Slow card reading

I bought a refurb 7D and then ordered a couple Transcend 32 GB Compact Flash Card 400X (Blue) from Amazon. I upgraded from the 10D and 40D bodies. I use an ancient SanDisk USB2 SRRD-77 reader.
I format the cards each time I put them back in the camera.
The camera writes to the CF card very well. Importing the files into Lightroom 4 takes forever. To download 5 video clips of 2 minutes each took 3 hours. Downloading 24 jpeg stills took considerable time last night.

Any ideas where the weak point is? The card, the reader, LR4, the format process?
Thanks

3 hours? that's ridiculous. I'd suspect errors in the read process, if you've got new cards i'd suspect the reader.

I'd try copying the files to the hard drive first. See how long that takes. That'll isolate the reader/computer communication.

Then import to LR (straight from the hard drive) and see how that goes.

How strong is your computer? Video is known to be a resource hog.

Can you plug a USB cable into the 7D and bypass the reader altogether?

I don't see why not.

Heck, you might configure to shoot tethered, and see how that works.

As an experiment.

MrEWorm wrote in post #15348783
Can you plug a USB cable into the 7D and bypass the reader altogether?

That would be my suggestion as well, at least as a test.

It sounds like your card reader may be using an old USB 1.0 standard, or the port in the computer.

MrEWorm wrote in post #15348328
I use an ancient SanDisk USB2 SRRD-77 reader.
Any ideas where the weak point is? The card, the reader, LR4, the format process?
Thanks

Could the ancient card reader be a USB version 1.0? I can't find any info on SRRD-77.

Even at USB 1.0 speeds, you could transfer 5.4 GB per hour. A few 2 minute video clips is probably closer to 1-2GB, so we are talking closer to 30 minutes tops if it was bus limited.

EDIT: actual worst cast negotiation speed for USB 1.0 speeds is 1.5Mbit, which is 0.18MB per second. That's only 675 MB per hour. That could be it. I've just never seen even the oldest card reader not run at least full speed USB 1.1, which is the figures above, 5.4GB/hr.

An update. Itried importing photos and video direct from the camera to the puter. The files zipped in. It looks like the culprit ios my card reader. Time for a new one.