests. I copied a 9.63MB file from my CF card to my SD card and the other way round.

Copying from CF to SD took only 15.45seconds and from SD to CF took 24.41seconds. It's not that slow at all for me after all..

[bee5]

I tested it for you with my configurations below.

Test (1)
1. SD Card Slot : 2G 155X speed
2. CF Card Slot : Use "EagleTec CF to SD adaptor" inserted with 1G Toshiba Fast SD Card

Transfer 5 photos from "SD Card Slot with SD Card" to "CF Card Slot with SD Card" and each around 3M. The total times is only 30sec (half minute) to transfer total 15M data, and about only 5~7sec to transfer 1 image file.


Test (2)
1. SD Card Slot : 2G 155X speed
2. CF Card Slot : SanDisk CF Type I ... a very old card with only 10M space, it seems to be the first generation product.

Transfer 3 photos from "SD Card Slot with SD Card" to "CF Card Slot with CF Type I Card" and each around 3M. The total times is about 1.5 minute to transfer total 9M data, and about only 25~30sec to transfer 1 image file.

Time count from pressing the "Paste" function key to the end of copy.

So, your problem may be on your 8GB microdrive's writing speed is too slow, or it is not quite compatible with the program's reading and writing setting inside x51V.

[JakeRich]

Just a thought. Are you copying the files using ONLY the Axim, or are you using Activesync to transfer the files? If the latter, then you are, in fact transferring the files over the slow USB link twice, once up to the PC and then down again to the destination card. Slow as mud.

If you are transferring directly using only the Ax, then something else is wrong, perhaps incompatiblity as bee5 mentions.