USB2 vs FireWire-800 card reader

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koffiejunkie

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Those of you who've hung around here for long enough know that I have a strong bias toward FireWire over USB2 for anything storage related. Not for nothing. When I started photography, I had a Sandisk Extreme FireWire (400) reader. I lost it when my kit got stolen, and since that particular reader was discontinued, it's replacement was expensive (ditto the Lexar one), and I would counting pennies, I opted for a Sandisk ImageMate USB2 card reader, which I've used to this day - nearly four years.

I never benchmarked the two against each other, since I never owned them at the same time, but I think it's reasonable to assume that Sandisk would have consistent quality across their devices, and it is my perception that the USB reader is much much slower than the FireWire one was.

That being said, it's always good to test things, and to that end I just purchased a DeLock FW800 CF reader. As it happens, I have a video file that's exactly 2GB on my CF card, and a bunch of CR2 files which I paired down to 2GB too, so this makes for handy samples. I'm copying to and from a SATA2 SSD which is good for 250MB/s odd so there's no bottleneck there. The CF card is a Sandisk Extreme UDMA 60MB/s edition.

Here are the figures:

2GB AVI file read:
Sandisk USB2: 2076MB in 137 seconds = 15.15MB/s
DeLock FW800: 2076MB in 29 seconds = 71.58MB/s

2GB CR2 files read:
Sandisk USB2: 1922MB in 126 seconds = 15.25MB/s
DeLock FW800: 1922MB in 27 seconds = 71.19MB/s

2GB AVI file write:
Sandisk USB2: 2076MB in 150 seconds = 13.84MB/s
DeLock FW800: 2076MB in 43 seconds = 48.27MB/s

2GB CR2 files write:
Sandisk USB2: 1922MB in 140 seconds = 13.72MB/s
DeLock FW800: 1922MB in 40 seconds = 48.05MB/s

I think the results are pretty conclusive.

For interest's sake, my MacBook Pro has a SD card slot - not sure what kind of connection it uses. Using the Sandisk ImageMate USB2 reader, and a Sandisk Extreme III 30MB/s SDHC card, I ran the test again. It's a fairly old card, so I'm not sure what will max out first, but either ways, here are the figures:

2GB AVI file read:
Sandisk USB2: 2076MB in 110 seconds = 18.87MB/s
MBP SD reader: 2076MB in 90 seconds = 23.07MB/s

2GB CR2 files read:
Sandisk USB2: 1922MB in 102 seconds = 18.84MB/s
MBP SD reader: 1922MB in 85 seconds = 22.61MB/s

2GB AVI file write:
Sandisk USB2: 2076MB in 173 seconds = 12.0MB/s
MBP SD reader: 2076MB in 85 seconds = 24.42MB/s

2GB CR2 files write:
Sandisk USB2: 1922MB in 136 seconds = 14.13MB/s
MBP SD reader: 1922MB in 103 seconds = 18.66MB/s

So not much to write home about. I find the SD slot on the MBP to be quite flakey - I had to re-insert the card several times before it would mount it read/write. The write speed difference between the large file and large number of files seem suspect too, but I ran all tests three times, and got the same results. I did notice that when copying the CR2 files to the SD card slot, it seemed very bursty, so I suspect there's some weird buffering going on/wrong.
 
I do love my Lexar FW800 CF reader - I just wish they hadn't stopped making them but I've got two so I'm good for the foreseeable future.
 
I just wanted to test the DeLock one first - the reviews on Amazon complained about Mac compatibility - but my plan is to buy a few extra. I don't plan to replace my MBP for another four or so years, so there's no USB3 in my immedate future, unless ThunderBolt accessories become dramatically cheaper and more widely available.
 
koffiejunkie said:
I just wanted to test the DeLock one first - the reviews on Amazon complained about Mac compatibility - but my plan is to buy a few extra. I don't plan to replace my MBP for another four or so years, so there's no USB3 in my immedate future, unless ThunderBolt accessories become dramatically cheaper and more widely available.
Click to expand...
Are they stackable? You probably wouldn't have a use for that but for me having two readers clipped together is pretty handy.
 
koffiejunkie said:
I just wanted to test the DeLock one first - the reviews on Amazon complained about Mac compatibility - but my plan is to buy a few extra. I don't plan to replace my MBP for another four or so years, so there's no USB3 in my immedate future, unless ThunderBolt accessories become dramatically cheaper and more widely available.
Click to expand...

They should open the Thunderbolt standard up like they have with USB. Let the Chinese come in and scare those manufacturers profiteering off the standard.
 
bwana said:
Are they stackable? You probably wouldn't have a use for that but for me having two readers clipped together is pretty handy.
Click to expand...

Sadly, no. That would have been handy, but then again, it would also half the throughput per device if you were using the two at the same time.

Fudzy said:
They should open the Thunderbolt standard up like they have with USB. Let the Chinese come in and scare those manufacturers profiteering off the standard.
Click to expand...

Thunderbolt is just Apple's fancy name for Intel Lightpeak. As far as I know it is an open standard (at least in the sense that USB and FireWire are), and ASUS is already making boards with it.

Remember, no one took USB seriously until the first iMac came with no fancy keyboard/mouse connectors and instead used USB for both.
 
koffiejunkie said:
Sadly, no. That would have been handy, but then again, it would also half the throughput per device if you were using the two at the same time.
Click to expand...
If I could find my second reader I could measure the impact but it's hiding from me.

I just tested one of mine and it took 181.47 seconds to copy 9.87gb (9*870*569*950 bytes) of files off one card which gives me a speed of 51.87MB/s?
 
Your math looks fine :) What do you suppose the bottleneck is? FW800 should be good for a theoretical maximum of 100MB/s.

In my case, 71MB/s read speed is probably maxing out the card. The card is rated 60MB/s, so getting a write speed of just under 50MB/s is a little disappointing. That said, FAT32 was never designed with flash memory in mind, so filesystem overhead may well account for some of the difference. I should test it on a linux box some time.
 
koffiejunkie said:
Your math looks fine :) What do you suppose the bottleneck is? FW800 should be good for a theoretical maximum of 100MB/s.

In my case, 71MB/s read speed is probably maxing out the card. The card is rated 60MB/s, so getting a write speed of just under 50MB/s is a little disappointing. That said, FAT32 was never designed with flash memory in mind, so filesystem overhead may well account for some of the difference. I should test it on a linux box some time.
Click to expand...
You did say using two would halve my speed but I think it would depend on where the bottle neck is, right?
 
bwana said:
You did say using two would halve my speed but I think it would depend on where the bottle neck is, right?
Click to expand...

No, it's simply the aggregate bandwidth of the bus (assuming the reader itself doesn't have a poor implementation of the bus). If you have reader 1 plugged into your laptop, and reader 2 connected to reader 1, and had a copying going from reader 1 at 100mbit/s, you still have 700mbit/s (theoretical maximum) available and reader2 should be able to utilise that fully.
 
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