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I'm looking for a good CF reader, but it's not easy to find readers specs on online stores, so I don't know what I can buy.

Are there any benchmarks online?

Now I have an external Skintek CF reader that goes to 2~4MB/sec max and a SanDisk card of 30MB/sec speed. I'm sure the card will never reach 30MB/sec but now is very slow, and I think it's a CF reader problem.

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Shopping advice is Off Topic on Super User. Why it is so. – Nifle Mar 5 '11 at 15:49
I'm just asking which are the fastest CF card readers. If area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/4239/computer-hardware will start I'll post these questions here. – Vittorio Mar 7 '11 at 16:45
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The reader is not likely to be your limiting factor, which is probably why their speed does not get mentioned in reviews.

Most readers will shuffle data around as fast as the fastest CF card can read/write, so the main bottleneck is the speed of the cards.

If you find a fast card then your limiting factor is likely to become the interface you are using to connect it to the machine (the speed supported by USB in the case of a USB based reader for instance).

If the card is slower than USB, the card is the bottleneck not the reader. If the card is faster than USB and you are using a USB reader then the bottleneck will be the bus, not the reader. If you are connecting via a faster interface (a reader that makes the drive appear to be a SATA device, like this, for instance) then once again the speed of the card if far more likely to be the limiting factor, not any limitation of the reader.

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Now I have an external Skintek CF reader that goes to 2~4MB/sec max and a SanDisk Card of 30MB/sec speed, I'm sure the card will never reach 30MB/sec but now is very slow, and I think it's a CF reader problem – Vittorio Mar 5 '11 at 13:24
If that is a USB reader I would suspect either a fault in the device or its design, or that the card is being that slow. If you are connecting it to your machine with a passive IDE adaptor then check to see if your OS is accessing it in PIO mode rather than using DMA (this would be pretty slow). Do you have access to any other readers with which you can test the card to rule out it being the bottle-neck? – David Spillett Mar 7 '11 at 1:17
@Vittorio, are you connecting the reader to a USB1.0/1.1 port? – Synetech Dec 8 '11 at 4:49
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