Are FireWire card reader extinct???

Raymond Lin · 1 Apr 2011 at 22:02

I want to get another Lexar professional 800 FireWire card reader but they seemed to be out of stock everywhere, and apparently it's because the Market is now saturated and thus sales have dropped so they've discontinued it...well, Sandisk no longer makes them either. I can only find USB 2 readers which sucks as my existing FireWire reader can read a 8G CF card in under 3 min where USB 2 takes about 9 min. This makes a big difference when I transfer 90G of images from about 12 cards.

If I can just find one more of the Lexar I can piggyback it so I can half my download and transfer time from half hour to 15 mins. (USB 2 for that many cards takes almost 2 hours)

Anyone know where I can find a Lexar professional 800 FireWire reader?

Or ANY FireWire reader!?

Energize · 2 Apr 2011 at 00:29

USB 3?

Raymond Lin · 2 Apr 2011 at 00:45

Energize said:
USB 3?

I have a 2009 iMac...

Surveyor · 2 Apr 2011 at 01:09

Won't piggybacking just halve the speed of each reader?

Raymond Lin · 2 Apr 2011 at 11:13

I don't think so...not the way they sold it.

Anyway, I even wrote to Lexar and they don't even have stock on their office! He said they few machines have FW ports now (all macs do?) and everyone uses USB.

If I have USB3 then I will be ok but I don't lol....guess I will have to suck it up until I get a mac with thunderbolt or usb3.

Surveyor · 2 Apr 2011 at 11:36

Raymond Lin said:
I don't think so...not the way they sold it.

If they're sharing the same FireWire connector then speed must be halved.

FireWire 800 has a maximum speed of 800mb/s which will be shared between however many devices are connected to a single connector.

Raymond Lin · 2 Apr 2011 at 12:16

Well, 800mb/s is way faster than the cards, which range from 30mb/s to 60mb/s.

Surveyor · 2 Apr 2011 at 12:23

Raymond Lin said:
Well, 800mb/s is way faster than the cards, which range from 30mb/s to 60mb/s.

I assume you mean megabyte not megabit.

EniGmA1981 · 2 Apr 2011 at 15:31

I assume iMacs have the standard PCI interface?

Could this help?

me227 · 2 Apr 2011 at 16:47

Ebay?

Energize · 2 Apr 2011 at 17:01

EniGmA1981 said:
I assume iMacs have the standard PCI interface?

Could this help?

iMacs are those thin computers where everything is inside the monitor, so they can't be upgraded like normal desktop pc's.

EniGmA1981 · 2 Apr 2011 at 17:05

Oh right, sorry - I was thinking of the Mac Pro

My bad

Surveyor · 2 Apr 2011 at 19:08

me227 said:
****?

Naughty, naughty.

No mentioning of competitors.

EniGmA1981 · 2 Apr 2011 at 19:49

The 'Bay isn't a competitor, it's an auction site... That doesn't count surely?

AtaRo · 2 Apr 2011 at 19:57

Theres some in the bay right now if use this to search for it " Brand new fireWire cf card reader writer.mac/pc " .

Surveyor · 2 Apr 2011 at 20:00

EniGmA1981 said:
The '*** isn't a competitor, it's an auction site... That doesn't count surely?

I'll think you find it does as you can buy items from there which you could buy from OcUK.

See how I'm not mentioning it.

From the FAQ:

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scrlk · 2 Apr 2011 at 21:07

http://www.sandisk.com/products/readers-accessories/sandisk-extreme-firewire-reader

Search on Google Shopping, 2 shops still sell them (at a hefty price).