SD card, HC type, problem.

[Terry Pinnell]

I have a 4 GB 'SDHC' SD card which I bought impulsively (cheap, high
capacity) some months ago. I could not get it to work in the Belkin
Card Reader on my old XP SP1 PC, which I assumed was because that PC
didn't have USB 2.0. So I bought a little USB adapter and that allowed
me to read and write to it, albeit very slowly.

I've finally upgraded my PC (to a MESH Xtreme GTS, Quad Core, 2.66
GHz) and expected to have no issues with reading this SD card with its
built-in multi-card reader. But to my surprise that doesn't work
either. Get either nothing (just hangs) or a message about I/O error.
So I still have to go via the USB adapter. And even that still seems
excruciatingly slow.

I have only the one HC card and so cannot make any comparative tests.
Is this a common problem please?

 

[Joel]

I have a 4 GB 'SDHC' SD card which I bought impulsively (cheap, high
capacity) some months ago. I could not get it to work in the Belkin
Card Reader on my old XP SP1 PC, which I assumed was because that PC
didn't have USB 2.0. So I bought a little USB adapter and that allowed
me to read and write to it, albeit very slowly.

I've finally upgraded my PC (to a MESH Xtreme GTS, Quad Core, 2.66
GHz) and expected to have no issues with reading this SD card with its
built-in multi-card reader. But to my surprise that doesn't work
either. Get either nothing (just hangs) or a message about I/O error.
So I still have to go via the USB adapter. And even that still seems
excruciatingly slow.

I have only the one HC card and so cannot make any comparative tests.
Is this a common problem please?

I guess the problem is SD (limit to 2GB max) and SDHC (it's up to 8GB at
the moment I believe as I have 8GB SDHC) they look alike and work similar to
each other *but* they are not 100% identical.

So, in order to use the SDHC whatever device you want to use must have
SDHC supported (most electronics devices like camera, GPS etc. can be
upgraded by Firmware), and if you want to read the SDHC memory card then you
have to make sure that the reader supports *both* SD & SDHC. I believe SDHC
is backward compatible, but SD can't read SDHC

 

[Paul]

I have a 4 GB 'SDHC' SD card which I bought impulsively (cheap, high
capacity) some months ago. I could not get it to work in the Belkin
Card Reader on my old XP SP1 PC, which I assumed was because that PC
didn't have USB 2.0. So I bought a little USB adapter and that allowed
me to read and write to it, albeit very slowly.

I've finally upgraded my PC (to a MESH Xtreme GTS, Quad Core, 2.66
GHz) and expected to have no issues with reading this SD card with its
built-in multi-card reader. But to my surprise that doesn't work
either. Get either nothing (just hangs) or a message about I/O error.
So I still have to go via the USB adapter. And even that still seems
excruciatingly slow.

I have only the one HC card and so cannot make any comparative tests.
Is this a common problem please?

There is an article here on SDHC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_digital#SDHC

With your working USB device, you can use something like UVCView to
look at the characteristics of the device. Where it shows up in the
UVCView window, tells you whether it is running at USB 1.1 or USB 2.0
rates. You can also interpret the info in the right hand side of the
window, and determine the operating speed there.

http://web.archive.org/web/20060509...f-a31d-436b-9281-92cdfeae4b45/UVCView.x86.exe

The UVCView window looks similar to this.

http://www.die.de/blog/content/binary/usbview.png

There are some benchmarks here. Access time is slightly below 1 millisecond,
and part of that is due to USB. The SSD tested in the article, reaches
0.1 milliseconds, by comparison. You could carry out a similar test,
using HDTune (hdtune.com), and look at the transfer rate curve. (Hard
drives are curved, while flash should have a constant transfer rate versus
position in the device.)

"SDHC Cards vs Hard Drive vs SSD - Feb.17,2008"
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4258

Paul

 

[Terry Pinnell]

The card reader has to support SDHC, and yours apparently
does not. As you saw, USB1 vs 2 doesn't matter except for
the obvious - the difference in transfer speed.

Similarly many old gear that uses SD cards won't use SDHC,
and there was an overlap where some devices might support
4GB SD but not 4GB SDHC cards (like my old MP3 player and
some cameras, though often they don't mention having 4GB
support at all but some owners have randomly tried and found
that IF the device can support FAT32 instead of just FAT16
due to inherant filesystem capacity issue of a 2GB limit to
FAT16, then they can use full capacity of a 4GB SD card.

Thanks all, very helpful. Looks like I'll have to

a) Continue using the adapter (which is just that little bit too large
to fit alongside another socket in use!)

b) Reconcile myself to slowness; at least, until I can get hold of
another faster SDHC card.

 

[Terry Pinnell]

There is an article here on SDHC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_digital#SDHC

With your working USB device, you can use something like UVCView to
look at the characteristics of the device. Where it shows up in the
UVCView window, tells you whether it is running at USB 1.1 or USB 2.0
rates. You can also interpret the info in the right hand side of the
window, and determine the operating speed there.

http://web.archive.org/web/20060509...f-a31d-436b-9281-92cdfeae4b45/UVCView.x86.exe

The UVCView window looks similar to this.

http://www.die.de/blog/content/binary/usbview.png

Many thanks, duly downloaded. Initially rather daunting as I'm having
trouble mapping the many entries to my physical USB sockets. But I'll
persevere. Does every entry correspond to a real socket?

There are some benchmarks here. Access time is slightly below 1 millisecond,
and part of that is due to USB. The SSD tested in the article, reaches
0.1 milliseconds, by comparison. You could carry out a similar test,
using HDTune (hdtune.com), and look at the transfer rate curve. (Hard
drives are curved, while flash should have a constant transfer rate versus
position in the device.)

"SDHC Cards vs Hard Drive vs SSD - Feb.17,2008"
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4258

Interesting, I'll study that. Rather like that $3,400 SD card!

As you may have seen, it now looks as if my multi-format card reader
is broken ;-(

 

[Terry Pinnell]

It now looks as if the multi-format reader itself is faulty.
This morning I can't get either the CF reader or SD reader to read
standard cards ;-(

So it seems I'll have the hassle of getting through to MESH Support
tomorrow.

 

[Joel]

It now looks as if the multi-format reader itself is faulty.
This morning I can't get either the CF reader or SD reader to read
standard cards ;-(

So it seems I'll have the hassle of getting through to MESH Support
tomorrow.

I would suggest not to bother brothering MESH support cuz you may not get
any better answer than some members here already gave you. And the answer
is to get the newer card reader with SDHC supported and that's all the MESH
suport you need.

 

[Terry Pinnell]

I would suggest not to bother brothering MESH support cuz you may not get
any better answer than some members here already gave you. And the answer
is to get the newer card reader with SDHC supported and that's all the MESH
suport you need.

I'm sure you're right about that. I'll take a look in ebay and Amazon
(UK) today.

But in any case there's been yet another development: when I tried my
(standard) CF and SD cards this morning, they both got read OK! I then
removed the SD and tried the SDHC. That just hung, as before. I then
tried the SD again - and that now failed.

So my conclusion is that somehow, when attempting to read the SDHC,
the reader or whatever is getting screwed up, To the extent that it
then cannot read a normal SD card. What I can't understand is what
then allows it to 'recover'. I haven't rebooted overnight, so that
can't explain it. But I'll try rebooting again after sending this, and
make 100% sure that the first card I try on restarting is a standard,
not SDHC.

 

[Joel]

I'm sure you're right about that. I'll take a look in ebay and Amazon
(UK) today.

But in any case there's been yet another development: when I tried my
(standard) CF and SD cards this morning, they both got read OK! I then
removed the SD and tried the SDHC. That just hung, as before. I then
tried the SD again - and that now failed.

So my conclusion is that somehow, when attempting to read the SDHC,
the reader or whatever is getting screwed up, To the extent that it
then cannot read a normal SD card. What I can't understand is what
then allows it to 'recover'. I haven't rebooted overnight, so that
can't explain it. But I'll try rebooting again after sending this, and
make 100% sure that the first card I try on restarting is a standard,
not SDHC.

