Ridata Flash Memory Cards: 1 gig 66x PRO SD Card and PRO-2 80x Compact Flash Card

Ridata PRO 66x 1 gig SD Card

Ridata is an established name in the flash memory and CD/DVD media business. Digital photographers have used their CF cards for years, and Ridata offers an extensive line of high speed CF and SD cards as well as mini-SD, MMC and Smart Media cards. Ridata also makes some innovative peripherals such as their QuattroDrive which combines a CD burner with a card reader (see our review here).

We received their 1 gig 66x secure digital (SD) card for review, which promises both fast read and write times. Read times are important when viewing photos on the card, watching videos using a PDA, playing hefty action games on a PDA and when transferring data from the card to a PC using a card reader. Write times are important when saving photos to the card. While VGA and 1 MP PDA and phone cameras won't tax write times that much, digital cameras, especially today's 5MP and higher models will benefit from a faster card. Images will be written to the card much more quickly and the camera will be ready for your next shot sooner.

For those of you who are wondering whether a faster card will benefit you, the answer is yes if you're a digital photographer, watch videos on a PDA, play games on a PDA or even want the smoothest possible playback from MP3 players using SD media. The 66x standard roughly equals the maximum standard speed for SD 1.01 devices (12.5 MB/sec). We'll be reviewing Ridata's hot new 150x 2 gig SD card soon as well as Kingston's 120x 2 gig card, but keep in mind, you'll need an SD 1.1 device to take advantage of those speeds (that standard came out in 2005 and generally new, high end digicams support it). So for most folks, a 66x card hits the sweet spot for performance.

The Ridata card performed well in our tests, though using our reference Palm Tungsten T3 and VFSMark, it wasn't the top speed card for writes. We also tested the card on the high end HP iPAQ hx4700 using both Pocket Mechanic and Spb Benchmark, the card outperformed the ATP on writes, so the operating system and drivers can influence write (and read) performance. Lastly, we did PC benchmarks using Sandra 2005 and the card did quite well compared to other high speed, high capacity cards on the market. Our opinion: the card is definitely fast.

Ridata 66x PRO 1 gig SD

File Create: 232%
File Delete: 108%
File Write: 73%
File Read: 713%
File Seek: 907%
DB Export: 129%
DB Import: 803%
Record Access: 841%
Resource Access: 783%

VFSMark: 509

ATP 60X 2 Gig SD Pro

File Create: 1006%
File Delete: 833%
File Write: 53%
File Read: 760%
File Seek: 983%
DB Export: 176%
DB Import: 867%
Record Access: 978%
Resource Access: 960%

VFSMark: 740

256 meg SanDisk Standard SD Card

File Create: 37%
File Delete: 18%
File Write: 26%
File Read: 311%
File Seek: 453%
DB Export: 20%
DB Import: 393%
Record Access: 425%
Resource Access: 384%

VFSMark: 229

Compact Flash cards are one of the oldest forms of flash memory, and they're still the standard for flash performance in high end Pocket PCs and in digital cameras. The CF card slot's 16 bit data bus is wider and faster than the SD card slot's 4 bit data bus, so nothing beats CF when you have a need for speed. Cost per meg is also lower for CF cards since they're not as highly miniaturized as other recent flash media. Ridata's 80x 1 gig CF card performed well in our 5 megapixel digital camera with fast recycle times and in our HP iPaq hx 4700 Windows Mobile Pocket PC which we used to watch .wmv and .avi videos, view photos taken with the Oly digicam and played the very large, resource intensive Atlantis Redux.

Spb Benchmark Results using an HP iPaq hx4700 624 MHz Pocket PC:

Write 1 meg file: 1478 KB/sec
Read 1 meg file: 2.17 MB/sec

Web Site: www.ritekusa.com

Price varies with capacity