It's been a while since we've seen anything truly interesting in the thumbdrive space, but this certainly qualifies.
Kanguru has taken a regular-looking USB 2.0 flash drive and slapped an
eSATA plug on the other end, finally breaking the performance barrier for thumbdrives. The eSATA is powered, and Kanguru tossed in a eSATA + Power bracket and eSATA + Power cable for whichever scenarios might present themselves. With an increasing number of laptops housing eSATA plugs these days -- not to mention all the other great scenarios that present themselves here -- we'd say the time is exactly right for this kind of mojo. Kanguru is shipping these now in 16GB ($85) and 32GB ($120) capacities, and will add a 64GB version in January of 2009.
posted Nov 19th 2008 11:52AM
That's completely stupid. Unlike what it says in the article, eSATA is not (currently) powered, and that means you have to plug it into two ports at once to power it for eSATA use.
And for what? You're not going to add any performance, because the NAND used in these devices isn't fast enough to exceed the speed of USB 2.0.
The name is funny though.
"Utilizing eSATA (External Serial ATA) technology allows the Kanguru e-Flash to achieve performance speeds never before obtainable with standard USB Flash Drives."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESATA#External_SATA
go down to the comparison chart... "eSATA in comparison to other external buses"
Well, there are some completely non-standard power + esata implimentations. The problem is that there are very few in desktops, and absolutely bugger all in laptops. So you can use the eSATA end of this in your home desktop, once you fit the eSATA + power bracket, but that's it. Even when official eSATA with power appears, it is unlikely to be compatible with the non-standard versions.
StalmatE:
I don't care what the marketing junk says. And it doesn't matter how fast eSATA is, if USB 2.0 can already handle the rates the NAND offers.
The NAND in these flash drives isn't fast enough to exceed the speed of USB 2.0. Not even close. If this is very well implemented, it could offer perhaps as high as 20MB/sec of throughput, and that's still 1/3rd of what USB 2.0 can offer.
point taken
Like Firewire 400, Apple has no eSATA port on the macbook lineup, so is eSATA clearly dead?
@Testies, Testies, 1, 2... 3?
Umm, maybe for that 10% of the market? Why would it be dead if it isnt on a macbook? where is the /sarcasm ?
If you have a maximum bus speed then it follows that there is no point putting faster NAND in the device than the bus can handle. However, you then assume that the NAND was not upgraded when they increased the potential speed of the bus. As SSDs use NAND and are SATA 2 devices, there is NAND technology out there that scales in speed. Also, the listed speed for USB 2 is the maximum speed (and is also listed in megabits, rather than megabytes as most flash throughput is measured), not the sustained speed, so the disparity in speeds is not anywhere near as great as your post implies.
What I want to know is...if you plug in both ends at the same time to different computers, does it tear space and time??
They can improve the speed in flashdrives by parallelism you know, 10 nand in a row for example can then do 200MB rather than 20Mb, all you need is the right controller, and a lot of flashram chips, that becomes expensive and more bulky though.
should be MB obviously, released the shift too soon :/
well you know what that means... its wednesday... and its business time
You know when I'm down to just my socks it's time for business that's why they call it business socks.
Ironically I listened to that yesterday.
HAHA. Is it just me, or stating "eSATA Performance + USB" on the adapter a joke...
How will you reach eSATA performance over USB? That's right, you can't! I haven't really seen any hard drive enclosures that had eSATA, but never had a USB output on it as well.. And using your drives without an enclosure is just asking for trouble!
Adapter?
It means + the option of USB.
I guess it means you get th performance of eSATA, plus a standard USP port. BTW I have an external HDD with eSATA and it is just so much faster than USB, you can't compare it...
Learn to read much?
With the amount of overhead USB causes, due to the fact it doesn't use Direct Memory Access (what Firewire/eSATA uses), you'd be crazy to think USB and eSATA are comparable. However, if this adapter worked as a USB passthrough, THEN it would make much more sense.. The ability to use a USB disk, without tying up an entire USB port.. It would let you plug your mouse w/ a 16/32/64GB disk accompanying it...
Do you not see the picture? One side has a eSATA plug, the other side has a USB plug. You probably get eSATA performance by *gasp* plugging it into an eSATA port on a PC.
rtfa.
esata has its own port, it doesnt use USB.
@Precurse
I just got mo stupid from reading your comments. Thanks!
Precurse:
USB uses DMA (direct memory access). It doesn't use cross-device DMA (i.e. memory address mapping) but then again neither does eSATA. As far as I know, Firewire is the only major external bus that actually uses memory mapping for transfers. And to be honest, there's a reason. It's a massive security issue and it doesn't increase performance.
Um, moron, this isn't a USB to eSATA adaptor. This is a flash drive that can plug into either a USB port or eSATA port. RTFA.
I was thinking it allowed eSATA drives to be hooked up through USB alongside its flash. Guess I missed that part...
