Kanguru Releases First FireWire Flash Drive 55
hajmola points out this Mac Observer article, which starts "At long last, after years of USB having a corner on the flash drive market, Kanguru has announced its Fire Flash FireWire flash drive line. With capacities ranging from 128MB to 1GB, the Fire Flash is the perfect way to carry your data with you, and since they uses FireWire, you won't be waiting around for the transfer to finish.""
USB 2.0 is faster (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:USB 2.0 is faster (Score:2, Informative)
-jim
Re:USB 2.0 is faster (Score:3, Informative)
Yay.
Re:USB 2.0 is faster (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:USB 2.0 is faster (Score:2)
Re:USB 2.0 is faster (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, in theory USB2 can do 480Mbps. In practice [barefeats.com] it doesn't achieve that kind of speed, it's slightly slower than Firewire 400.
When you recall that Firewire supports isochronous transfers and daisy-chaining, which USB lacks, speed isn't the only advantage.
Now if only Apple could fix the Panther Firewire stack so I could use my Firewire drive stack they way it used to work...
Re:USB 2.0 is faster (Score:5, Informative)
There is no question, as far as I know, that Firewire 400 provides better throughput than USB 2.0 in a typical environment (and most non-typical ones as well). Not just better, either. Significantly better. I can attest to this personally. A file that, via USB, takes 3 seconds to copy to the hard drive in my USB2/Firewire400 enclosure, only takes about 1.5 seconds via Firewire. (for those concerned about my testing methods, yes, these are smallish files for a reason. I don't want the drive's maximum to be taken into account. As long as we're only writing to the 8MB cache, we should be fine.
Anyway, yeah. Ignore the marketing hype and look at benchmarks. USB 2.0 -- replacing the Mhz myth with the Mbps myth.
Re:USB 2.0 is faster (Score:4, Interesting)
That doesn't even include IEEE1394.b, which is 800Mbps. Unfortunately, these devices aren't of the newer flavour of FireWire.
You will also certainly find major speed differences in different sets of USB & FireWire chips & drivers, so you'd have to benchmark the things to find out for sure.
Re:USB 2.0 is faster (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, I have noticed that transfers take about 25% more time when I use USB over FireWire.
Now, about this little device, I myself, being a heavy FireWire advocate do not see a major use for it. In a flash drive, I want the ability to use it everywhere, and many machines I
Re:USB 2.0 is faster (Score:3, Insightful)
Is a Volvo S60 faster than a Ford Expedition? Well, it depends on usage right? Freeway? Off road? In a river?
But in usage tests, Firewire is faster. Feel free to buy USB2, of course, but you're only cheating yourself in most situations!
Re:USB 2.0 is faster (Score:2)
Re:USB 2.0 is faster (Score:3, Interesting)
Your points are not the parent AC's points. His was "USB2 is faster than Firewire" and your points are "USB2 is more ubiquitous and fast enough."
If you use the parent AC's belief that USB2 is faster than Firewire and purchase accordingly, you will be disappointed because in fact Firewire is faster.
If you buy using your points, that USB2 is more ubiquitous and fast enough then of course you won't be disappointed because it's true.
I've enjoyed a nice healthy 16mb/s from my iPod,
Re:USB 2.0 is faster (Score:4, Funny)
Man, 16 millibits per second? That would take YEARS to transfer one song! Poor guy.
(This post brought to you by the Association for the Correct Capitalization of Abbreviations)
Re:USB 2.0 is faster (Score:2)
And yes, my main points were that USB 2.0 is pretty fast and is ubiquitous. I do, however, think Firewire is usually faster. Yes, once in a g
Only if you buy the right flash card (Score:1)
Having a Firewire option is great for people who don't have alot of USB2 connectors but have Firewire. Doesn't seem like a huge market though.
Re:Only if you buy the right flash card (Score:2)
I'd have to agree here. I'm a big Mac user, but FireWire's design is biased towards continuous data streaming (for like audio and video), while USB 2.0 (or even 1.1) is good enough for random access flash media. Since a big use for the keychains is to help move files between machines (even between PCs and Macs, if you're careful), the poor deployment for IEEE 1394 i
The Catch (Score:4, Insightful)
So as nice as this is, it's not for everyone. USB really is superior for this task because of this (IMHO). I have never seen or heard of an unpowered USB port. And if such a thing exists, I don't think it is up to spec because (unlike FW) I think that all USB ports are require to be able to power something (not pass-though ports though).
Still, neat to see. Now if we could just lose the 4 pin FW ports. The connectors are bad enough on their own. Redesign it, and and power to it.
Re:The Catch (Score:2)
Funny you should mention this .. I was testing a USB key I bought for my wife, when I plugged it into the USB port on the back of my Mac's keyboard, I got an error informing me that the device was on an unpowered port.
