Customer Reviews

Sandisk Extreme USB 2.0 3in1 Card Reader (SDDRX3-3IN1-901, US Retail Package)

5 star:		(75)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I needed a faster reader to get large amounts of large pictures off large compactflash (CF) cards that I use in my camera (a Canon 30D that I have set to save both the RAW and JPG Files for each shot I take).

One afternoon last week, I took 137 shots (so 274 files) that took up 1.34GB on my CF card. When I read them into my computer using other readers, it took 26 minutes one time, and 31 minutes a second time (I was testing the speed, it's not that I really needed to do that 2 times). One of those was a reader that is built into my Canon photo printer, a USB 2.0 printer, but at about 30 minutes for the copy task, that was just not good. I bought the Sandisk Extreme USB 2.0 Reader from Amazon, and plugged it into one of my PC's USB 2.0 ports, and the copy task only took 2 minutes for the same files! Now, the CF card that I am using is a high-speed, high-end card, a Sandisk Extreme III 2GB compactflash card, and the timings were not done with a stop watch, so your results may vary, but this was really good for me. In the event that it is important, the PC used for the test is a DELL Pentium 4 3Ghz 1GB RAM machine and the target disk-drive is a Seagate 120GB SATA 7200RPM drive.

The reader is shiny black with a nice rubber base, 2 1/2 inches square, 3/4 inch thick. It came with the USB 2.0 cable, and also with a Sandisk Rescue Pro program on a mini-CD (a full working copy with a license key, not a limited demo version). I got that same program when I bought my Sandisk Extreme III 2GB CF cards, and I have used it once; it worked wonders to recover files from a CF card that had been corrupted and not readable otherwise (that situation was with a different CF card and a different camera; I've never had a problem with my Canon 30D camera or with the Sandisk Extreme III CF cards).

The reader and cable and mini-CD came in a re-sealable clear plastic bubble case. Many of you will just throw that out, but I plan to keep my reader and cable in there to protect it from harm and the clutter on my desk and in my camera or laptop bags.

Note, this reader also has a slot for a Secure Digital (SD) card. Here's my test results with a SD card: The memory card was a Sandisk 512MB SD card (nothing special). It had 195 JPG files on it, each about 1M in size (from a 3MB Nikon point and shoot camera), for a total of 213MB. My other card reader (the same one from the discussion above) took over 5 minutes to read this all onto my PC. The Sandisk Extreme USB 2.0 Reader, plugged into a USB 2.0 port (same as above), took only 6 seconds!

We bought this disk reader to use with our regular SanDisk cards. It downloads photos from the cards to the computer in seconds. That is, it's very fast on our WindowsXP computer. But on our older laptop with Win2000, the downloads are quite a bit slower. Still works with the older computer, though. The reader installs easily into a USB port and takes several different sizes of cards (SD/MMC, MSProDuo, CF I/II). It comes with a small format CD of RescuePro software and no instructions, but a 2 year warranty. We have used the reader several times a week for about 2 months and have had no problems with it.

The reader works fine. However, for some strange reason you MUST use the supplied USB cable. Other cables won't work.

This is a good buy. It's plenty fast enough when you plug it into a USB 2.0 slot. A lot of people don't plug it into an actual USB 2.0 slot and will then just get normal slower USB transfer speeds. But when using USB 2.0, it's very fast, about as fast as firewire actually.

And this card reader is better than the Firewire model because it also includes a slot for SD, MMC and Memory Stick Pro Duo in addition to CF cards. The Firewire model only has a CF slot. Also, the chances of other computers that you might want to transfer your images onto of having USB are much greater than with Firewire.

Lastly, this card reader is a lot cheaper than the Firewire model.

This card reader is very fast - especially with Sandisk cards. I tried using this reader with a USB cable I already had on my computer (for my iAudio U2) and the drive would suddenly not be recognized in the middle of transferring photos, causing the photo it was currently transferring to be corrupted with no way to restore it.

After a couple times of that, I started copying instead of moving the files to my drive, and then decided to plug in the provided cable - problem solved.

If you buy this card reader, you'll want to use the supplied cable, or at least test the reader with your preexisting cable, to ensure you don't lose value data in the transfer process.

This is definitely a USB 2.0 HIGH SPEED reader. I got 17.1 MB/s and the package up "up to 18 MB/s". I was using a Sandisk Extreme III 2GB Compact Flash card. That means you can move 1 GB of data in about 60s. The speed difference between this reader and my USB 2.0 full speed reader is like night and day.

A word of caution: USB 2.0 is not necessarily faster that USB 1.x. What you want is USB 2.0 "High Speed", with the high speed being 480 Mbit/s data rate. A device can be USB 2.0 compliant and not be high speed, which is typically the old 12 Mbit/s rate. Many people get confused on this point and think USB 2.0 means the device is faster, but this is not necessarily the case.

Rest assured, this Sandisk Extreme Reader is a USB 2.0 high-speed device. If take a lot of pictures and fill up card above the 1 GB level, this beauty will save you lots of time. I am totally satisfied and would highly reccommend this card reader to friends.

Not much to say, but this is definitely a very nice CompactFlash and SD reader (I don't use any variant of Memory Stick). The speed is blazing, with RAW and JPG files blitzing along almost instantly, and unlike so many other models out there, it isn't from some unknown manufacturer and it doesn't try to read a gazillion formats (who the heck uses Smart Media anymore anyway?). Really, if Sandisk made a slow reader, they'd lose a heck of a lot of business selling flash, so they're bound to do a better job than some fly by night outfit you've never heard of, and I value my pictures way too much to ruin them on a cheap $10 reader when a $20 reader is so much better.

Works as advertised, super-fast copying compared to the Sandisk MobileMate reader I had for my high-speed SD cards (from ATP), and much faster than connecting my Canon digital Rebel directly to my computer. Looks good, though the rubber pad on the bottom seems to be drying out and losing its grip.

I just filled a 4GB CF card this past Saturday at my parents' anniversary party. As luck would have it, my card reader arrived that same day.

To test the speed, I transfered the files a total of four times:

- Camera to desktop via camera's USB 2.0 cable
- Camera to laptop via camera's USB 2.0 cable
- CF in this cardreader to desktop
- CF in this cardreader to laptop

The camera used is a Canon EOS 40D. Memory card is a 4GB Sandisk Extreme III CompactFlash. In each of the four tests, I transfered the files using Canon's ZoomBrowser EX transfer tool (included with the 40D).

Results:
Average transfer time via the 40D's USB 2.0 cable was 8:48.
Average transfer time via the cardreader was 4:36.

That's nearly twice as fast as the camera's USB 2.0 interface. That could quickly add up if you shoot a lot.

Other than that, I'm pleased with the appearance, size and feel of the reader. The cord detaches so it will fit in my camera bag easily, or it looks good just sitting on my desk. There's a small blue LED that indicates when a card is inserted.

EDIT:
The reader has spent the vast majority of the last 7 months loose in the top compartment of my camera bag along with some filter cases, remote shutter release, and other various extras. I'm surprised to see that it isn't really scratched up. It still works great.

I shoot raw, and it would not be unusual to have to transfer 2 GB of data. my generic usb reader with a highspeed 100x compact flash, would transfer at 2.9mb/sec. This does at 11. For 2gb of information, its the difference between 11.5 minutes vs 3 minutes. Well worth it to me.