Memory Card Readers - USB 2 vs 3

[Kayaker72]

So, like I am sure many of you, I watch the occasional YouTube video. I saw this one go by on Fstoppers earlier this week:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlWhvc-UCOA

This got me thinking about my card reader as I often find the transfer of my memory cards to be slow, but, ultimately, it isn't that big of a deal due to the low volume of data I need to transfer.

But, it struck me that on the exact same memory card reader (Transcend RDF8) that I use they seemed to be getting better transfer rates than I experience. So, I just ran my own test, and I was transferring at about 30 MB/sec from the card to my computer's SSD drive. Much slower than what they observed.

So, I started looking at my set up. Conclusion, I am a bit of an idiot, my USB 3.0 memory card reader I have had for years was plugged into a USB 2.0 port on the back of my computer.

I just switched it to a USB 3.0 port (I only have two, and no USB 3.1 as my motherboard is from 2011) and I am now seeing 130 MB/sec read off my CF card to my SSD drive. I then tested reading from my CF card in the Transcend reader to my HD drive, and it ranged from 60 to 110 MB/sec.

So, it is interesting that Fstoppers found that the higher end card reader did help with transfer speeds. But, for those of us working with slightly older set ups, just making sure it is connected correctly is the big first step.

All this was with a Sandisk Extreme Pro UDMA 7 160 MB/sec CF card.