Not all memory is created equal

With upgrading the photography gear, I’ve also learned that not all memory is created equal. There’s a lot more to it than just size. In particular, SD (Secure Digital) cards in SD, miniSD, and microSD card sizes come with different speed ratings. The speed is important for photos and videos as it needs to be fast enough that the memory card can be written to without the camera stalling or freezing trying to wait for the write process. There are class 2, 4, and 6. I have class 6 cards in both cameras. The SD cards also come in different types. The SD card is available up to 4 GB, the SDHC is available up to 32 GB, and the SDXC will be theoretically available up to 2 TB (terabytes)! Wikipedia has a nice explanation on all the details.

Memory has both read and write speeds, which may be different, along with lots of other specifications. USB memory sticks are also not created equal. The speeds of USB sticks aren’t as generally published, as they are for SD cards, but try to find USB sticks that have read and write speeds close to 30 MB/sec, which will be close to what a portable hard drive would read and write at across USB 2.0. One of the fastest USB sticks I’ve run across is the OCZ Rally2 Turbo USB 2.0 Flash Drive, but I’m sure others can be found with a little surfing.