CF card reader FW800 vs USB 2.0

[Tom.Wong]

that thing looks awesome. still wish it was firewire or esata based it's never fast enough.

all my expresscards are apiotek. esata, fw800, cf card. they all work flawless. lot of ppl use sonnata and even firmtek. i've never had an issue with apiotek even though they are a less known company. keep in mind that a lot of these companies use the same technology and rebrand them. out of 10 expresscards out there, 6 of them are probably all the same components with just a remix of drivers.

 

[Clifford Norton]

At the max, these cards are pulling 47 MB / second. USB 2.0 shouldn't dip much below 30-35 MB/s sustained throughput, max burst throughput closer to 40-45 MB/s.

Well, that depends on a lot of things, including what else your processor is doing at the time. In real-world comparisons I've done, USB hasn't ever been even close. FW400 is faster.
The only way to take advantage of these newer breed (UDMA 5+) CF read speeds in through a FW 800 reader or pro ExpressCard. Not all ExpressCards are the same. Most are just USB bridges.
Check out this Sonnet model. There are a few out there that are essentially the same as this, but this one has a better card guide to reduce the chance of bent pins inside. Plus it accommodates two cards at once!

Cliff

 

[Clifford Norton]

I'm not sure if this has been discussed here or not, but the real Cat's Pajamas in this arena in Sonnet's new QIO.
Woof.

Cliff!

 

[Tehben Dean]

I have one of these "Lexar professional" Firewire 800 readers http://www.lexar.com//readers/pro_udma_reader.html f. It seems to be about twice as fast as the equivalent usb2 model that I used before.
If anyone wants me to compare the two I would be happy to.

 

[Jonathan Smiles]

I have found the Lexar UDMA FW800 CF reader to be faster than the SanDisk Extreme FireWire 800 Reader on the same setup.