Customer Reviews

Sandisk Extreme FireWire Reader

5 star:		(58)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(20)

 

 

I recently switched over to shooting RAW (7-9 meg a shot) instead of jpeg (2-4 meg a shot) so I got myself an 8Gig Extreme III card and this reader. I have used many readers in the past, but nothing has even come close to this speed before.

I can put over 1,000 RAW files or about 4,000 jpegs on the card and then transfer them all over to my computer in just a few minutes instead of closer to a half-hour or more. It seems to average around 1Gig a minute.

It is also pretty small so you can travel with it easily. However, if your notebook PC has a 4 pin firewire connection, like many do, this will not work. Firewire needs 6 pin or higher to be able to power devices. I e-mailed SanDisk several times about this and they just gave me the run-around, so I did the research on my own to find this out. So if anyone knows of a way around this please let me know because based on what I saw it is not possible.

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.)

I wanted to take advantage of 1394B 800MB Firewire on my Windows XP PC so I bought a Firewire 800 card. However, I was not able to achieve the dramatic transfer speeds that others do. After researching, I found out that Microsoft CRIPPLED Firewire in Windows XP SP2! It is limited to 100MB. They provide a fix but you have to look for it by searching the Microsoft Knowledge Base MSKB for "firewire" and you will find the patch to download. You may also have to edit your registry.
Why did this happen and why has it not been fixed? Why doesn't Sandisk warn us about it? Who knows, but I hope this information helps you.

Now THIS is an upgrade! After getting a new digital camera I had been using the USB cable to transfer images to my Mac G4 MDD. I knew it would be slow, but what the hey. With the USB cable I was getting about 750-800Kb per second transfer rate. With the Sandisk Extreme reader I now get 33MB per second! YEEOWZA! This thing flies like the wind! 400MB of files blasted onto the hard drive in seconds! It was so fast I had to laugh like a madman. What more could you ask for, you plug the thing it, it mounts right up; no software to install or anything (not sure about the Windows world, though) and it copies files off the card like greased lightning. If you are impatient and\or value your time this little thing gets the job done. Your progress bars will actually make progress!

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?

Thanks to the new Firewire 800 technology, this reader is the fastest available currently on the market. Rated the best in on-line tests. Build quality is solid as plastic can get, with a nice rubbery bottom pad so it won't slide off surfaces. Comes with Firewire 800 cable and Firewire 400/800 adapter cable so you can use it on a Firewire 400 port if you don't have Firewire 800 on your computer (you will not get the fast speed though).

After getting sick of the SLOW transfer times of the digital images from my camera's CompactFlash card to my computer, I decided to step up to a firewire card reader. Here's my comparison of my "old" USB 2.0 unit to the new SanDisk Firewire Extreme card reader...

For testing purposes, I used 24 files (RAW camera images - Nikon D70) totaling 123.3MB, which were stored on a SanDisk Extreme 1GB CompactFlash card. Using a "Stor" USB-HUB Combo card reader (USB-2.0), it took 2-minutes & 14-seconds to transfer the images to the hard drive. Using the SanDisk FireWire Extreme Reader, I compared transfer times (using the same 24-image files) using both Firewire 400 and Firewire 800 on a Mac Pro (Intel). In this situation of comparing the two different firewire types, the transfer times were identical at 10-seconds. Comparing to the USB 2.0 unit, the SanDisk Extreme Firewire Reader was 134-times faster! Definitely worth the $65 bucks for the unit!!!

This is my first review - had to write something up since I love it so much:-)

I have a Nikon D200 camera and shoot in NEF mode which results in a file that is 15mb in size per shot, and purchased the new Sandisk Extreme IV 4GB Compact flash card. Even with USB 2.0 downloading a full card was a 10+ min chore no matter what I did. After buying the new Extreme Firewire Reader my troubles went away. I can now download a full card in around 3 minutes. The only thing about this card is you need AT LEAST a Firewire 400 connection or the newer 800 connection which is what I download through. If you use ANY compact flash cards, this will pay for itself in a short period of time! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!

I owned a usb2 card reader and it took at least 5 minutes to transfer my full 256 MB compact flash cards to my imac. now I can barely review the pictures in Iphoto while the reader is working, as it takes no more than 10 seconds. Really impressive

Just used mine for the first time tonight and I must say that I'm impressed. It is lightning fast. I shoot RAW images almost exclusively & this just downloaded 110 RAW images in mere seconds. Well worth the investment. Much faster than my previous USB model.