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Other Reviews SmartDisk FireFly FireWire Drive Parallel to USB Printer Adapter QPS Que! M3 80 GB FireWire Drive The Orb Drive -- Is it Worth the Wait? Cool Accessories For Your PowerBook
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by Steve Becker
Company: SmartDisk SmartDisk's new FireLite FireWire hard drives bear a strong resemblance to their smaller cousin, the FireFly drive (see review). This is a good thing, as this means the FireLite shares the very attractive and functional design of the FireFly. Since the FireLite utilizes a 4200 RPM Toshiba 2.5" mechanism (the FireFly uses a 4200 RPM Toshiba 1.8" drive), the FireLite is both larger and heavier than the FireFly. However, at less than 8 ounces and measuring only 3.25" W x 5" D x .75" H, the FireLite is still an impressively light and small drive. Like the FireFly, the FireLite doesn't require an external power supply when connected to your Mac's FireWire port. However, unlike the FireFly, the FireLite includes a connector for an optional power supply as well as a second FireWire port (this allows you to daisy chain the FireLite with other FireWire devices). Another significant difference between the FireLite and FireFly is capacity: The FireFly drive currently comes in only a 5GB capacity, while the FireLite is available in capacities of 20GB, 30GB, and 40GB. Included with the FireLite is a FireWire cable, a padded carrying case, a copy of the popular Copy Agent utility from Connectix, and SmartDisk's excellent formatting software (now called "SmartDisk Tools"). To help monitor the status of the drive, the FireLite includes both a blue power light and an orange light for monitoring disk activity. The FireLite utilizes the same latest generation chip set from Texas Instruments that's used by the FireFly and has the same size (2MB) buffer as the FireFly. Here are the results of some informal performance tests using a G4/450 (AGP) with OS 9.0.4:
To provide some perspective for the FireLite's performance, I've included the results of tests I ran with three other FireWire drives: a 30 GB drive that uses a 4200 RPM 2.5" drive mechanism, a full-height drive that uses a 7200 RPM 3.5" mechanism, and the FireFly drive. By the way, all of these drives are partitioned (generally, this slightly enhances a drive's performance). As expected, the higher RPM of the full-height drive provides better performance when copying many small files. However, the FireLite's performance when copying a large file is better than that of the 7200 RPM drive! I expect the new chip set used in the FireLite contributes significantly to its ability to outperform the full-height drive in this test. (I don't have an explanation for the FireLite underperforming the FireFly when copying a large file.) While these are just two simple performance tests, they provide real-world results that show the FireLite drive provides an excellent combination of small size, high performance, and large storage capacity! The small size and weight of the FireLite make it a great device to use when you need to be able to easily carry large amounts of data around with you, and it's a fine accessory for your PowerBook/iBook when you need to have more storage capacity then is provided by the FireFly drive. SmartDisk says the FireLite requires OS 8.6 or later and a Mac with a built-in FireWire port (I expect it will also work with most PCI FireWire cards). SmartDisk is on a roll: first they released the excellent and innovative FireFly drive, and now they offer the higher capacity FireLite drive. The FireLite's combination of relatively small size and weight, large capacity, and fine performance make it a highly desirable drive. The included accessory bundle and fine formatting software are just icing on the cake! Pros: Small, light, and attractive design, good performance, bundled with good accessories and excellent formatting software. Cons: None. © 2002 by Steve Becker. All rights reserved. |
