When I plug in my camera through USB to read its card, it can take a while to load all the photos. I was wondering if and how I can reduce this loading time? Do I need a better/faster SD card or are there some tricks I can do on the camera or the computer?
Example of a folder loading:
Your camera is probably not the best or fastest USB memory card reader you can own, so even if you are using the fastest card you can buy and the camera claims to be using the fastest USB protocol your computer can handle, it's not very likely that it will give you the best data transfer speeds. A high-quality, high-speed external USB card reader (there's no reason not to use USB 3; it'll still be relatively cheap at or around $40) combined with fast cards, will give you the best performance.
I looked around for a CF card reader that was faster than the common cheap ones. It's not easy to shop for as they don't really say on the specs, but I found someone who made a recommendation and it was sound advice. It was indeed much faster than other card readers I had around.
The camera itself is probably not fast. It's probably not USB3.
I just bought a new PNY "Elite Performance" SD card that states 90 Mbytes/second, and my own tests on my USB3 reader confirm that. The reader needs to handle the optional faster protocols to make use of the card's potential.
In my experience, common USB2 devices have a hard limit of 20 MB/s. I think that's due to the chipset, since I have seen occasional devices that are faster.
The SD Card might be too older to perform as you want. Consider formatting it completely first and see if it perform faster than before. Alternatively, you can also try different card reader of faster performance or purchase a new one with reputed manufacturer.
