Kanguru Releases First FireWire Flash Drive

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.""

Comments

USB 2.0 is faster

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, isn't USB 2.0 faster than firewire?

Re:USB 2.0 is faster

[j1m 5n0w]

Uh, isn't USB 2.0 faster than firewire?

yes, at 480 mbps (as opposed to 400mbps for firewire).

-jim

Re:USB 2.0 is faster

[Tumbleweed]

Technically, but not really. USB 2.0 is 480Mbps, Firewire (IEEE1394.a) is 400, but due to latency and protocol issues, Firewire is almost always faster, often _much_ faster than USB 2.0.

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

[LincolnQ]

Well, of course, if you read the parent's Wikipedia link you notice that FireWire 800 exists, which is 786.432 mbps.

Yay.

Re:USB 2.0 is faster

[2nd Post!]

No, though as another helpful poster has linked, USB 2.0 is specced higher than Firewire.

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

[j1m 5n0w]

True (though it uses a different, backwards compatible, 9 pin connector). Alas, the flash drive's specifications list its maximum speed as 400mbps.

Re:USB 2.0 is faster

[mewyn]

Not only that, but take a look at your CPU usage during bulk transfers. On my 1.25GHz PowerBook, I see 25% CPU usage on bulk transfers with USB 2.0 while i see < 5% CPU usage with FireWire. This is on the same drive, same hardware.

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 am around have no FireWire (grr!). Although, I would get one if all the machines I'm exposed to had FireWire.

Re:USB 2.0 is faster

[bill_mcgonigle]

yes, at 480 mbps (as opposed to 400mbps for firewire).

Yes, in theory USB2 can do 480Mbps. In practice 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

[Cecil]

Clearly you haven't tried to actually use USB at those speeds.

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

[Methuseus]

How exactly are you cheating yourself? USB 2.0 is more ubiquitous than Firewire, and is fast enough for most things. It's still a case of deciding what you need the most, speed or interoperability with many machines, as well as the fact that most Firewire devices I have seen are more expensive than USB 2.0.

Re:USB 2.0 is faster

[GoRK]

Well AFAIK, the physical connector is unfortunately neither forwards nor backwards compatible between firewire 800 and firewire 400 although the electrical interface is. Therefore you can plug a firewire 800 device into a firewire 400 port and vice versa provided you have the correct cables (one with a 4 or 6 pin firewire end and another with a 9 pin firewire end)

Re:USB 2.0 is faster

[2nd Post!]

Uh, you really don't know?

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, a good 3.5mb/s from my camcorder, and 35mb/s from my external firewire drive for two years+ now. Yes, each device IS more expensive than what USB would have cost, but at the time I bought the camcorder there was no real alternative, when I bought my Firewire drive we only had external USB1 drives, and when I bought my iPod we only had USB1 Nomads as the competition, so if I paid a premium it was because there was no USB2 to drive prices down.

If you like, you can also see it as Firewire driving the USB backers to release a faster spec to stay competitive, but in the end all consumers win with choice, price competition, and variety.

Re:USB 2.0 is faster

[Anonymous Coward]

No it isn't.

Re:USB 2.0 is faster

[jerde]

I've enjoyed a nice healthy 16mb/s from my iPod[...]

Man, 16 millibits per second? That would take YEARS to transfer one song! Poor guy. :p

(This post brought to you by the Association for the Correct Capitalization of Abbreviations)

Re:USB 2.0 is faster

[boisepunk]

*retracted*

Re:USB 2.0 is faster

[Anonymous Coward]

USB 1.0 supports isochronous transfers. This is how USB webcams and audio cards work.

I haven't checked, but I'd be shocked if USB2 didn't carry that support forward.

True about daisy-chaining, but I'm not sure that is important in practice. I (and I suspect I am far from alone) have only one USB cable leaving my computer; it goes to a hub with 4 ports. I've never needed more.

Re:USB 2.0 is faster

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple's USB implementation is substandard. You'll see significantly higher USB2 throughput on XP or Linux. XP USB2 is pretty competitive with Firewire 400 on XP or a mac, though Firewire is still a bit faster. On the order of 10%.

