2012 MBA data transfer slow with USB2?

Here's a question for you all.

I've just copied a 12gb folder from my a memory card to the desktop of a Mac Pro, and it took about 15 minutes or so.

I then dragged a different 6gb folder on to the same memory card from the Mac Pro, so I could transfer it to my new MBA.

However, copying that smaller 6gb folder from the card to the MBA is currently giving me an estimated time of 'about an hour'.

Is there any reason obvious reason I'm missing why copying from the card to the Pro took 15 minutes to copy 12gb, but copying from the same card to the MBA is taking an hour for a folder half the size?!

The 12gig folder was full of D800 raw files, at around 45mb each. The smaller folder contains more files yes, and is zipped.

But that said, copying that smaller folder to the memory card in the first place didn't take long at all so it just feels like a very disproportionate amount of time sending it across to the Air.

Since starting the thread it's half way through and says 40 minutes remaining zzzzzzzzzz

After some more investigation the Air USB ports are definitely slow with USB2 I think. I've tried copying large 6gig files back and forth between memory card and a Mac Pro, my old MBP and the Air.

With the Pro and the MBP it takes about 6 minutes, with the Air, an hour

katmeef said:

Maybe the problem you're having is specific to the card reader? Are you using a USB card reader connected directly to the Air?

Click to expand...

I'm wondering if it might be the card reader. It's an old Sandisk one, although it was a fast reader by USB2 standards. But yes that might be the issue. I'll be out on a shoot tomorrow so in the evening I'll be transferring files back to the Air via a Sony XQD card reader and directly from the D800, both or which are USB3. So the issue isn't going to be too much of a problem generally as I shouldn't need the USB2 card reader in day to day use.