Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

D800 Dual Slots, which card for back up?

S

SOLLERBOY

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 8, 2008
715
68
UK
Hi,

I have a D800 and have only ever used the CF slot, I am in a situation where I need to use the SD slot as back up. I've had my current CF cards for a few years so need to change them (They are all sandisk extreme or ultra 8gb).

I've been toying with the idea of getting a couple of sandisk extreme pro 16gb CF cards and a sandisk ultra 128gb for back up. I will be dumping the CF cards at the end of the day onto two external drives but for added security I liked the idea of the 128GB card holding the images from multiple days just as a redundant back up.

My issue is the CF card is 160 mb/s but the SD is only 30 mb/s. Is this likely to cause a huge bottleneck? Will the SD still keep accepting new images every time I swap Cf cards or will it only work in tandem with one card?

Thanks
 
acearchie

acearchie

macrumors 68040
Jan 15, 2006
3,264
104
Assuming you are backing up properly on a computer then there is no need to have more than double the CF card size as when you start fresh with the CF cards you can format the SD cards as well.

Much cheaper to buy computer storage space than SD or CF card storage space.
 
nburwell

nburwell

macrumors 603
May 6, 2008
5,450
2,364
DE
acearchie said:
Assuming you are backing up properly on a computer then there is no need to have more than double the CF card size as when you start fresh with the CF cards you can format the SD cards as well.

Much cheaper to buy computer storage space than SD or CF card storage space.
Click to expand...

I have to agree here. As a fellow D800 owner, I only use the CF or SD slot when taking my images. As soon as I'm home, I take the cards I used out and back them up on my computer and external HD which houses all my RAW files.
 
S

SOLLERBOY

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 8, 2008
715
68
UK
Thanks for the replies, , my concern is that as I will be on the road, my main bag withe the hard drives in will be left in hotels while I'm out shooting. I was thinking having the 128Gb in the camera will act as a redundant off site back up.
 
acearchie

acearchie

macrumors 68040
Jan 15, 2006
3,264
104
SOLLERBOY said:
Thanks for the replies, , my concern is that as I will be on the road, my main bag withe the hard drives in will be left in hotels while I'm out shooting. I was thinking having the 128Gb in the camera will act as a redundant off site back up.
Click to expand...

There's nothing wrong with your system and I think it's always good to have a backup somewhere else. Personally, since I've never had a card fail in camera and I've only ever had a camera with no internal backup I think the money is better spent on a portable hard drive.

Either way it's good that you are being safe with your media.
 
S

SOLLERBOY

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 8, 2008
715
68
UK
Thanks for the replies. In the end I went for 2x 16GB Sandisk Extreme Pro CF cards and 2x Sandisk 16GB Extreme Pro SD cards. My current cards were purchased around 4 years ago when I got my D700 so they are mostly 8gb ultras so I thought I would take the opportunity to get better cards.

My external hard drives are from 2008 and 2010 as well so I bought two new 500gb usb3 ones to replace/supplement them as they will be my main back up while on the road. I also got them from 2 different manufacturers to mitigate any manufacturing problems.
 
Meister

Meister

Suspended
Oct 10, 2013
5,456
4,310
OreoCookie said:
The fastest SD cards manage up to 250 MB/s (write), way faster than 30 or 160 MB/s. With the proper SD card, there will be no bottle neck to worry about.
Click to expand...
This information is wrong! Nikon at present supports UHS-I SDXC memory cards. The one you mentioned is UHS-II. The D800 only supports sd speeds up to 99mb/s. The cf slot does make use of cf cards that go up to 160 mb/s. In real life usage a high end cf card should perform almost at double the speed of a high end sd card.

Also the sd card you mentioned costs 1200$ and is only supported by the fuji systme at this point in time.
 
Last edited:
alphaod

alphaod

macrumors Core
Feb 9, 2008
22,183
1,245
NYC
SOLLERBOY said:
Thanks for the replies. In the end I went for 2x 16GB Sandisk Extreme Pro CF cards and 2x Sandisk 16GB Extreme Pro SD cards. My current cards were purchased around 4 years ago when I got my D700 so they are mostly 8gb ultras so I thought I would take the opportunity to get better cards.
Click to expand...

16GB? Even when I had a D700 I thought 32GB is small, so I guess our usage is different.

Anyways I'm using a 128GB Lexar 1000x CF and a 128GB Sandisk Extreme Pro SD in pairs. I usually go RAW to the CF and JPEG to the SD. For video I record to the SD card because it's easier to import into my MacBook Pro.
 
O

OreoCookie

macrumors 68030
Apr 14, 2001
2,727
90
Sendai, Japan
Meister said:
This information is wrong! Nikon at present supports UHS-I SDXC memory cards. The one you mentioned is UHS-II. The D800 only supports sd speeds up to 99mb/s.
Click to expand...
The OP worried about SD cards being terribly slow. You're right that I missed that the D800 does not support new UHS-II cards, but even if the D800 doesn't support them and these cards are very expensive at the moment, SD cards are not slower than CF cards in principle. Common SD cards (not the expensive kind) support ~80 MB/s, but you can get some that are faster. If you look at benchmarks with the D800 rather than synthetic benchmarks, you see that the difference is shrinks to ~20 % -- unless you compare a $70 SD card with a three times as expensive $200+ CF card. In both cases, the actual throughput rates are nowhere near the theoretical maximum (or what you'd get with a good card reader).
 
Meister

Meister

Suspended
Oct 10, 2013
5,456
4,310
OreoCookie said:
The OP worried about SD cards being terribly slow. You're right that I missed that the D800 does not support new UHS-II cards, but even if the D800 doesn't support them and these cards are very expensive at the moment, SD cards are not slower than CF cards in principle. Common SD cards (not the expensive kind) support ~80 MB/s, but you can get some that are faster. If you look at benchmarks with the D800 rather than synthetic benchmarks, you see that the difference is shrinks to ~20 % -- unless you compare a $70 SD card with a three times as expensive $200+ CF card. In both cases, the actual throughput rates are nowhere near the theoretical maximum (or what you'd get with a good card reader).
Click to expand...
I am just explaining why Nikon still uses cf slots.
Pros will use a $200 cf card instead of a $70 sd card.

Anyway, I do not own a single cf card and I much prefere sd cards.
You are completely right, that sd cards can be faster than cf and i think nikon should just support uhs-II.
 
O

OreoCookie

macrumors 68030
Apr 14, 2001
2,727
90
Sendai, Japan
Meister said:
I am just explaining why Nikon still uses cf slots.
Pros will use a $200 cf card instead of a $70 sd card.
Click to expand...
I didn't want to come across as wanting to be right all the time -- and I apologize if I did. Nor do I want to say that (commonly available) SD cards are better today than CF cards. You are completely right that if you are willing to pay, the fastest solution is a CF card (right now, the fastest CF cards are ~60 % faster than the fastest SD cards). I just wanted to reassure the OP that the difference between more affordable CF cards and good SD cards is so small that it doesn't matter for most people. If you are a pro and you really need fast write speeds (not everyone does), then surely an expensive CF card is the way to go.

I have the impression that the writing is on the wall, and the future, like it or not, belongs to SD cards. SD card slots go up the ladder and are features in higher- and higher-end cameras. I haven't had owned CF card ever since selling my Nikon D70 in 2007.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom