Product Requirements:
Device:
Any device that can accommodate a Type II CF card
I live by the Boy Scout motto: Be Prepared. I have a zippered pouch in
my gear bag that has all kinds of little adapters and tools. Things like the
Victorinox CyberTool and
FlexUSB adapter.
I just found another adapter that will be taking up permanent residence in that
pouch: The EagleTec SD to CF card adapter,
which I received from Brando.
There isn’t anything really mysterious about this adapter. It is basically a
CF Type II shell, with a slot that an SD card can plug into.
Above you can see a regular run of the mill Lexar SD card plugged into the
side of the adapter. When fully inserted, the card’s outside edge is flush with
the end of the adapter.
You might wonder if this adapter has any effect on file transfer speeds. I did a quick test where I copied a folder of 111mb from my PC to an SD card and then back again. Times for that test were 40 seconds and 6 seconds. Then I did the same test with the SD card inserted into the adapter. The results were 49 seconds and 6 seconds.
Above you can see the adapter plugged into the
Dell x50v Pocket PC. It fits perfect and
works perfect. Unfortunately, we all know that nothing really is
perfect. That is true of this product too. The only problem with the EagleTec SD
to CF adapter is the fact that the edge of the adapter does not have a lip. As
such, you will play havoc trying to remove it from any device that does not have
an eject button. After inserting it into the x50v, I had to use some needlenose
pliers to pull it out of the slot. Grrrrrr…. That said, I’m still
keeping it in my gear bag. I’ll just remember to keep a small pair of pliers in
there too!
Price: $25.00
Pros:
Compact way to use SD cards in CF slots
Cons:
Does not have a ridge along the top edge to help with extraction
Product Information
| Price: | 25.0 |
| Manufacturer: | EagleTec |
| Pros: |
|
| Cons: |
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great product.. Is SD still cheaper then CF?
I heard that MMC is going to make a major comeback… something like 10-20GB MMCs cards within the next couple of years..
F.
flamaest:
Historically, SD has been more expensive than CF because it is a newer technology. These days the prices of the two are pretty close to equal.
You have not commented at all on speed. Is a SD card in the CF adapter much slow, or equally fast as in the SD slot?
Surur
Surur:
I did a quick test where I copied a folder of 111mb from my PC to an SD card and then back again. Times for that test were 40 seconds and 6 seconds. Then I did the same test with the SD card inserted into the adapter. The results were 49 seconds and 6 seconds. I’ll go update the review with this info.
You should put a link to the actual product in the review.
Thanks,
-Brian
bshort:
I make it a habit of not linking to a direct product page on a reseller site because you never know when they might remove the product or change the link. Here’s the page on brando’s site:
http://shop.brando.com.hk/eagleteccftosdadapter.php
Hmmm this might be great for those of us who own DSLRs that have an SD slot and a CF slot. This way you dont have to have both cf and sd cards, just buy SD and use it for both slots.
Though harder to find (I had to get an email notification from a retailer in order to find it in stock), I think the Minolta SD-CF1 Compact Flash Adapter is an even better find… cuz it’s a CF Type 1 adapter (and thus compatible with even more devices).
I got it from buy.com (http://tinyurl.com/chlao). The only downside is that it’s a more expensive ($52 from buy.com).
Another note on performance numbers is that SD performance tends to fluctuate a lot more from vendor to vendor, card to card. So Julie’s numbers may vary with another card.
I am a teacher and I want to use my XDA II with a video projector, but the backpack, which is needed, is not easy to find and quite expensive. So, does anyone know if there exactly the opposite of the “EagleTec SD to CF II Card Adapter”?, that’s to say, <u>I need a CF to SD card adapter</u>, is there such a gadget in the market?
I would appreciate if someone knows and helps me with the isuue.
Thanks in advance
jbrare
Anybody knows if the Panasonic BN-SDCF1E SD to CF adapter is a Type I or Type II card?
I’d be more interested in such a device coz Archos AV4xx and Gmini 4xx only have a CF Type I slot and I’m about to get one of those.
Looks like Minolta Switzerland doesn’t carry the SD-CF1, while Panasonic Switzerland does carry their BN-SDCF1E.
This is absolutely untrue!!
SD is NOT a technology, it’s a standard.
AFAICT SD uses exactly the same memory chips as CF or other cards.
But since CF has a lot more internal space (for obvious reasons) you can pack more memory chips of any given chip generation to yield higher capacity cards; or include previous generation and cheaper chips to make lower cost cards of the same capacity.
The top capacity SD cards cost more than the same capacity CF ones and you can find CF cards in much higher capacity, not only as HDDs.
Top CF card capacity today is 12GB (Pretec). That’s 12 times more than current 1GB SD cards, and still 600% the capacity of the most recent SD cards (2 GB from Sandisk and Apacer).
Also technology limits in CF cards are much higher simply because like HDDs they are basically IDE devices; SD’s technology limit is 32 GB and miniSD only 4 GB 😮
Hello,
this seems to be exactly what I was looking for! :wow:
Has anyone tested the EagleTec card with a 2GB SD card!? Was thinking af getting a new SD card with 1 or 2 GB for the new Cam!
Has anyone tested the EagleTec in a Camera, background I’m on the verge of buying a DSLR Camera von Cannon, the 350d (Rebel Xt) but would rather like to use SD than CF cause of the other gadgets and Cams in by possesion!? :unsure:
Does someone have the exact specs of the Adapter, what’s the max transfer speed?
thx.. Harry
orchis:
I can help with 2 of your questions. I just tried my 1gb SD card in the adapter (I don’t have a 2gb) and it worked fine. I put the adapter with the SD card in my Nikon Coolpix 8800 digital camera and it worked fine as well.
