Sd Card Transfer Rate

[Answerprancer]

Hi (Chris?)
Is it normal for it to take well over an hour (so far, it's still going) to move about 8gb of data (photos) from an SD card to a hard drive?
Card: Transcend HC1 16gb
Card reader: Unbranded USB2 from PC world
System: Athlon 640 3Ghz, 16GB RAM, Windows 7 64 bit
TIA for any answers ..getting mildly frustrated.

[ivor4781]

well my answer is no should be done in less than 1 minute
can you put your card in without card reader is there no sd slot on your comp

[Answerprancer]

Nope - the only thing I'm guessing might be the problem is the lead: the usb plug from the card reader is going into the comp via one of those female/male extension leads. Also I keep getting a warning bubble saying that faster USB ports are available on my comp (which is something new).

[Answerprancer]

...also also, could it simply be that the PC World (£6) card reader is a slow unreliable POS?

[TheChair]

The warning bubble is telling you that you've plugged a USB2 device into a USB1 port.
USB1.1 xfer rate is 12 MBits/sec 8GB is roughly 64000 Mb
64000/12 is 5,334 seconds which is around 88 minutes.
So, yes, it's quite normal.

[Answerprancer]

Oh p!ssfl@ps - then something's gone wrong with my USB setup.

[Answerprancer]

...because I KNOW at least some of my USB plug holes are USB2 (round the back?)
Initially I had it plugged into one of those and it was the same there.

[Old_Geezer]

Not that it helps your situation but :

My motherboard is supposed to have USB 3.0, and the cables are connected as per the guide, but whatever USB socket I plug into I always get that "could be faster" warning. USB is weird. Maybe there's a setting somewhere the degrades them all to 2.0.

Even 2.0 shouldn't leave you waiting over an hour though.

[TheChair]

"Even 2.0 shouldn't leave you waiting over an hour though."
No, it shouldn't. But 1.2 should

[Buenchico]

This might be relevant:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/usb-speederror/

[bhg481]

USB 3.0 leads have a different connector from USB 2.0 leads. They look the same at first glance but they have connections both above and below the central insulator, which is blue for USB 3.0. If you plug a USB 2.0 lead into a USB 3.0 socket the extra terminals are unused, the computer recognises this and may give you a warning.