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robert hazelwood
11-20-2008, 12:14 PM
Does anyone have any experience with Symantec virus scan software slowing down the transfer of files from camera memory cards? (CF)

I noticed today that my card reader ports on my multimedia machine are listed with all of my drives as items to scan in my virus scan program. I have been having extremely long transfer times when I plug the card into the front of the machine. (2 Hrs for 8GB). I am wondering if the transfer is being slowed down by the software scanning each file before it is loaded into the hard disk. Has anyone else seen this or had any additional experience with it.

Tonight I am going to see if I can disable the scan from those cards since the files are from a trusted source they don't need to be scanned.
<O:p

Alfred Forns
11-20-2008, 02:53 PM
Robert what device are you using? Is it Firewire or USB 2.0 It will take under eight minutes to transfer that card.

Maybe the software has an effect but not to that extend !! Would disable.

Grady Weed
11-20-2008, 03:58 PM
Get rid of Symantec and download AVG Free version here: http://free.avg.com/ It works just as well, better. AND IT IS FREE! I have used now for 8 years, hassle free. And I own my own PC Tech Repair Service. Check your system over. Update your PC, remove junk files with CC Cleaner: http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/ , defrag the drive and scan it for problems etc. Norton will most assuredly slow you down.

Chris Starbuck
11-20-2008, 05:10 PM
I'm running Norton Internet Security 2008 (with Autoprotect On) under Windows XP Pro. I think NIS only scans removable media for boot viruses upon insertion, and doesn't scan the individual files unless I tell it to manually, but it's hard to figure out exactly what NIS does; Symantec tries very hard to hide the details.

I have both USB 2 and FIrewire 800 CF readers, and use 2GB Lexar Pro WA 80x (old, fairly slow) and 4GB Lexar Pro UDMA 300x CF cards. I filled up a couple cards and timed the transfers for reference:

Full 2GB USB 2 transfer time ~ 4 minutes 10 seconds
Full 4GB USB 2 transfer time ~ 7 minutes 10 seconds
Full 2GB FW800 transfer time ~ 2 minutes 50 seconds
Full 4GB FW800 transfer time ~ 2 minutes 30 seconds

Obviously my old, slow 2GB CF card can't keep up with the FW800 reader speed.

I did a manual AV scan of my full 4GB card in the FW800 reader, and it took less than 5 seconds including the time to launch the program. The same scan in the USB 2 reader took less than 10 seconds.

In any case, an 8GB transfer time of more than 15 minutes, even with a slow card in a USB 2 reader, is seriously abnormal. Disabling the AV scan is worth a try, but unless your CPU is old and very slow I doubt that's the root of the problem. The only explanation that comes to mind, and seems extremely unlikely, is that your reader is connected to a USB 1 port; that's only a possibility if your PC is really old (more than 5 years).

robert hazelwood
11-20-2008, 08:29 PM
I thought I would supply some additional information on this. The machine is a HP Media Center PC m1160n, with AMD Athlon 64 Processor at 2.21Ghz with 2GB ram. The OS is Windows XP Media Center ED with SP 3 installed. I have been installing all available udates to the system.

The four front mount card readers are wired internally into the mother board. They are listed in the System under Storage Volumes, Generic USB CF Reader USB device, by Microsoft 5.1.2600.0. They are USB 2.0.

I also experience this level of slow speed when I plug an external card reader into a USB port on the front or back of the machine..

It has firewire installed but I believe it is the older 400 since it does not have the expanded connector.

I went in and set the presets in Virus scan to not scan any jpg or nef files from drive I which is the built in CF reader. I have not been able to check it out yet to see if there is an improvement.

I am also considering taking this to my repair shop and have him drop in a new firewire 800 card and go for one of the super fast firewire readers from Delkin or Lexar. Lexar has a rebate on theirs right now so the cost would be reduced.

Symantec is furnished free through my employment and has not been a problem before, "that I noticed." However with D300 my files are much bigger and take up twice the space as my D70.

Any ideas?

Bob

Alfred Forns
11-20-2008, 08:41 PM
Robert you did not say what kind of reader you have. If you have a 1.1 reader it would be painfully slow !!!

Rene A
11-21-2008, 07:30 AM
Robert,

This card reader has sped up the upload from 4hrs to 10 min for $20

http://www.adorama.com/ILXCRCFPUD.html?searchinfo=lexar%20cf%20udma%20rea der&item_no=2

robert hazelwood
11-21-2008, 08:18 AM
Alfred
Card reader is built into machine, drivers are installed by HP it is a 2.0 card reader. This is one of the reasons this is so puzzling. I would expect a built in system would run with a minimum of complications, especially on a machine sold as multimedia.

bob

Rene A
11-21-2008, 08:42 AM
Just transferred

with the above card reader

CF 2GB in 55 seconds

robert hazelwood
11-21-2008, 11:27 AM
Renate
Thank you. I will probably go with the high speed Lexar reader, however if I go to that I will put in a firewire 800 and go to the next faster Lexar reader in the same series as you are using. With the rebate I will be spending a little more but it appears to be an even faster reader. http://www.lexar.com/readers/pro_udma_reader.html It will get me away from all the current ports built into my system and possibly away from whatever is slowing down the transfer.

Thanks for you help
Bob

Robert Amoruso
11-21-2008, 03:12 PM
Robert,

On two computers that I have card readers on the front (USB 2.0), I get really slow transfers (25 minutes for 8GBs). Plug in my fast reader and get 8 minutes at a USB port. Go figure.

robert hazelwood
11-24-2008, 11:13 AM
All
I got my hands on a San Disk reader and tried it this last weekend. 8GB transferred in 16 Min. When I tried the same card in the front mounted CF reader on the CPU same as before 120+ Min. The problem is with the internal connection within the machine for the built in card readers. Going to an external USB 2.0 reader there was better then 8X speed improvement.

The set of readers you would expect to be taking advantage of DMA transfers are the slowest. Yea, go figure!

Next machine will be from a small shop that will build it to meet my requirements, rather then a standard one size all fits no one.

Renate
I will be looking into the Lexar readers at a local shop over the holidays. Thanks for your input.

Has anyone out there tried the new Firewire 800 readers with a Firewire 800 card? According to specs it should be close to twice as fast as USB 2.0

Thanks

Alfred Forns
11-24-2008, 11:59 AM
Robert you might consider a Mac next time :)

I'm sure the internal reader is working at 1.1 speeds !!!! Glad your sorting things out

Chris Starbuck
11-24-2008, 03:50 PM
Has anyone out there tried the new Firewire 800 readers with a Firewire 800 card? According to specs it should be close to twice as fast as USB 2.0
Yes, and yes. For a couple timing numbers look at my 11-20 post in this thread. Speedup for an old, slow CF card was about 2x, for a new fastest-available CF card the speedup was about 3x.

Chris Ober
11-26-2008, 06:34 PM
Ditto what Grady mentioned. Symantec security software is notorious for being a huge system performance killer. I would at least diabled all things Symantec and test as a first step. MSConfig is a good included application that will make this easy to disable/enable. Make sure to get all occurances in the Startup and Services tabs.

Have you tried writing data to the device to see if that is slow too? Any other USB devices plugged in? I've seen machines appear to hang doing anything and immediately kick back to life when unplugging a USB device.


Get rid of Symantec and download AVG Free version here: http://free.avg.com/ It works just as well, better. AND IT IS FREE! I have used now for 8 years, hassle free. And I own my own PC Tech Repair Service. Check your system over. Update your PC, remove junk files with CC Cleaner: http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/ , defrag the drive and scan it for problems etc. Norton will most assuredly slow you down.