Sandisk Extreme FireWire Reader
by SanDisk
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List Price: Category: CE See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Sandisk Extreme FireWire Reader
Customer Review: Fastest card reader for a Mac
Summary: 5 Stars
Please be aware that all the people giving this product one star reviews are Windows users. If you are a Mac user with a Firewire 400 port (either laptop or desktop, does not matter) you will be very happy with it. If you are a Mac user with a Firewire 800 port, you cannot buy a faster, or more reliable card.
I am a professional fashion photographer who shoots 21 megapixel raw files. Typical number of shots per full day of shooting is two thousand to three thousand. I shoot on Sandisk Extreme IV 8GB and 16 GB cards (even Extreme III cards are too slow for the Canon IDs Mk 3), filling up 4 to 6 cards in a day. So how fast a reader downloads files to my three drives (one main, and two back-ups) is of crucial importance.
This reader is faster and more reliable than the Lexar Firewire 800 reader. I have both, but I get data corruption with the Lexar FW800 reader - four to eight images per card end up being corrupted upon download (though they are ok on the card). I have never had an image show up corrupted when downloading using this Sandisk reader. (By the way, the Lexar Firewire 400 reader is 100% rock solid and reliable. It is slower than this Sandisk reader because the Sandisk is a FW800 reader, but I have happily used two Lexar FW400 readers for years before the FW800 readers came to market.)
Customer Review: Great with Firewire 800, causes lockups otherwise
Summary: 3 Stars
I used this reader with a 15" MacBook Pro that has both a FireWire 400 and FireWire 800 port. At first I didn't even notice the cable that would let me connect to the FireWire 800 port. So I tried to use the card reader (connected to the FireWire 400 port) to move some pictures off of a compact flash card and onto my MacBook. Most of the time, this would result in my MacBook locking up. I think this is the only device or software program that has managed to lock up my MacBook. On rare occasions, the reader would work for a short while before causing a lockup.
After struggling with this problem for a weekend, I was packing up the reader to return it when I noticed the other cable. I used this cable to connect the reader to the FireWire 800 port and the reader has been working flawlessly ever since. The transfer speeds with my UDMA Compact Flash card are incredible. I have been using it to move large photos and 1080p video (from a Canon 5D Mark II) and it has alleviated the agonizing waits during transfers.
The issue could be with FireWire 400, or the amount of power supplied to that port on my particular MacBook. Whatever the case may be, it just won't work in that configuration. If you have a configuration that works, this reader is outstanding.
Customer Review: So far, so good
Summary: 4 Stars
I've only had this reader for a couple of days, but I'm pretty familiar with card readers...particularly USB readers for CF cards. I've had my fill of Windoze poor management of storage media via USB (at all levels from XP to Windoze 7 Pro which is what I run it with now) and decided to go with a different interface. The Firewire is much faster than USB and so far, seems to be free of the dumb stare that most USB readers get when trying to read the 2nd or 3rd card. I've had zero problems with it in the short time I've had it. Since I use it on my desktop, I have no problem using a 6-wire interface cable, which is all I use for all FW devices. I'll do an update later as I've used it more. Ohh..I also got an apparently no-name CF-SD card adapter so I can use the SDHC cards for my baby Panasonic camera and it's worked flawlessly, too. Price was the only reason I didn't give this reader a 5-star rating.
Caveat: This isn't a multi-interface reader
Pros:
Firewire interface
Fast data transfer
Flawless operation so far
Works with SD card adapter
Cons:
Price
Requires 6-wire connection (not an issue for me)
Doesn't have USB connection option (not an issue for me)
Customer Review: It is faster!
Summary: 3 Stars
Sandisk now makes their Extreme 60MB/s and Extreme Pro 90MB/s compact flash cards.
Important Update 2-19-10
I have completely rewritten this review, because the previous review where I said speeds were slower than they should be was wrong.
I was only able to read at the specified speed of 40MB/s and Sandisk confirmed that this was the maximum for this reader even with the faster card. This is wrong!
I talked to Rob Galbraith who's article claimed he got high number speeds from this reader and the Extreme 60MB/s cards.
With his help, I was able to determine why I was not getting those speeds. It seems that on my Mac Pro the Firewire 400 and 800 Port is on the same bus. So if there is something plugged into a Firewire 400 port, the Firewire 800 port dumbs down to Firewire 400 speeds.
I unplugged my Firewire device and low and behold I got an average of 55MB/s with a top speed of 58MB/s.
If I could, I might have considered raising the rating. But since after contacting Sandisk 3 times and three different people there all said this reader cannot go faster then 40MB/s, I think I will just let it go.
Though, maybe I should tell Sandisk?
Customer Review: Just Good on Older MacBooks
Summary: 5 Stars
I have to concur with the postive reviews for this device when used with a Mac desktop computer. It does truly fly. I get transfer rates using Path Finder that always exceed 40MB/sec using a 8GB SanDisk Extreme IV card, 38-40+MB/sec using an 8GB Transcend 133x card, and about 29MB/sec using a 4GB Sandisk Extreme III card. These are read (download) rates. The write speed for the Transcend is significantly slower than the Sandisk cards.
This consistency is really rare. I use a USB Imagemate reader (highly regarded) to read my SD cards, and the transfer rate fluctuates dramatically from as slow as 8MB/sec to close to 20MB/sec. I attribute this huge variance to USB. The transfer rate of USB varies with multiple factors. By contrast, firewire devices are pretty consistent in their speed.
However, I was a bit disappointed connecting this device to my pre-unibody 15" MBP. These CD cards never exceeded 26MB/sec read rates. I had read that there was some problem with firewire implementation on the MBP, but I had hoped that Apple would have corrected the problem (this was a late 2007 model). Hopefully, the unibody MBP has the full speed FW 800 implemented.