USB2 will use more host CPU time even on XP or Linux, but nowhere near the 5x you're seeing on your mac.

Re:USB 2.0 is faster

[Methuseus]

You are absolutely right. For camcorders I really think Firewire is best, personally. The iPod, well, I personally don't like the design, but the speed you get probably *is* faster than USB 2.0 can handle (not sure if you mean MB or Mb, or another unit entirely). The hard drive, because of the bus methods between USB and Firewire, I would expect Firewire to be faster.

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 great while there may be a device that's faster on USB 2.0 than it would be on Firewire.

So, in short, I agree with I think everything you say, so I don't know why I even really wrote this post.... Probably just the pain relievers and just waking up talking.

Only if you buy the right flash card

[Jahf]

Often the less expensive flash cards can only write at a very slow speed. Most times even with a decent flash card it won't exceed USB2 speeds.

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

[DLWormwood]

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.

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 in the Wintel sphere is going to limit the utility of this.

It's a shame though, my Mac at home has three FireWire ports completely unused, while I needed to get a hub to handle all my USB devices.

The Catch

[MBCook]

That's nice and all (I prefer FireWire over USB myself), but it would be useless to me. The problem is powering the thing. Sure, 6 pin firewire ports are powered. But what about me? My computer has a 4 pin port (which I'm not happy about). So how do I use it? There is no power from the port. There is no plug on the device for a way to plug it into a USB or PS/2 port to get power. The only way I can think of is a firewire Y cable sort of thing I have. You plug the device needing power in one end, the computer in another, and then you plug the third end into a wallwart (not unlike the iPod's one). So much for portable.

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

[MaxQuordlepleen]

I have never seen or heard of an unpowered USB port.

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

[MarsDefenseMinister]

So, you buy a computer with an insufficient FireWire port, and then claim that the drive is broken? The real problem is your port. You can get an expander card and fix the problem. The drive is fine, your ports are not.

Re:The Catch

[AndyBusch]

Ah, but that is an unpowered *hub*. No rules regarding that. The parent is referring specifically to what comes out the back/side/front of the computer.

Re:The Catch

[MBCook]

I wasn't after the firewire port, it was just included. And it is a laptop, which is probably why it's the 4 pin and not a 6 pin (although there is plenty of room for the 6 pin version). But my point was that I can take my USB key drive up to any computer and it will work in the port. Not only do many computers not have FireWire ports, but some that do have the 4 pin version and the drive won't work there.

For a little drive you can take anywhere and use on any computer, USB is simply superior to FireWire. The product is filling a demand that I doubt was ever really there. It doens't offer anything over a USB flash driver other than the firewire interface, which as I pointed out could be a problem.

Re:The Catch

[MBCook]

Exactly. While plugging it into a keyboard or something might not work, I could always unplug a printer or something and I'd be set. Not only that, but many computers these days (at least on the PC) come with like 6 USB ports on the back of the computer alone. There is almost always a powered port.

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

[OldMiner]

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 argument is partially correct. Some flash drives will not work on the hub in mac keyboards or potentially any other unpowered or overloaded hub. But this really is a problem with your drive, and not the USB standard.

Re:The Catch

[Bastian]

Hey, don't blame them for 4-pin FW ports. Me, I blame all the cheap-ass PC users who push manufacturers to cut costs by any means necessary, including emasculating an otherwise far superior bus technology.

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, but with USB I've never even seen one drive work without an external power source.

I imagine the next great innovations we'll get from Dell and company will include mice that speak to the computer using BlueTooth but get their power from 110V A/C, optical drives where you spin the media with a hand crank, and MP3 players that have no internal storage but can grab music from SMB shares using the convenient ethernet port.

Re:The Catch

[dchamp]

This is very true. My last 2 Dell laptops have both had 4-pin (un-powered) Firewire ports, so the nifty external firewire drive I had didn't work on the laptop unless I had external power. This is a pain, especially if you're on the go.

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, or external HD's and CDRW's. But for a small flash drive, USB makes a lot more sense.

Re:The Catch

[jeif1k]

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.

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

[rkrabath]

I've tried my key drive on 3 different macs(iMac G3, iMac G4, eMac). All the keybord ports were powered. The front ports on an eMachine i've tried said it wouldn't work. But it did...

