Trouble with new SanDisk Firewire 800 SDDRX4-CF acting sluggish!

[chupacabra31]

Hello,

Okay so I just bought a second hand SanDisk Firewire 800 compact flash card reader from ebay. Unfortunately it did not come with the cable. I thought no big deal as I have two firewire 800 cables one came with my back up drive from OWC (I think a high end one they sell for $20 looks similar) and one from a western digital my book studio edition back up drive.

The weird thing is that my old SanDisk SDDRX3-3IN1 USB 2.0 card reader is actually faster transferring data by 40 seconds.

I used my sandisk extreme III 8.0 GB cf card for the test holding close to 1gb of data.

The test consists of me dragging and dropping the EOS100D folder to my desktop then waiting.

This is using my sole computer which is a late 2010 13" macbook pro loaded with 8gb ram, SSD drives OSX 10.6.8

So do you think this could be caused from not having the OEM cable? This is a nightmare, I thought how cool it was that I got a firewire 800 card reader in the hopes of faster transfers to my computer and its actually slower!
chupacabra31 is offline 0 Reply With Quote
Old Yesterday, 10:39 PM #2
chupacabra31
Thread Starter
macrumors newbie

Join Date: Aug 2011

Well said cables work fine with my back up drive which has firewire 800 and usb connections. The firewire transfer was more then 2x faster then the usb transfer using the same drive, so I think one could rule out the cable being the problem no?

Maybe part of what helps the sandisk is their OEM proprietary firewire cable?

Well said cables work fine with my back up drive which has firewire 800 and usb connections. The firewire transfer was more then 2x faster then the usb transfer using the same drive, so I think one could rule out the cable being the problem no?

Maybe part of what helps the sandisk is their OEM proprietary firewire cable?

 

[snaky69]

Hello,

Okay so I just bought a second hand SanDisk Firewire 800 compact flash card reader from ebay. Unfortunately it did not come with the cable. I thought no big deal as I have two firewire 800 cables one came with my back up drive from OWC (I think a high end one they sell for $20 looks similar) and one from a western digital my book studio edition back up drive.

The weird thing is that my old SanDisk SDDRX3-3IN1 USB 2.0 card reader is actually faster transferring data by 40 seconds.

I used my sandisk extreme III 8.0 GB cf card for the test holding close to 1gb of data.

The test consists of me dragging and dropping the EOS100D folder to my desktop then waiting.

This is using my sole computer which is a late 2010 13" macbook pro loaded with 8gb ram, SSD drives OSX 10.6.8

So do you think this could be caused from not having the OEM cable? This is a nightmare, I thought how cool it was that I got a firewire 800 card reader in the hopes of faster transfers to my computer and its actually slower!
chupacabra31 is offline 0 Reply With Quote
Old Yesterday, 10:39 PM #2
chupacabra31
Thread Starter
macrumors newbie

Join Date: Aug 2011

Well said cables work fine with my back up drive which has firewire 800 and usb connections. The firewire transfer was more then 2x faster then the usb transfer using the same drive, so I think one could rule out the cable being the problem no?

Maybe part of what helps the sandisk is their OEM proprietary firewire cable?

Well said cables work fine with my back up drive which has firewire 800 and usb connections. The firewire transfer was more then 2x faster then the usb transfer using the same drive, so I think one could rule out the cable being the problem no?

Maybe part of what helps the sandisk is their OEM proprietary firewire cable?

What speeds are you achieving? How fast is your memory card? How fast can the reader be? I strongly doubt the cable is at fault here.

 

[getz76]

You might have a bad reader or a bad cable. My unit works fine.

The Extreme III is only capable of 30 MB/s, and a good USB reader will hit that speed or close to it. You are not going to see gains unless you get a UDMA card.

 

[chupacabra31]

What speeds are you achieving? How fast is your memory card? How fast can the reader be? I strongly doubt the cable is at fault here.

Just to reiterate:
Transferring 1gb of data from card reader using drag and drop to desktop from mounted card image, with both sandisk extreme Hispeed USB 2.0 and Sandisk Extreme firewire 800 (only 800 they ever made). USING the sandisk extreme III ESP technology 8gb card for the transfer.

The transfer took approximately 60 seconds usb 2.0 hi-speed, the transfer took 115 seconds firewire 800. The firewire 800 reader should at the very least have some edge over the usb 2.0 reader, which is not the case at all.

----------

You might have a bad reader or a bad cable. My unit works fine.

The Extreme III is only capable of 30 MB/s, and a good USB reader will hit that speed or close to it. You are not going to see gains unless you get a UDMA card.

Okay but how do you explain the usb reader being almost 2x faster then the firewire 800 card reader with the same extreme III card.

Man it's like you guys just skimmed through my post haha. Can't say I blame you as it is kind of boring lol.

 

[getz76]

Okay but how do you explain the usb reader being almost 2x faster then the firewire 800 card reader with the same extreme III card.

Man it's like you guys just skimmed through my post haha. Can't say I blame you as it is kind of boring lol.

You might have a bad reader or a bad cable. My unit works fine.

The Extreme III is only capable of 30 MB/s, and a good USB reader will hit that speed or close to it. You are not going to see gains unless you get a UDMA card.

Come again?

 

[Freyqq]

no clue why you got a firewire 800 compact flash card reader in the first place. I thought those cards max out at around 20 mb\s anyways, so it would be well within USB 2.0's capabilities.

 

[getz76]

no clue why you got a firewire 800 compact flash card reader in the first place. I thought those cards max out at around 20 mb\s anyways, so it would be well within USB 2.0's capabilities.

The more expensive CompactFlash cards are UDMA 6, and can reach speeds of 90+ MB/s.

 

[chupacabra31]

no clue why you got a firewire 800 compact flash card reader in the first place. I thought those cards max out at around 20 mb\s anyways, so it would be well within USB 2.0's capabilities.

Why is the USB 2.0 reader faster then the firewire 800 reader, if anything by your guys logic, the firewire reader would at least be the same as the usb 2.0 reader but it is half the speed of the usb 2.0 reader :/

To address your question, because I also have 600x udma cards, I was just using the Sandisk as a test subject.

 

[snaky69]

From the specs I could find, your card reader is only good up to 40MB/s, which is right up there with what USB 2.0 is able to achieve(theoretical max of 60MB/S for usb 2.0)

Since it says "up-to" I strongly doubt it will ever reach said 40MB/s, so I daresay your unit is functionning correctly and according to spec.

 

[getz76]

Why is the USB 2.0 reader faster then the firewire 800 reader, if anything by your guys logic, the firewire reader would at least be the same as the usb 2.0 reader but it is half the speed of the usb 2.0 reader :/

You might have a bad reader or a bad cable.

You might want to read that again.

With that same reader and my SanDisk Extreme IV, I am getting about 40 mB/s read speeds.

 

[chupacabra31]

You might want to read that again.

With that same reader and my SanDisk Extreme IV, I am getting about 40 mB/s read speeds.

What OS X version are you using?

I bought an inexpensive lexar firewire 400 card reader (brand new) and it is half as slow as the Sandisk USB 2.0 Hi-speed reader with 3 different brand/size cards (transcend 400x UDMA, Sandisk Extreme III with the ESP Tech) including a Lexar 80x 4gb.

Did they stop supporting the firewire card reader since 10.4? Might be rubbish, but I am wondering.