So I've finally had some time to sit down with the R2E from Cool Camera Gear and do some speed test...

First off: the setup.  For dumping cards/drives we use a Macbook Pro Core2Duo 2.16 with a Tempo 32 expresscard from Sonnet.  Attached to this we have a five bay SATA enclosure with 1TB 7200RPM drives.

The R2E cable is very well built.  It has high quality connectors and the outer casing is very durable so it will be able to stand up to the riggers of set life.    It's about 3 feet long, which is a pretty good length.  long enough that you can easily have stuff plugged in, but far enough that it doesn't get in the way.

The Test: After plugging in the red drive to it's AC adapter (don't forget it at home or this won't work!) I plugged it in, and the drive was recognized within seconds.  So I dumped over 86.03 GB of data into the enclosure.   It completed the transfer in: 21:47. So that's about 4GB per minute, so a full drive would take about 80 minutes.
Connected through FW800, as seems to be the case with a lot of Red Drive owners, took a little bit to finally connect and be recognized.  The 86.03GB of data transfered to the drive in 23:00 which is about 3.5GB per minute.  So a full drive should take about 90 minutes to transfer.

Pros:
Faster transfer speeds.
High quality cable, firm connections will give years of trouble free use
FW bus is freed up to handle enclosures, CF Card drives, or other camera systems (ie. HVX, etc). Don't have to worry about the FW port on the drive failing, and being stuck

Cons:
Price.
Requires need the drive's external power supply


Recommendation:    The cable is a high quality piece of gear that allows you to free up the FW ports on your notebook for other purposes.  The value of the speed increase depends on your environment.

After each setup we like to take a look at the footage to make sure that there are no problems before moving on - our equivalent of "checking the gate".   Getting better performance off of the drive so that you can see the footage better and shaving even a little bit of time off of transfers can be extremely valuable.

 

So for us, this cable will become a valued part of our Red kit.