Hi all,
I’m thinking about bying an eagletec CF-SD adater. Are you still happy with your adapter, and can you tell me something about the speed with 40x – 133x sd cards and power consumption?
Thomas
Munich:
I still use this adapter and am happy with it. The only fast SD card I have, is a 1gb 80x. I’m not sure how to measure power consumption. In what type of device are you wanting to use the adapter in?
OK!! there was mentioned earlier that a 111mb file took about 40 and 49 secs when out and in the converter respectively. that leads to 2.775mb/s and 2.265mb/sec of transfer rates respectively with a difference of 0.5mb/sec between the two.
I think that the cost in bandwidth is considerable but what I want to know is what happens if you insert a sundisk extreme card that usually reads out in a speed of 10-11mb/sec with a sundisk usb reader(tests carried out using super copier deluxe by sfx team) . Now 0.5mb/sec is about 18% reduction in performance so if the reduction grows in higher speeds linearly due to the addressing mode conversion lags I should expect a 25%-50% conversion lag depending on the chip electronics that define the linear slope factors. On the other hand if the conversion chip is good and just had to wait some dead cycles due to incompatibility with the SDs addressing mode due to repeatedly issued commands that might not got carried out completely ( clock edge detection, clock setting quantifiers, power lags etc ) there is a chance of an ideal matching that might give a much less than 0.5 mb/sec lag. In theory, using a simple model in an fpga cad software ( altera quartus 6) , clocking a simplified IDE to SD converter with a standard uprising edge clock at 25mhz (http://www.sandisk.com/Assets/File/OEM/ApplicationNotes/SDCard/AppNoteMMC_SDv1.0.pdf)
in 4 bit mode we get a 12usecs lag to move 512bytes and then of course there is the rest of the lag on the storage layer. That leads to 24.576 msec per megabyte. Introducing some basic signal integrity checkers throughout the conversion circuit and possible data error/ weak signal/ resend cases it comes in theory to a figure or approx 300-400 msec/megabyte. adding the time to get the signal confirmed as stored and stable to a location, we get the values that get close (50-110%) to the real world data transfer rates.
The big question is who can find what chip is used as there is nothing on google about this products specs and what are the known problems of this chip aside from the ones officially stated so I can check it out and verify how ugly it will look before I buy it or at least someone who has a sandisk extreme to tell me if it simply worx!
I have bought a new one and a CF TO IDE.
But,unluckily,i found that WINDOWS XP couldn’t read this device correctly.
This device can be found on winxp(disk.sys and partmgr.sys were loaded),but winxp said this is a device without a disk.It tells me to insert a disk even a 2G SD was inserted.
When i click EJECT disk from this CF ADAPTER ,it shows a error message.
How could i do now?
I’m looking for a simple way to make this adapter can be recognized in winxp correctly on IDE channel,like a fix hard disk.
Everybody know?Thanks!
riverstring:
Have you tried putting a different SD card in the adapter?
Yes,Julie,I tried several SD cards(32M,1G,2G Sandisk,Apacer,Adata). I have called Eagletec’s support.They replied me that it’s designed for read by card reader.It’s no tech support when i read the adapter from IDE.
I checked its DevNode and Capabilities on winxp’s Device Info.it has DN_DISABLEABLE flag and it hasn’t CM_DEVCAP_UNIQUEID.A normal harddisk is contrary.
I guess maybe the so solution is change/add the RegKey or get a right driver(such as modify some *.inf files , find some suitable *.sys files etc.)
Any idea?Thanks again.
I didn’t notice that you mentioned that you were having issues with a different adapter than the one I reviewed. 🙂 I’m not familiar with the CF to IDE adapter, so I’m afraid that I won’t be much help for you…
It doesn’t matter.
Holding this message,maybe you or someone can solve this problem later.:)
I don’t think i explained clearly.but I explain what’s going on again.
There’re two cards.One is Eagletec (SD->CF,ET-CFAII45) ,and one is CF->IDE (This one about 2$ just).Because CF’s interface is IDE originally,so CF->IDE is card to change IDE socket’s shape.
so the problem can be simplified like following:
Eagletec’s SD2CFII card couldn’t work normally on Winxp When it’s connected by IDE interface.Winxp’s driver recognize it as a REMOVABLE device without disk.
The key is:
I use ET-CFAII45 without a card reader.How to make winxp recognize it as a disk-inserted-device?
Thanks for pay attention:D
I buy some CF Card,IDE-CF,SATA-CF adapter from a china factory , and find it good quality and lower price,so i want share with others my feels.Especially,the IDE-CF only 1.98USD
Websit: http：//www.soarland.com
This is cool, but I see how hard it is to take it out by hand. I understand what you are saying about your need of pliers to get the compactflash adapter out. By the way, if you know about the tiny Micro SD cards, you should try this: You can go from very small to very big. Start with the Micro card and put it in the adapter for the Mini (if the Micro card came with one) and then put the Mini into the matching SD adapter (or just put the Micro into its matching adapter if you don’t have the corresponding SD adapter for the Mini).
P.S. Could you put a picture of your SD card and compactflash adapter next to each other? I am curious about how much the capacity is on your SD card.