SD card slot on CPU for SDHC card transfers ?
 

MxM claims on their website:

"never use the SD slot on the laptop to transfer your footage to your hard drive as doing so may corrupt your data and SDHC card, use any available 34 adapter or certified reader"

have you found this to be true? what are your thoughts or experiences?

thanks,
Mike

I usually do use the SD slot + EX ClipBrowser to preview and transfer the clips to the editing system and have had no problems so far.
Some have advised turning the card's "write lock" to on to prevent the system from writing anything to the card.

thanks for the "write lock" tip. i'll give it a try.

This is a practical advice. I have the lockable version of the MxM adapters and the lock part is quite fiddly and made of thin plastic. So I found the best to leave the SDHC card inside and never take out. I have the USB reader from MxM, so its not a biggie to download the files, the reader is very cheap but working well.

I assume there could really be a problem if anything will be written on the card, however the "workflow" with the reader prevents other problems, too - such as losing or misplacing a card, or mess up cards (accidental deleting) or breaking the lock.

From MxM point of view this matter definitely helps to sell more adapters. But if you compare the prices to the SxS cards it really wont matter - and now (at least in the EX1r) the MxM soultion works same as SxS, with any rate or setting. Never failed a frame while using them.

I'm not convinced the risk of ejecting SD cards outweighs the risk of a computer system corrupting the card. Macs like nothing more than spewing invisible files all over any media inserted yet I've never had an issue and one has never been reported on here. Sony will have taken this kind of writing into account given the high proportion of Mac users using the system.

Windows on the other hand, if you have a virus then might run into problems.

For all we know, inserting the SD card with your left hand may also "corrupt your data and SDHC card" since they offer no evidence of WHY they say that.

I have never followed this advice and I have had no issues with my SDHC cards.

I've only experienced this problem once. Filming a live event, 7 cameras. I was the only handheld so fortunately my footage amounted to B-roll material. One of my clips had a few minutes of corruption. I was able to salvage the footage eventually but playback of the original clip is inconsistent. Sometimes it will work but most of the time you have to skip past the corrupt portion. The sound was completely trashed for that portion of the clip. The DP wanted to download straight to his Mac in the green room and didn't want to use the USB from the camera. I've never had any other issues with these cards though.

well, it sounds like if we switch the "write lock" on then we shouldn't have any problems. i still don't understand the argument of how using an external USB reader will avoid the CPU from writing data back to the cards as MxM's statement may be suggesting. just my guess. i use a SD card for my stills camera and when i use a USB reader with my older MBP then use the same card and reader on my PC i notice weird Mac files on the card. as of right now i think the "write lock" technique is probably the best way to go regardless of using an external reader or not.