SDHC Rant...

OK, someone may have already done this, but I have just stumbled into the dangerous world of SD...

So we went out and bought a Powershot TX1, it takes SD, which includes the high capacity SDHC cards. All our previous cameras use CF cards.

So when I ordered two 4GB SDHC I thought all would be OK, did my background, got the facts on the speed classes, and the fact that their are non SDHC 4GB cards that are to be avoided.

So when the card arrived, chucked it into the camera and away we go, over 2000 jpg shooting capacity sweet

However it was when I popped it into my multi card reader that something dawned on me, perhaps SDHC is quite different and might not work?

Sure enough card reader doesn't know what to do and just errors, fine the one month old Dell 24" Monitor I have has a multi reader in the side, we don't use it as it is a tight squeeze on our desk, guess what, also doesn't work! Then I had a really scary thought, it probably doesn't work in our portable hard disk (Vosonic XSDrive 3320), which we take away with us, yep card read error.

Well that really sucks. Been playing the CF game since 4MB cards, now using 4GB, my original card reader does them all (albeit a bit slowly).

Yes it is easy to get another reader (already have one on order), and I can plug the camera directly into the PC, but I am stuck with the XS drive, but why would we ever need to download when we have 4000 jpg capacity - one word movies. One of the main reasons we got a TX1 was its movie capability.

So my solution for now, we are going to get some 2GB 'holiday' cards that work in the XS Drive, so when the HC's are full park them and use the 2GBs

Unless there is a converter out there?

Rant ends.

Unfortunately that's one of the perils of SDHC, and was partly why I wrote the warning thread here. Devices designed for SD don't work with SDHC (though SDHC devices are, to my understanding, required to be backwards compatible with SD cards).


There are some nice surprises - such as people finding that the S3 IS seems to work just fine with SDHC cards (much as it's not promoted by Canon and it doesn't carry SDHC logos). On the whole, though, there's a lot of kit - even kit that you can buy new today such as your Dell monitor - that doesn't support SDHC. Unless a device specifically claims SDHC support, it's best to assume it won't work.

At the moment, I have nothing that supports SDHC - and will avoid SDHC cards for as long as is reasonable. Neither of my iPAQs supports SDHC, I can't think my digital photo frame supports SDHC, and none of my current crop of card readers do. My memory cards are split between CompactFlash for the DSLR, SD for just about everything else, and a few SmartFlash cards lying around with an ancient Fuji digital camera which is only used as a camera to leave in my bag if someone else has our family Ixus 700.

Meanwhile, I'm attempting to avoid devices with SD slots that don't support SDHC from now on. I need a portable SD reader, and the best solution I can come up with is the Kingston DataTraveler Reader, which is an inexpensive device that's a USB memory stick and an SDHC reader all in one.


Personally, I'd stick with 2GB SD cards unless you're using the movie capabilities of your camera, which chew through memory like it's going out of fashion. As for the XSDrive, you may be able to find a CompactFlash SDHC reader. CompactFlash SD readers exist, though I'm not sure whether anyone has made an SDHC compatible version.


The worst thing is that it's going to happen again with SD. The current SDHC spec only goes up to 32GB - which could be reached sooner than you think. 16GB CompactFlash cards are readily available now if you're prepared to pay, and the drive for ever larger flash memory in increasingly small devices will probably mean 32GB SDHC cards are a reality within 18-24 months.

CompactFlash is a big form factor by today's standards; you can't get away from it. However, it's architecturally very clean - to my knowledge, there's no size cut-off in the foreseeable future, and the only reason that older gear can't use cards larger than 2GB is due to lack of FAT32 support. It's not a hardware limitation where the newer larger capacity cards require a different controller setup as with SDHC.

Indeed, whilst in current high end cameras SD(HC) tends to be a bit faster than CompactFlash, if the camera manufacturers supported the high speed UDMA modes that the likes of the Sandisk Extreme IV Firewire CompactFlash reader does, CompactFlash would leap way ahead of SDHC in transfer speed as well.

David

Hmmm, I wonder why these guys cannot get their architecture right and always seem to fall into the "you will never need more than 640K of memory", SmartMemory and the original memory stick both hit the limit at 128MB, I hear SD was supposed to be 1GB but they managed to squeeze 2GB out of it. As you said CF doesn't seem to have an issue, I think it may have some file system issues around 137GB when we get there, but perhaps cameras will support another file system by then (FAT64 anyone?).