You must be a luckiest user to have the USB issue the first time, when
most of us usually have some connection issue at least several times before.
IOW, USB, mouse, tablet, keyboard, hard drive etc. have to have driver and
connection, and sometime the driver get conflicted with other TSR and cause
many waco thing. And quite often, reboot or depending on the OS sometime
you just unplug and replug may reset the problem.

And YES some device or sometime it may need to reboot to solve the
hardware problem.

 

[Terry Pinnell]

I'm sure you're right about that. I'll take a look in ebay and Amazon
(UK) today.

But in any case there's been yet another development: when I tried my
(standard) CF and SD cards this morning, they both got read OK! I then
removed the SD and tried the SDHC. That just hung, as before. I then
tried the SD again - and that now failed.

So my conclusion is that somehow, when attempting to read the SDHC,
the reader or whatever is getting screwed up, To the extent that it
then cannot read a normal SD card. What I can't understand is what
then allows it to 'recover'. I haven't rebooted overnight, so that
can't explain it. But I'll try rebooting again after sending this, and
make 100% sure that the first card I try on restarting is a standard,
not SDHC.

I decided to try closing Explorer first, via XP TM, and that recovered
access to my SD and CF readers. So, to wrap this up, my conclusions
(focusing just on my new PC) are:

1) The MF card reader doesn't support SDHC.

2) Attempts to read an SDHC card in the MF card reader screws up XP
Pro Explorer on this PC, so that even standard SD and CF cards cannot
be read.

3) That can be corrected by closing Explorer, which automatically
re-opens, after which normality is restored. (Thereafter I obviously
avoid trying to read the SDHC!)

4) The USB Adapter (from www.nextdaymemory.co.uk 6 months ago) allows
me to read the cheap, unbranded 4 GB SDHC card via any USB port.

5) The Belkin SD & CF Card Reader I used to use on my old PC must be a
USB 1.0 type, as tests show that reading/writing a standard SD and CF
cards with my MF Card Reader is much faster than using the Belkin.

 

[Joel]

I decided to try closing Explorer first, via XP TM, and that recovered
access to my SD and CF readers. So, to wrap this up, my conclusions
(focusing just on my new PC) are:

1) The MF card reader doesn't support SDHC.

2) Attempts to read an SDHC card in the MF card reader screws up XP
Pro Explorer on this PC, so that even standard SD and CF cards cannot
be read.

3) That can be corrected by closing Explorer, which automatically
re-opens, after which normality is restored. (Thereafter I obviously
avoid trying to read the SDHC!)

How about just unplug the card reader or USB Hub (if you use one) and it
should reset the whole connection (with WinXP at least and I don't know
about Win98 or similar)

4) The USB Adapter (from www.nextdaymemory.co.uk 6 months ago) allows
me to read the cheap, unbranded 4 GB SDHC card via any USB port.

5) The Belkin SD & CF Card Reader I used to use on my old PC must be a
USB 1.0 type, as tests show that reading/writing a standard SD and CF
cards with my MF Card Reader is much faster than using the Belkin.

USB 1.0 usually have nothing to do with SD vs SDHC except that it's an
older generation of USB so there is a big chance that it doesn't have SDHC
supported cuz SDHC is a very new format which it's only few years young
(probably around more/less 2-3 years or so?).

 

[Yoma]

I have a 4 GB 'SDHC' SD card which I bought impulsively (cheap, high
capacity) some months ago. I could not get it to work in the Belkin
Card Reader on my old XP SP1 PC, which I assumed was because that PC
didn't have USB 2.0. So I bought a little USB adapter and that allowed
me to read and write to it, albeit very slowly.

I've finally upgraded my PC (to a MESH Xtreme GTS, Quad Core, 2.66
GHz) and expected to have no issues with reading this SD card with its
built-in multi-card reader. But to my surprise that doesn't work
either. Get either nothing (just hangs) or a message about I/O error.
So I still have to go via the USB adapter. And even that still seems
excruciatingly slow.

I have only the one HC card and so cannot make any comparative tests.
Is this a common problem please?

however rare, it is possible that your card is faulty from the
manufacturer. I would contact them and state your problem (if you havent
already) and see if the will stand behind their product (granted it
within a reasonable time from purchase).

Goodluck,

www.bytemecomputers.net