Haha, I thought the same thing when I first saw this article. I was this close to posting a rant about it when I realized I had misread.
It's like they are trying to say that their drive is so fast that to take advantage of the speed you need eSATA instead of USB 2.0 - somehow I'm betting that this drive is more about hype than actual performance.
Have you ever compared a SATA hard drive to one housed externally?
The difference is AMAZING. The thumb drive probably isn't smoking fast, but is 2-3 times faster on eSATA.
Read Speed
eSATA: up to 75 MB/s
USB 2.0: up to 30 MB/s
Write Speed
eSATA: up to 25 MB/s
USB 2.0: up to 20 MB/s
http://www.kanguru.com/eflash.html
I've seen USB drives with faster write speeds (though the 25 MB/s is nothing to sneeze at), but the 75 MB/s read speeds would indeed be smokin', I think the best I've ever seen on a USB 2.0 flash drive was 32-34 or so.
So the flash is limiting you on the write still, but it looks like USB is limiting on the reads, which jives with what I've seen from SATA drives in different enclosures.
Sooo, does it get power from the usb (and disable the usb data) when plugged into the eSATA?
That would seem to be the neatest way of getting around the lack of eSATA power.
However, having said that, do most thumb drives max out the usb2 interface anyway?
Maybe this is more of a tiny external SSD, but I somehow doubt it based on the price.
Thats what Im thinkin.. Think of it as an SSD.. Shove it in a Mini PC for Cheaper, quite drive space.. I think this is cool.. Wonding how much more of this we will see..
I want a shuriken flash drive with a different connector at each point, USB2, esata, firewire 400, firewire 800, and, umm, SCSI, just for fun.
Hello, everyone. As the PM for this new line at Kanguru, Id like to clear up some questions noted above. Thank you all for your interest and we hope you try out the eFlash, its a great product!
*One end has the normal USB connector. The other has a new POWERED eSATA connector.
*Using the Powered eSATA connector plus the bracket and cable we include, you can hook this up to your desktop via the eSATA connector only, no added power cables needed.
*We are also offering a powered eSATA Expresscard for laptops very soon. In fact many new laptops by Dell, Toshiba, etc already have a Powered eSATA port on them now (called USB/eSATA i believe)
*The device is much faster through eSATA, our testing shows on average, 75 MB/s Read, 25MB/s Write.
*you can see the full Specs here (stated by Jay Evans). http://www.kanguru.com/eflash.html
Thanks again everyone for your interest,
-David
Sounds nifty.
Thanks for clearing that up, David. It's not every day we get input straight from the horse's mouth, if you'll pardon the expression. As Wolfticket says, it sounds nifty.
This may be a silly question, but can the eSATA end be powered by the USB side? It seems like there would be enough power running through there and there'd be no need for extra 'dongles' and junk to carry around. It could detect if the eSATA was connected and prefer that if both ends were on.
Actually thats a great question and yes, it can. If you have a standard eSATA connector on your pc, you can hook it up to the eSATA connector on the device, then you would hook up the USB side to the PC as well. the USB side would utilize the USB power pins only and the eSATA connection would carry the data. It's very versatile :)
Thank you! This is exactly the kind of thing that most products miss! Being able to power it with USB in the absence of powered eSATA seems obvious, but I didn't expect it. Good on you for throwing us a bone!
I wish my job paid me to post on engadgets comments....officially. ;-)
LOVE IT! I need one yesterday. One question about the specs though, what is random write speed like? Been burned by slow random writes before... for comparison: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/memory/display/2gb-miniusb_10.html
I'm expecting greater than 10 MB/s for both (please)...
Thanks,
Mark
I think everyone is missing the potential here. An eSATA flash drive has the potential for running OS's directly from flash. While possible with USB, the process is quite harrowing. As someone who just set up a USB drive to boot windows XP, this drive would have been a real timesaver.
Exactly - glad that you mentioned it. Fast XP/Vista/Leopard on a flash drive is now possible without being a low-level hacker.
Added bonus is that eSATA has much lower CPU utilization that USB, and once we get to 50MB+ speeds, it starts to matter.
That doesnt sound so bad at all I want "We are also offering a powered eSATA Expresscard for laptops very soon" yup i will take that.
Engadget kicks ass, we get answers , companies are listening to engadget big time.
Is there a way to go from internal sata to e-sata so i can replace my hard drive with this thumb. I would take the reduced speed for the weight loss.
...but does it also double as a bottle opener?
Oh it doesn't? Then no care, I never...
Looks and works exactly the same as AO-LAB's.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/10/10/ao-labs-esata-ssd-flash-drive-conveniently-includes-usb-port/
I have VMWare/VirtualPC files on my thumb drive.
However,the access rate is very slow.
If thumb drive is fast enough, All I need to carry around is the thumb drive instead of carrying the whole notebook back and forth.