Anyway for now it looks like we will be going out and getting some 2GB's. I am have a last ditch attempt to find a CF-SDHC adaptor, but so far can only find CF-SD...

137GB is the cut-off at which 48 bit LBA is needed - there aren't enough bits in 32 bit addressing to address storage in such a large partition.

SD was, indeed, originally intended to have a cut off at 1GB, until they found a way to extend the standard to encompass 2GB cards.


If you do find a CompactFlash SDHC adapter, I expect others will be interested. I may be interested if I eventually go for a Nexto CF OTG.

David

I have the eagletec SD-CF adaptor and I'm pretty sure my 4gb SD is a SDHC.
I'll double check it tonight for you.

Ok just had a look and it says SDHC on my 4gb SD card.
It works with my non HC card, my HC card doesn't work in the XTi

Are you saying that your SD/CF adapter doesn't work with your SDHC card?

David

Hi David,
Yes it does NOT work with SDHC. Only works with the earlier 4gb SD cards which are non-HC compliant.

ed. wrote in post #3281795
Hi David,
Yes it does NOT work with SDHC. Only works with the earlier 4gb SD cards which are non-HC compliant.

Bummer.

I have a 4GB SDHC card from Sandisk, it came with an SDHC reader otherwise I would not have bought into SDHC at all.
It works fine with my 1DsMkII. Only because of the latest firmwear which I was also aware of when I went for the SDHC card.

What I was not aware of (or did not fully understand until too late ) was that the class of card is the MINIMUM speed it will go at and is no indication of it's maximum speed and although the Sandisk I have is listed as an Ultra II SDHC (and is legitimate ), it almost goes at standard Sandisk speed (meaning slower then I like by a lot ). It is class 4 and based on that I will wait for class 10 or 12 (which don't exist yet even as a standard ) before I again get another SDHC card . In fairness the card works fairly fast downloading to the computer, but that is not where I need the speed.

Luckily my primary cards are 8GB Extreme IV CF cards and they are noticeably faster then anything else I have used to date. I will keep the SDHC card for emergency backup - it works fine for that.

Of course this is all on a 2 1/2 year old camera.

So do your research and buyer beware.

Longwatcher wrote in post #3286510
I have a 4GB SDHC card from Sandisk, it came with an SDHC reader otherwise I would not have bought into SDHC at all.
It works fine with my 1DsMkII. Only because of the latest firmwear which I was also aware of when I went for the SDHC card.

What I was not aware of (or did not fully understand until too late ) was that the class of card is the MINIMUM speed it will go at and is no indication of it's maximum speed and although the Sandisk I have is listed as an Ultra II SDHC (and is legitimate ), it almost goes at standard Sandisk speed (meaning slower then I like by a lot ). It is class 4 and based on that I will wait for class 10 or 12 (which don't exist yet even as a standard ) before I again get another SDHC card . In fairness the card works fairly fast downloading to the computer, but that is not where I need the speed.

Luckily my primary cards are 8GB Extreme IV CF cards and they are noticeably faster then anything else I have used to date. I will keep the SDHC card for emergency backup - it works fine for that.

Of course this is all on a 2 1/2 year old camera.

So do your research and buyer beware.

There are claims that the whole 'x' speed thing is flawed as it was often quoted as burst speed, so the solution to all this was to establish a new system, the speed class where it has to always meet the given transfer speed. Well that is what they claim anyway!

so am I to understand correctly that my Hyperdrive won't be able to download my files off of a Kingston 8GB card that I just purchased for my TX1?

jevidon wrote in post #3348338
so am I to understand correctly that my Hyperdrive won't be able to download my files off of a Kingston 8GB card that I just purchased for my TX1?

That all depends on the HyperDrives support or lack there of of SDHC, if it is over six months old I would say no.

I found a SDHC-CF adapter, but it is not just a CF card size.

http://www.digitalera.​co.uk …t-flash-card-adapter.html

This is however still useful if the CF slot does not require the CF to be enclosed.

There is a 17 in 1 CF adapter that claims SDHC support.

http://www.digitalera.​co.uk …t-flash-card-adapter.html