I am a photographer and I am wondering if I should buy a USB 3.0 SD card reader. Especially for large shoots like weddings, if the MacBook Pro built-in card reader is USB 2.0, a USB 3.0 card reader will make a huge difference in the amount of time it will take to transfer pictures to a hard drive. My laptop is a MacBook Pro, Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015.
That depends almost entirely on the transfer rate of the cards themselves.
This link will give you the details regarding what you are dealing with:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204384
Ciao.
Look at >(option key)System Information>Hardware>Card Reader
link speed
http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/sc-card-reader-speed.1414498/
Yeah, I checked System Report before posting. However, there isn't really any mention of USB 3.0 or anything. There are only 4 things mentioned. Unless it is 'Revision:'?
The card reader has a significant effect on speed, both read and write.
This guy had 16MBs/18.8MBs Read/Write speeds compared to 45.5/64.3, simply by changing card reader. That is a HUGE difference!
http://kai-takusari.com/blog/personal_computer/1441
If the card reader on a Mac is USB 2.0, but has has a USB 3.0 plug, you will get very similar results to the example above.
Thanks OGELTHORPE. Had read the following (quoted below), but there is no mention if the USB bus is 2.0 or 3.0. I am using, I think, 2012 iMacs at my photography school, which is usually where I transfer huge 32GB SD cards. I am pretty sure the Early 2015 MBP is 3.0, but I'm not sure if the 2012 iMac is 2.0 or 3.0.
Mac notebooks use the USB bus to communicate with the SD card slot and have a maximum speed of up to 480 Mbit/s. Mac desktops use the PCIe bus to communicate with the SD card slot and can transfer data at a faster rate.
KevenA wrote:
Yeah, I checked System Report before posting. However, there isn't really any mention of USB 3.0 or anything. There are only 4 things mentioned. Unless it is 'Revision:'?
From the links already provided—
System profiler gives you Link Speed entry, the PCIe bus express their speed as GT/s.
2.5 GT/s on PCI-Express = 250MB/s that would be USB 2
This is how that's worked out... note 'b' = bits, 'B' = bytes, 8b = 1B.
2.5 GT/s = 2.5 Gb/s = 312.5 MB/s... then you've got 8b/10b overhead so 312.5 * 0.8 = 250 MB/s.
USB 3.0 has a maximum bandwidth rate of 5 gbps (gigabits per second). That translates to 640 MBps (megabytes per second)
I don't know where you got those. I only have:
| Vendor ID: XXXXX |
| Product ID: XXXXX |
| Revision: XX |
Serial Number: XXXX |
Vendor ID:
Product ID:
Revision:
Serial Number:
Run the AHT http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1509
Not definitive by any means, but may kick out an error code.
Is my MacBook Pro built-in SD card reader USB 2.0 or 3.0 (MacBook Pro, Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015)?