Re:The Catch

[2nd Post!]

Don't you mean better as laptops get more power efficient?

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?

[Tom7]

"USB 2.0 hi-speed" is pretty fast.

Re:Firewire for speed?

[MacJedi]

"USB 2.0 hi-speed" is pretty fast.

...in Japan!

Re:Firewire for speed?

[Anonymous Coward]

huh?

The Problem

[2nd Post!]

Why do you have a computer with a 4 pin Firewire port?

You could have chosen one with 6 pin, too.

Re:The Problem

[Kris_J]

My Fujitsu Windows laptop has a single 4-pin firewire port. Can't say I had much choice in that. To get this new device working I would have to buy a powered firewire hub (such as the renamed Hubzilla, whatever it's called now) or a PCMCIA card something like this which appears to have a 6-pin port that's either powered through the PCMCIA port or via a PS/2 port tap that's listed in the box contents.

I'd say that this was all way too clumsy for anyone to do, but the week before last I bought a USB2 hub specifically because the USB2VGA adapter I was trying to get working off a PCMCIA USB2 adapter was drawing too much power. Of course, if I'd bought a USB2 PCMCIA adapter with any sort of external power option, rather than the cheapest one I could find, then I wouldn't have needed the hub.

Re:The Problem

[GoRK]

I have been eyeing the USB VGA adapters, but could not find a good source for them in the US. I also had never found anyone who actually used one firsthand. Can you give me any advice on how it works/where to buy it? I'm looking to add a second (informational) display to my carPC and since it's based on a mini-itx board, expansion is very limited.

Thanks!

Re:The Problem

[Kris_J]

Dynamism sourced mine. US$159 included shipping to Australia.

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 line by line.) However, there are no artifacts, no corruption and if you're willing to drop to 640x480x8bit you get a much better response rate. If you just want to do basic stuff, no games and no video, it's enough. Just.

I don't think there are any Linux drivers, but if you're running Windows the initial install process is: Install software, reboot, plug-in, reboot, works. After that, it's pretty much plug and play.

Re:The Problem

[jeif1k]

Why do you have a computer with a 4 pin Firewire port? You could have chosen one with 6 pin, too.

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, there is a simple reason designers don't put powered Firewire ports on laptops more often: Firewire devices can demand much more power from the laptop than USB, and that's not a good thing on a laptop.

Re:The Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

"USB 2.0 is faster..."

A common misconception, thanks to some FUD from Intel.

USB 2.0 is 480Mb/s peak whereas FireWire is 400MB/s sustained. USB 2.0 essentially lies for the benchmarks, but FireWire outperforms it every time.

This is why you don't see any USB 2.0 video cameras.

And of course, this ignores FireWire 800 completely, which stomps over both of them.

Re:The Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why you don't see any USB 2.0 video cameras.

USB 2.0 is plenty fast for video cameras, and several cameras support it.

The reason people use Firewire is because it happens to have a standardized video format, while USB doesn't.

USB 2.0 is 480Mb/s peak whereas FireWire is 400MB/s sustained. USB 2.0 essentially lies for the benchmarks, but FireWire outperforms it every time.

Sorry, but that makes no difference in practice: actual performance is lower than those numbers for both. And both are much faster than disks or video devices require.

Marketing gimmick

[austad]

You're still limited by the speed at which flash memory can be read and written, which is sufficiently less than the speed of a firewire or USB 2.0 port. What's the point?

Nearly every machine has a USB port, but many do not have a firewire port, and of the pc laptops that do, it's usually the little 4 pin ports, which you would need a dongle or adapter for. Why not buy a USB 2.0 drive? It's probably less money, you'll get the same transfer speeds on a box with 2.0 ports, and it will work on nearly every machine on the market.

Re:Marketing gimmick

[n1ywb]

Yeah I was going to say, isn't flash memory notoriously slow, especially for writing?

Re:Marketing gimmick

[Anonymous Coward]

The lable on the dongle just means that they can work in a USB 2.0 port. Imagine the confusion of the typical non-tech if they weren't labled that way.

"Can this work on the new USB 2.0 port?" "It doesn't say." "I'm so confused."

