X-bit labs

SanDisk Extreme IV Compact Flash Card and New Card-Readers (page 4)

Category: Storage

by Aleksey Meyev

[ 07/30/2007 | 06:52 PM ]

SanDisk FireWire Card-Reader

We also took a model with a FireWire interface (its connector is FireWire800 compatible, but we guess it only supports data-transfer rates up to 400Mb/s). It provides a maximum write speed of 40MB/s that allows getting the utmost from the new flash cards. Unlike the Extreme USB, this reader supports Compact Flash format exclusively.

The package contains two interface cords with different connectors, a user manual, and a CD with data restoration software. This reader comes with a 3-year warranty (as opposed to the USB model’s 2-year warranty).

Test Methods

We used the following software:

• FC-Test version 1.0
• FC-Test version 2.0
• IOMeter version 2003.02.15

Using two versions of FC-Test allows to compare the results with those we got in our earlier tests while transitioning to the newer version of the testing program.

The following PC configuration was used for the test:

• Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz
• 512MB DDR2-533MHz
• ASUS P5WD Premium mainboard
• Samsung SP0411N as the system disk
• Windows XP Professional SP2

We took cards from the older series, SanDisk Extreme III and SanDisk Ultra II, for the sake of comparison. Once leaders in terms of performance, these cards are still being produced and are quite popular among the end users. The new card-readers will be compared with the previous-generation SanDisk ImageMate USB 2.0 and a SanDisk Ultra ImageMate FireWire, which we have already tested and discussed in detail before (for details see our article called Eleven Card Readers Roundup: Which One Is the Best?).