6 slot SD card reader, THUNDERBOLT 3!

StarTech.com 6-Slot Thunderbolt 3 SD Card Reader - UHS-II - Multi-Card Reader
This is my review of the most expensive SD card reader with thunderbolt 3.
Spolier alert: this does not beat the prograde sd card reader or the SanDisk Extreme PRO SD UHS-II USB-C Card Reader
Instagram: @hitplayfilms
MY CAMERA amzn.to/2N9bmAT
MY LENS amzn.to/37H9UPH
MY SD CARD amzn.to/2AQoGrg
MY LIGHTS amzn.to/3fDZzXj

[@ilkoallexandroff]

I’ve been using this one for a while, works kinda decent on my MacBook, when it connects, because once in a while just isn’t recognized, and unfortunately since it’s Thunderbolt 3 device, isn’t recognized on my Surface, and Desktop PCs! Cheers from Japan!

[@ilkoallexandroff]

HitPlayFilms the more cards I was copying at the same time the more the total speed was decreasing, so I’d better pause 5 cards and let one do its thing, then continue others one by one! If I had time, and I needed to go for a snack or walk I would leave all 6 and probably it would just take double the time if I did it one by one! In your video was really so slow, I didn’t have that experience up to now!

[@dukenukem2258]

what slot reader would you recommend?

[@ThoseGreatMoments]

Hi, can I buy yours from you?

[@miekwavesoundlab]

why did it go from 2GBS to 35mbs after 10 seconds? Is there built in throttling protection? Can you Raid 1|0 four 128GB SD cards as a single 256GB drive with this?

[@jpdj2715]

Interesting. So, with 4 drives at 40MB/s sustained throughput you end up at 1.25 Gbps. The detailed copy graphs indicate that the initial very high speed could not be sustained. The question is if we need to blame this card reader, your computer or MS-Windows that manages the copy process. The card reader is a full blown Thunderbolt 3 device and it only read - I feel it should be able to get much higher. What is likely going on is that your computer has a performance bottleneck. You can figure this out from the documentation of the motherboard in that computer. In my computer, several I/O connectors share bandwidth. This means, for some, you can populate one connector or the other, never both and for a few others populating connectors with shared bandwidth means you get reduced speed. This "reduced speed" is accomplished by closing "lanes" in connectors. If I populate PCIe_1 and PCIe_2, they both end up with only 8 lanes out of 16. If I put a 16 lane video card in PCIe_1 and a 4-way M.2-NVE-PCIe 16 lane adapter in PCIe_2, then both only get 8 lanes: the video gets slowed down a bit and in the storage adapter card, 2 of the 4 M.2 drives will not be accessible. These PCIe lanes, however, are directly connected to the CPU. So anything connected to them has top speed. Some of the connectors in my motherboard are not directly connected but via a chip with the nickname "South Bridge" (SB). That SB is basically a switch that does time-sharing of a couple PCIe lanes of the CPU between a lot of devices. In my motherboard, the Thunderbolt interface shares bandwidth with PCIe_3 and it is "either/or". In another motherboard, Thunderbolt could be on the SB and may never get to its maximum speed when other devices connected via SB are competing for time with the CPU PCIe lanes from SB to CPU. Biggest problem in this case is likely something else - the storage component you write to. Storage device manufacturers publish top speeds and the devices are never able to sustain that top speed for long. The top speed depends on "cache" that is very fast and the processor in the storage device needs to copy from cache to long term storage that goes a lot slower. So, copying large files, like 2GB HD movie recordings, you quickly saturate the cache in the storage and then fall back to "media speed". Which is what seems to happen here. All in all, this looks like a combination of the card reader being read via SB and the target disk being written via SB with a storage device that cannot handle the I/O requests fast enough and has a slowish media speed. You could buy a PCIe S-ATA controller card with 8 S-ATA connectors and a minimum amount of PCIe lanes (that will be direct to CPU) for about 30-40 USD (at Amzn). When you connect 4 or more "cheapish" Samsung 860 Pro (1) SSD to these and set them up as a RAID 0 array in Windows (2), you will get very high write speeds: because each disk has cache, because one disk is written at a time and when the other 3 or 7 are written there is enough time to flush the cache to the media. So, even when the Thunderbolt 3 controller in your computer is on the SB, this will already speed up your uploads a lot. Note that the reads of your uploaded videos will be a lot faster as well. Consider if your motherboard allows a separate disk/array that also is on its own PCIe lanes to the CPU that is your target store for the videos you render out of the edits. And keep your project and application cache folders on physically separate drives too, if possible. (1) flash memory wears out with each rewrite of memory cells. The controller and firmware in the card and SSD distribute this over the entire available storage space but wear happens. Pro versions can sustain about 10 times more rewrites. (2) Software RAID performance is actually very good. I have both SW and HW RAIDs and actually most HW RAIDs are driver level SW RAID.

[@jpdj2715]

@@filmsbyimran_ - I don't think so, but could be mistaken. The new M1 chip is phenomenal indeed, but not the absolute top in performance (it is in its class). Also, as Apple computers in the past decade were based on Intel architecture, I would still expect the South Bridge and all the other details are the same on a low level. As to hardware, it is not difficult to outperform a mac Pro of, say, $8,000 with a PC of half the price. I have been using Windows in the past 20 years and Apple in the 10 years before that. IMO, MacOS as UNIX variant is just a better operating system and its "closed" nature make it easier to have a stable driver (hardware abstraction) layer. Apple is not on a path to try to embrace-extend-kill competition and that makes software development easier too. So with a lighter load from a slightly more stable operating system, slightly less powerful hardware is not a problem. When we throw big powerful components into the mix, then it becomes very expensive. But well executed, I have to add. There is one area where Apple typically had a headstart: video editing and this was just because their software engineering (programming) of that software was much better and more efficient. You should be able to find KZbin clips demonstrating these ideas, or showing benchmark results that underline this. And there's this US system builder that can build you a custom PC based on the performance you need, specifically tuned to your use cases (Puget Systems - they have benchmarks as well.)

[@MyEyePhotography1]

Thanks. Gutted! I was hoping for 80mbs across 4 cards or 320mbs shared between 6 cards.

[@spainey1712]

Ha I'm glad you said early on it's probably one of the most disappointing products you'll review on the channel as when I originally saw the title I thought perfect, something I can get as I can't seem to find the Lexar workflow. Where did you purchase the Lexar from?

[@spainey1712]

@@filmsbyimran_ Legend, I'll check that out! Thanks and all the best with the channel (I've subscribed)

[@sdutango]

Monoprice has one Thunderbolt 3 6-Slot SD Card Reader around $66