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FireWire Flash Drives

Tallest Skil

Tallest Skil

macrumors P6
Original poster
Aug 13, 2006
16,044
4
1 Geostationary Tower Plaza
So...I really don't want a USB flash drive. USB sucks eggs simply because FireWire can do so much more (TDM, transfer speeds, etc.)

OCZ was going to make a FireWire flash drive; heck, they had a FireWire 800 version built!

Does anyone know of any FireWire flash drives? 800 is certainly preferable, since 400 is currently dead.

Not the extortionately-priced Kanguru crap.
 
I've never seen a FW flash drive...

It would be rather pointless to make it though, because the bottleneck is memory speed, not USB. (I've never seen a flash drive exceed 4 MB/sec write speed, while USB can easily do 15 MB/sec+)
 
eXan said:
It would be rather pointless to make it though, because the bottleneck is memory speed, not USB. (I've never seen a flash drive exceed 4 MB/sec write speed, while USB can easily do 15 MB/sec+)
Click to expand...

Interesting, then that they saw such an improvement over USB here. Am I reading this wrong and you're right, or is FireWire really an improvement with transfer speeds?

fire_small_3.jpg
 
Well a Google search for "firewire flash drive" listed several that I have seen before- the most prominent is Kangaru FlashFire which is even sold on Amazon (the smaller sizes). This is the same type of product offered by Micromat (the Tech Tool people) in their Tech Tool Protege pocket diagnostic tool.

I guess mostly due to limited production they are not cheap though.
 
Tallest Skil said:
Interesting, then that they saw such an improvement over USB here. Am I reading this wrong and you're right, or is FireWire really an improvement with transfer speeds?

fire_small_3.jpg
Click to expand...

Hmm. They probably used hi-speed flash memory, which is expensive nowadays. And I imagine the extra price for FW itself could lead to a really expensive toy...
 
While I have never seen a firewire flash drive several companies have recently announced esata flash drives which look very promising.
 
You can put a flash drive in a FireWire case yourself.

But some newer flash drives, like the ones from Intel, saturate the SATA bus, so I wouldn't even use FW800.

There is SATA 6 Gbps coming for this.
 
cube said:
You can put a flash drive in a FireWire case yourself.
Click to expand...

Would you be so kind as to show me where I can purchase a flash memory chip and a circuit board with a receptacle for said chip that not only is the size of a normal USB flash drive, but also has a FireWire port out?

If I have to make my own, I'd certainly be fine with that, provided the parts even exist.
 
I could use that for my G4 PB, actually.


And another one I would give away to a friend of mine who just bought the Alu Macbook without firewire ports.
 
If you say "firewire flash drive" we don't necessarily understand that what you want is a stick.
 
cmon, it can't be that bad. USB should be fine for your personal use. those drives werent made to be cutting edge, just something tiny and universal that all computers can be plugged into.
 
You could get an ExpressCard/34 SSD, if you're using an MBP. This might be faster than FW800.
 
Your mention of TDM as a reason for FireWire external drives makes no sense.
 
It's computers that have TDM, not the drives. So the FireWire in the computer accesses the internal drives.

The external drives always work like standalone drives, you just plug them where you need.

I'm not sure if you can access an ExpressCard drive with TDM if you can't plug it anywhere else.
 
I stumbled across this thread looking for a firewire flash drive (or whatever it should be called) because I was looking for something that I could plug into a firewire port to xfer data. The main reason is that where I work they do not allow USB connections to a computer (think about it), but they have no such rules for firewire (go figure). If anyone knows of a firewire data xfer media that uses the FW400 port let me know.
 
southwos said:
I stumbled across this thread looking for a firewire flash drive (or whatever it should be called) because I was looking for something that I could plug into a firewire port to xfer data. The main reason is that where I work they do not allow USB connections to a computer (think about it), but they have no such rules for firewire (go figure). If anyone knows of a firewire data xfer media that uses the FW400 port let me know.
Click to expand...

A FW800 2.5" external drive?
 
What about firewire to ide/sata then ide/sata to ssd?

It seems that only kanguru sells it? but their product page is now 404?
 
I really can't believe not a single FW thumb drive is on the market. Even at a higher price point, they would make wonderful diagnostic tools for booting a Mac from. Stick FW400 on one end and FW800 on the other, it would be the perfect portable, bootable operating system.
 
sprale said:
I really can't believe not a single FW thumb drive is on the market. Even at a higher price point, they would make wonderful diagnostic tools for booting a Mac from. Stick FW400 on one end and FW800 on the other, it would be the perfect portable, bootable operating system.
Click to expand...

Or you could just use a portable hard drive with an enclosure that has USB, FW and eSATA.
 
jdechko said:
Or you could just use a portable hard drive with an enclosure that has USB, FW and eSATA.
Click to expand...

Old thread, but thought I would chime in. Pre-Intel, you couldn't boot a Mac with a USB drive, thus the firewire requirement. Now that Apple doesn't support pre-intel systems, Intel Mac's can boot from USB and the demand was basically by support techs only, there's no money in Firewire flash memory, as the greater market share of PC's don't have Firewire ports... at least desktops, whereas Intel, AMD and NVIDIA embraced the USB spec into their chipsets.

Even with faster speeds of the bus, you used the more expensive higher speed memory to get the performance there's the problem with royalties involved that don't exist for USB. You would be hard pressed to offset manufacturing costs against USB. Kanguru's dumped their firewire line, but have brought up a USB/eSATA combo flash drive you could check out.
 
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