Re:The Catch (Score:2)
Re:The Catch (Score:2)
Also, to the grandpart of this post, did the USB drive work plugged into the keyboard? It may have been an unpowered port, but I wouldn't be suprised if there was enough power to run the USB key.
Re:The Catch (Score:3, Informative)
I'm afraid you're doing what most users do. You're relaying the error message you thought you saw, and not the actual error message.
USB has negotiation built into it. Initially, a device gets a small amount of power, then it negotiates for more. If it requires more power than is available on the hub, it won't get it. The hub inside standard Mac keyboards doesn't have much power, so some flash drives won't work on it. I've used flash drives that worked on a mac keyboard and some that don't.
So your
Re:The Catch (Score:1)
Re:The Catch (Score:2)
Re:The Catch (Score:2)
For a little drive you can take anywhere and use on any computer, USB is simply superior to FireWire.
The Problem (Score:2)
You could have chosen one with 6 pin, too.
Re:The Problem (Score:2)
I'd say that this was all way too clumsy for anyone to do, but the week before last I bought a USB2 hub spe
Re:The Problem (Score:2)
Thanks!
Re:The Problem (Score:2)
The product is okay. I'm using it at the moment because it works under XP SP2 and my Margi PCMCIA adapter does not. Screen updates are quite slow at 1024x768x16bit (the highest res/colours it does). When I say slow, I mean that you can see it drawing down the screen, at least on my laptop with the hookup described above. (There may be a driver problem, because areas of flat colour I would expect to be filled in hardware are visibly filled lin
Re:The Problem (Score:1)
But why would he have wanted to? He doesn't want Firewire in the first place, there are far more USB 2.0 devices out there than Firewire devices, USB 2.0 is faster and more widely available, and there is a much wider range of machines available that don't have 6 pin Firewire. And for the only function that most normal people use Firewire for, hooking up a camcorder, 4 pin is more than enough.
Furthermore, th
Because (Score:2)
Oh, you mean what rational reasons would he prefer powered Firewire?
Maybe he wants an iPod. He did mention it in his post! Or maybe he HAS one?
Because Firewire is faster, as explained in multiple points?
Because Firewire does carry more power, you can have many neater gadgets (yes at battery expense) that do not require external power. iPods, hard drives, CD drives, etc.
Because he wants a camcorder?
Because he wants to chain multiple devices?
I
Re:Because (Score:1)
It's all an engineering and cost tradeoff.
But you're being silly if you think Firewire doesn't have a reason to exist. It has much better performance, sustained performance, and for stuff like video work (camcorder and hard drives) and other high performance activities, more performance is better.
Not at any cost. USB2 is fast enough for hard drives. It's also so cheap that people generally just plug each high-speed device into its own controll
Re:Because (Score:2)
But USB2 is fast enough for now, until you start hitting devices that need more, and that will always happen. And then what?
You have either Firewire800, which already exists, or you hobble along with USB2 for three more years until USB3 is released. Take a broader view, man! Imagine two years ago, you only had Firewire because USB1 was too slow!
In terms of price, USB2 and Firewire is the same price in terms of production. The only reason it isn't the same price in deployment is
Re:The Catch (Score:3, Insightful)
The amount power you can send over a 6-pin FireWire bus is one of its greatest assets. I've had four external FireWire hard drives daisy-chained off of one FW port without having to resort to an external power source. Granted, God Save You if you try to transfer data from two of those drives at once, b
Re:The Catch (Score:2)
Some of the (few) PC's that include Firewire ports have 4-pin ports on the front where you'd be plugging in something like a little flash drive, and the powered ports on the back. This is also a pain.
IMHO firewire is great when you need high-speed transfer - like DV cameras
Re:The Catch (Score:2, Interesting)
FW is spec'ed to supply much more power to devices than USB. That's probably the reason why designers don't like to put powered FW ports on laptops in the first place, and that's only going to get worse as laptops get lighter and more power efficient.
Re:The Catch (Score:2)
The more power effecient a laptop is, the more power is available to use, the less is wasted.
What would make things worse is laptops getting
a) smaller batteries
b) less power efficient
c) more power hungry
Firewire for speed? (Score:1)
Re:Firewire for speed? (Score:1)
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Marketing gimmick (Score:2)
Kanguru Is Not The First (Score:3, Informative)
Wiebetech had a Firewire Keychain flash firewire drive back in 2002.
Check it out:
Searching vs. waiting (Score:2)
and since they uses [sic] FireWire, you won't be waiting around for the transfer to finish.
So, instead of waiting for my USB transfer to finish, I'll spend my time trying to find a machine with firewire ports. Yeah, okay.