Any Thoughts on 2.2GB Magicstor microdrive?

[Texass]

Shopping for memory I ran accross this Magicstor website

I'm not up on microdrives, so naturally I thought I'd ask y'all.

I already have a 256mb CF and was looking for an xd or sm card to go along with it. Then I found a dutch auction for the 2.2gb microdrive. This ought to be way more capacity than I need for a dive trip (maybe), but not knowing anything about microdrives, I was wondering if there are any issues like write speed etc. that would bum me out.

Thanks,

 

[SimonJ]

IMHO you should stick to solid state disks and not the microdrives. For a while I was using an IBM 1Gb microdrive, but as it is in effect a tiny hard disk, complete with moving parts, it broke after about a years use. Storage disks in digital cameras are subject to a fair amount of movement and abuse, so solid state disks has a significant advantage. Just my 2 pence/cents worth.

 

[Scubatooth]

hey Dez.

like simon said i would stay away from the micro drives (these look like variants of hiatachi(IBM) micro drives, which have a bad habit of Sudden death syndrome or click of death, its because of all the moving parts in them, and the in ability to take a shock load(ie a drop from 2 ft to a carpet floor, etc) before causing damage. I know they may look like a better deal but in the long run CF cards are much better for surviving high shick loads (i have one that has survived a trip through the washer)

plus another thing is that microdrives draw more power because they consantly have to be spinning the platters, wether its read/writing or not.

Dan

 

[Tearless Tom]

I agree with both above.

Had a 1Gig microdrive that died when I went to download it. Fortunately it was not a paying job and nothing of any great value was lost.

 

[slowhands]

While the microdrives cost about half per unit of storage and are available in large sizes, they have inherently lower reliability. If you must have a large amount of storage at the lowest price, they make sense (for portable MP3 music players, for instance). For saving important work in a difficult environment, CF is probably a better choice. The warranty difference, 1 year for MD vs 5 years for CF, should tell you something.

 

[Texass]

I was actually looking for a larger xd card to pop in next to the cf card since the 32mb only gets 8 pics. My original (& current) thinking was I could stick a couple of 256's together. The prices are dropping so fast now I'm debating getting a bunch of smaller cards vs a couple of large cards. Either way I think will work.

I appreciate the fast feedback on the microdrives. A cool idea that looks like it's going to be left behind by the emerging technology. I've seen the 512mb xd cards and understand they're shooting for more than my last hard drive's capacity. The cf cards are already way up there.

 

[mjh]

If you are storing shots in JPEG about how many Images will a 512 card hold? Or if you are shooting in RAW same question?

 

[Dee]

Des...I use a 256mg CF and a 128mg XD cards. I change the CF card every 2-3 dives, every time I change batteries. The XD is a backup. If the CF card goes bad, rare but it happens, then all I've lost is a couple dives worth of pics. If you fill up a 1Gig card and it goes, you would lose everything on it. There are recovery programs and services but you know what I'm talking. I'd spend my money on a couple of each!

 

[mattloaf]

I have had a 1 Gig IBM microdrive sense 2000 and have not had a single problem with it. Its still running strong with many thousands of photos captured with it. But when I needed a second memory card for my Digital Rebel, I went and bought a 1 gig CF card. The price has droped so much on them there is no reason to get the slower microdrives, unless you want a 2-10 gig card.

There are also a lot of digital wallet type devices that allow you to download photos from a CF card. Archos (http://www.archos.com/) makes a bunch of different devices that play MP3's, MPEG movies and displays JPEG's. And if you get the CF card reader for them, you can back up your photos on it as well mid trip. Its also easier to carry around then a laptop, thats for sure.

 

[orangeBloke]

I have the X's drive with a 20Gb laptop size 2.5" drive in it. It can read 6 types of cards tho not XDs. You can dump the pictures directly to the hard disk, wipe the card and continue, or even copy the XD card to the CF card and up load that too.
The down side is that you can't see what you've copied so you run some risk but so far its behaved quite well