Some time ago I bought a USB connected XQD Card reader but the card I placed into it did not come up on my desktop PC or laptop at all. Having just received a couple of used XQD cards I bought off the internet, I now know the reason why. Some cards no not have the "USB" logo on them, and it appears that these cannot be read by USB-powered card readers ! Whose stupid idea was this?

Does that mean that the cards without this logo can only work and be read when in a camera? Is there any way to get them to read in a PC other than by leaving them in the camera and connecting it to the PC via a dedicated lead?

 

Who’s stupid idea was that? Sony’s I imagine since the XQD card is/was a Sony invention.

 

I can’t believe that it is impossible to transfer data from a XQD card to a computer or that a USB device wouldn’t be the medium. Either you were mis-sold or specific drivers are needed.

 

Is your XQD reader a Sony device or some other make? My first XQD card came with the reader at minimal extra cost.

 

My XQD card reader is a Delkin. The first XQD card I bought was a Sony, did not come with a card reader but does work OK in the Delkin reader that I have.

The subsequent XQD cards I bought, one of which is Sony, do not have the "usb" logo on them and don't work in the card reader. I don't recall reading anything in the photographic mags when XQD cards were "launched" that said that some could not be read by USB card readers, but surely most camera memory cards are placed into a card reader to transfer data to a PC, so making some that do not communicate in this way is IMHO crazy

 

What evidence do you have for that? My guess is that "most" people would use WiFi, Bluetooth or a USB cord to transfer images to another device. Of course, knowing nothing about "most" people, that is a simple guess, like your own.

 

USB will be the protocol by which the reader talks to the computer. I don’t see why the card should be marked USB, seems to me totally irrelevant. Quick google suggests you are not alone in having difficulty.

 

I would imagine that he's right for XQD cards, probably less so for cards in general these days. Either way, it doesn't really matter if he's technically correct or not, card reader is certainly going to be a fairly common method of transferring files from card to computer, and being pedantic about "most" doesn't really make any difference to the issue.

 

The Delkin reader advert I found says it supports “all popular XQD formats” suggesting there can be compatibility problems. I also found references to power requirements. Not all USB connections are equal when it comes to power draw. Could be that some cards require more power to read than others.

I’ve exhausted my curiosity! If the cards work in the camera suggest just use a cable to download from the camera to the computer as per post #6. That’s what I do.

 

To be honest, I generally avoid Sony where any kind of compatibility is required, and that goes quadruple for memory card compatability. They do have a track record in this area...
XQD does have the whiff of a Sony romp down a blind alley, despite them getting others involved - Nikon have announced (and certainly launched some) firmware updates for several of their cameras that use XQD cards to allow them to use CFexpress cards, Canon have ignored XQD and gone straight to CFexpress, and even Sony's latest A7S III uses CFexpress.

My best guess as to why newer XQD cards don't work in the reader in question is that they're probably a newer version of XQD.

EDIT: It's frankly a complete mess, it appears:

https://fstoppers.com/business/why-im-not-investing-xqd-memory-cards-yet-295297

The more I read, the more it reinforces my prejudice against Sony-derived memory "standards", because they're clearly anything but. If your camera gives you the firmware upgrade path out of this morass, it would seem to be a very sensible option.

 

I have to agree, XQD cards were designed for fast data transfer and, if used for video, are easily filled which would suggest to me that users will probably remove the card when full, or nearly so, and then transfer to computer using a card reader.

I would certainly not contemplate transferring data from an XQD card using the camera, the camera's data transfer rate via USB is much slower than can be achieved using a USB3 reader.

It certainly seems odd. My inclination would be to by another reader, they can be bought for under £20, and if you buy on-line and it doesn't work you should be able to return it.

 

If only! Nikon haven't issued an upgrade for the D4 so I am stuck with XQD but I have enough cards now that I won't need any more.

XQD does seem a typical Sony blind alley, they have, as you say, form in this area. Betamax, Memory stick and now XQD, Sony "standards" that few others were interested in adopting, probably because Sony wanted to recover the development costs quickly rather than making a good profit slowly, translates to the license was/is too expensive. I have used Sony products but wouldn't normally chose them over a competing brand. I had a Sony Vaio but they wouldn't release drivers to allow it to go back to Windows XP from Vista, I have a MiniDisk machine but rarely use it because it doesn't connect to anything else. The SLT didn't go anywhere either.

 

Yes, unlikely the D4 versions will get an upgrade, but at least the more recent models have/will, which is good work from Nikon in my book.

I've got an excellent Sony Blu-ray player, which is an example of Sony technology winning, I suppose, at least until the end of optical media. It has all sorts of fancy options if you use it with a compatible Sony TV, which I don't - and I suspect it wouldn't be compatible with current Sony TVs anyway. But it does its job really well, and was surprisingly cheap.

And in all fairness to Sony, they did abandon the Minolta flash shoe for one much more like a standard hotshoe, that at least allows normal hotshoe flashes without an adaptor. Although you could argue that abandonment was in itself very Sony...

Thing is they're first and foremost a consumer electronics company, where standards change like the wind, not a camera company like Nikon, where standards are pretty much for life. It's perhaps unfair of me to judge them by the standards of standards we're used to.

 

I spotted a bit on Nikon Rumors that there will be a firmware upgrade coming for the D5, D850 and D500 to allow the use of CFExpress cards. No mention of the D4 though.

 

Indeed it is excellent work, and realistically I wouldn't have bought CFExpress cards anyway because of a Nikon file/folder numbering quirk which means they are too big. I can however still be disappointed that they didn't/couldn't include the D4.

There are many excellent Sony products but the buyer really does have to take great care to get something that is likely to remain usable for a longer period. At this distance from the product's lifetime it is difficult to say much more about Betamax and Memory stick than that they were ultimately a dead-end, at the time they did what was required of them. To be fair XQD does the job very well and remains available, it could have been more though if only Sony had made the details freely available, or at least cheap enough, for other manufacturers to get onboard. CFExpress would still have come along but more devices would have been available with XQD/CFExpress card slots, we'll never know what else might have been different.