Well none of the dongles exceed the 12 MBps limitation of USB 1.1. The new "hi-speed" dongles approach 8-10 MBps, which is still much faster the the earlier 6 MBps or even the 1.5 MBps dongles. They newer dongles do allow bursts into a RAM buffer, but you still can't yank them until they're actually done writing to the permanent flash. The file name and handles are usually written last.

Kanguru Is Not The First

[Goo.cc]

Wiebetech had a Firewire Keychain flash firewire drive back in 2002.

Check it out:

• Firewire Keychain Review
• Firewire Keychain
• Wiebetech Announced Firewire Keychain
• WiebeTECH 1GB FireWire KeyChain review

No

[Anonymous Coward]

USB 2.0 = 480Mb/s peak.
FireWire 400 = 400Mb/s sustained.

And that ignores FireWire 800, which is 800Mb/s sustained.

Because

[2nd Post!]

He himself prefers Firewire over USB2, at his own admission.

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've got an iPod, camcorder, CD-RW, and hard drive unit, all living off two Firewire ports.

I also have USB devices of course. A scanner, a mouse, a keyboard, and a digi cam.

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.

Or do you also believe people shouldn't want faster CPUs?

Re:Because

[jeif1k]

Or do you also believe people shouldn't want faster CPUs?

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 controller. It would be fast enough for video work; it's just for historical reasons that devices generally use Firewire for that (that's changing, though).

Re:Because

[2nd Post!]

Of course not at ANY cost.

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 because Intel has chosen to support USB over firewire. They bundle and mass produce the controllers on their motherboards. A few pieces of silicon and a port cost the same regardless of protocol. But the design differences between USB and Firewire means USB always requires a faster CPU, where Firewire has it's own dedicated control logic. If I'm not mistaken it's due to USB's host centricity, where Firewire has peer negotiation.

If you want to believe that it's 'historical' reasons, fine, but then I would have to argue that 'historical' means 'USB1 was inadequate and USB2 didn't exist'. And if you say (that's changing) then I think you mean (USB2 doesn't suck as much as USB1 now, and is no longer an order of magnitude slower than Firewire, and eventually USB3 will be faster than Firewire).

Tongue twister

[regcrusher]

Try saying that 5 times fast! Fire Flash FireWire flash drive... Fire Flash FireWire flash drive... Fire Flash FireWire flash drive... Fire Flash FireWire flash drive... Fire Flash FireWire flash drive...

Searching vs. waiting

[stevenbdjr]

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.

Re:Searching vs. waiting

[Anonymous Coward]

For less than $15, you too can buy yourself a firewire port.

For less than $35, you too can buy a dual port IEEE1394/USB 2.0 external drive.

The firewire/IEEE1394/iLink - USB battle is equivalent to the SCSI - IDE battle. USB is equivalent to IDE. IEEE1394 is equivalent to SCSI. Servers use SCSI (fibre channel for higher end). Home users and other non-critical business machines use IDE. High end users will gravitate to IEEE1394 and cheap ass low end users will gravitate towards USB. I buy IDE for my cheap low end, non heavily used medium term storage. I buy SCSI for my heavily used servers for short term storage. Each has its use.

I myself have both on different systems, so for now, I buy the dual plugged external cases and buy my own drives. I've always liked the beauty of the higher end SCSI for my servers, since they don't choke like IDE drives do when multiple users access the drives. I'll probably gravitate towards the better format at least for some of my machines. The less essential ones will get the cheap-ass IDE and USB, just because it is more affordable.

For the common penny pinchers USB will win out because, that is what will become most cost effective. With lower demand, IEEE1394 will eventually cost a bit more. Eventually, no one will understand or care why high end or critical systems use the more expensive system, except for the knowledgeable underappreciated sysadmins and the special few(including a bunch of Apple enthusiasts) whose job is to provide support for the high end systems or do work on them. No one else will understand the need of the higher end systems and spout the usual uninformed, "Why can't you give me (some dipshit LUser) more space, disk(or some other future storage device) is cheap?", crap.

It comes iwth an adapter

[Anonymous Coward]

It comes iwth a 6 to 4 pin adapter and a USB power cable.. so your in luck