Sandisk Ultra CF in Fusion

[Marc Wielage]

Presumably CF cards are rated by write speed, not read speed. Regardless, it is not worth the extra $50 to buy the 266X Kingston card vs. the 133X model.

Hey, I owe you a lunch for saving me $100! Thanks for doing the testing on this, Paul.

I did discover on my own last year that transferring CF cards data via Firewire 400 is a heckuva lot faster than doing it by USB. Good to know that the 266X cards won't make much of a difference, and the 133X cards are OK for the Deva. Gotta stock up on some more!

--Marc W.

[Paul Graff]

Well, I have never Twittered, but I will adopt the @ convention to respond.

@Jeff--When I modified the last time to add the P.S. the [bracketed] stuff finally disappeared, but I didn't dare mess with it again lest it return!

@Philip--I agree that is exactly how it works on the vast majority of jobs. I do have a semi-regular job where we travel a few days at a time and the cameras shoot on tape, so no data wrangler on that one. The client is from New York and always brings a rugged drive for the audio.

@Whitney--The SASE is a simple and brilliant solution I will definitely adopt. I'm serious; it's elegant, professional, effortless for them, gets you off the clock.

@Marc--One caveat is I suppose there could be variation between different cards of the same model. A friend has my other 266X Kingston right now. Web reviews from the DSLR users seem to back me up, however. They rave about the 133X Kingston being faster than rated, while they don't see much faster write or read times with the 266X version.

Paul

[studiomprd]

" They rave about the 133X Kingston being faster than rated, while they don't see much faster write or read times with the 266X version. "

of course there could be other factors (in the equipment it is used in or with) that could be the limiting factors...

[johnpaul215]

Hey, I owe you a lunch for saving me $100! Thanks for doing the testing on this, Paul.

I did discover on my own last year that transferring CF cards data via Firewire 400 is a heckuva lot faster than doing it by USB. Good to know that the 266X cards won't make much of a difference, and the 133X cards are OK for the Deva. Gotta stock up on some more!

--Marc W.

Getting a FW CF reader saved my sanity. I ordered a FW800 model off Amazon (i think?). My current laptop is only FW400, but I daisy chain the CF reader ------ LaCie Rugged ------- MacBook. I copy from the card to my LaCie drive. If I am burning a DVD, I burn data from the LaCie drive.

If I remember right, this is the most efficient way to get data from the CF to the external drive. If one drive was USB, it would "go through" the computer as opposed to the computer "overseeing" the data transfer. I might have this a bit mixed up, but I remember this being one way that Firewire really outdoes USB. When I last read in to this, I was not moving data like this, so it was just curiosity and not "get me wrapped asap" info. I don't think my 133x cards ever take more than 8 minutes to transfer in a typical day of shooting. That's with my FW400 laptop that's a few years old (possibly the bottleneck?).

Look at a seasoned downloader for RED shoots.... I've noticed they ALL use firewire CF readers. I think that will make a universal difference in your download speeds regardless of you using 133x or 300x cards.

[RobertKennedy]

Hello,

Thought I'd put in my 2 cents.

I suggest Sandisk Ultra cards (aka. UDMA).  I own 5 of these (16GB each) and have had 0 problesm with the Fusion.  Though I cannot verify it myself, wear-leveling enhancements supposedly  prevent wearing out a card prematurely due to repeated writing to a  limited number of very important sectors.

NOTE: These cards require a UDMA compatible card reader (like the CURRENT one made by Sandisk) or you risk corrupting the card when downloading. 

I also trust Transcend INDUSTRIAL.  I used to have more faith in regular Transcend but lately I suggest that those using regular Transcend cards as a primary MARF drive might do well to consider demoting them to Mirror drive cards only.  If you are using regular Transcend cards and have had no problems, I wish you continued success.

That being said, I believe in the importance of backups because it is possible to lose an  entire drive (hard drive or CF otr otherwise) with a simple electric or magnetic or physical issue.  I do my best to record a usable mix track (at least) to two different places in the unfortunate event the primary data is compromised.  That's a subject that has been covered in other threads however.

-Robert

[Zack]

I used to have more faith in regular Transcend but lately I suggest that those using regular Transcend cards as a primary MARF drive might do well to consider demoting them to Mirror drive cards only.

Exactly what I experienced with my Transcend 32gb 400x card.

[gabi]

I asked Zaxcom for a CF recommendation for the Fusion and this was their reply:

"Use slow sandisk or transend cards. 32 gig maximum.

Glenn"

I wonder if their recorders support this UDMA technology and if it makes any difference to adopt these UDMA faster cards.

Gabi Cunha