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    TM8204 Flash Card Reader Slow?

    Discussion in 'Acer' started by orthorim, Mar 25, 2007.

  1. orthorim

    orthorim Notebook Evangelist

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    Hi,

    I thought I was being clever and bought a 150x high speed SD card to test Vista's ReadyBoost. Sadly, Vista says the card is too slow for ReadyBoost.

    I tested the card with HDTune on Windows XP and it shows a consistent 8MB/s - way below the 150x rating which should yield 20MB/s. I assume that's because the SD card reader is just slow - probably not built to be very fast because it doesn't need to be for the odd import of digital pix.

    Installing some files and apps on the SD card was also really slow. It's pretty much useless.

    If anyone knows of a way to make this faster - or knows why it's so slow - please let me know.

    BTW ReadyBoost works without problems with a USB stick. The SD card reader would be neat mainly because I can leave the card in at all times...(and SD cards are cheap)
     
    orthorim, Mar 25, 2007
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  2. squeaver

    squeaver Newbie

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    I also have a TM8204, and I think that the card reader is just slow, I usually get around 5mb/s on mine (I dont know what the rating is for my SD card, but it was just a cheap panasonic 512mb that I use for my wii).

    Another reason why it does not work: (Q/A with a microsoft developer from http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarcher/archive/2006/06/02/615199.aspx)
    Q: Why don't you support SD on my USB2.0 external card reader?
    A: We unfortunately don't support external card readers - there were some technical hurdles that we didn't have time to address. In general, if a card reader shows a drive without media in it (like a floppy drive or CD ROM does), we can't use it for ReadyBoost.

    I'm guessing that it counts the card reader as external, so it will most likely not allow it to work with any card, no matter the speed.
     
    squeaver, Mar 26, 2007
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  3. wynand32

    wynand32 Notebook Consultant

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    I've noticed the same thing, after reinstalling Vista on my 8204 (which was after swapping my Toshiba M400 with my wife). My SanDisk Ultra II 2GB SD card worked perfectly with ReadyBoost on the M400, but it's rated as not fast enough on the 8204.

    I've installed the latest SD card driver, but no change. I'm wondering if this isn't a systemic problem with the 8204. It's a bummer, but then again on the Toshiba I think ReadyBoost actually slowed things down over time.
     
    wynand32, Jun 14, 2007
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