external firewire drives fire flash?

nordicmannordicman
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
Has anyone tried the Kanguru Fire Flash Drive? It is in 512MB and 1 GB sizes, and is bootable, Kanguru says, as well as quicker, being FireWire 800, than USB.



In addition to a larger external drive, for which I am debating the OWC FireWire drive, and the Maxtor one button push drives, I am planning to get a flash drive, and I just noticed this from Kanguru.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 3
    mikefmikef Posts: 698member
    But it's only 512MB/1GB of data... there can't be more than a few seconds difference in filling the slowest vs. the fastest flash drives.
  • Reply 2 of 3
    splinemodelsplinemodel Posts: 7,311member
    The max transfer rate of NAND Flash isn't all that high unless it is put in a formation that is, essentially, a RAID configuration. On pretty typical Samsung Flash (e.g. the K9F5508U0C), there's a theoretical max transfer rate just under 14MB/s. And, generally speaking, microcontrollers that strobe flash memory in such devices aren't implemented for maximal performance, since doing so would require them to be clocked in the 200MHz range. This is way outside the range of cheap microcontrollers.



    It's totally possible that this kanguru model is an exception, but I'd prescribe a gigantic caveat emptor.
  • Reply 3 of 3
    nordicmannordicman Posts: 269member
    Thank you kindly for your thinking, gentlemen. I found it interesting that one might have a little flash drive that could have the Mac OS on it, and also use it for booting, since it is FireWire. I think they say that a 2 GB is also coming along.



    Well, it is something that I wished to get other views on before doing something like jumping in and buying.
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