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Going on vacation...best data storage device?

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foto guy

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Hi Folks --

I'm planning on doing some traveling this year where I'll be away from home for at least a week, hopefully more. :) Should I simply buy a bunch of SD cards or invest in a data storage device, such as those available from Apple, Jobo, SmartDisk, Wolverine, etc.?

I don't have a laptop and, since I'll likely be traveling by motorcycle, a laptop would be impractical.

Shooting JPG would suit me fine as I have three 1 GB cards, but I'd rather shoot RAW. I could go through 3 cards in a couple of days when traveling. :)
And naturally, reliability is very important.
I'd like to hear what forum members do in such situations.
Many thanks for relating your experiences and providing suggestions.
--
Joe G.
'The universe is wider than our views of it.'
-- Henry David Thoreau
 
I think they're badged as HyperDrive in the US. Very affordable, solidly built and reliable. Easy to use.

Ben
--



'There's gotta be record of you someplace' - Mark Knopfler
 
Agree with Ben. For me it's a natural fit because it also recharges the NimH batteries I use in the DS. Very easy to use and well built.

Guy
--
GMT +11
 
from an earlier post, if your interested check out the adonics website...

About a month ago I picked it up a addonics mfr 842 for about 150 american refurbished directly from the manafacturer. It burns dvds and cdrs and if the card is to big for a cd it prompts you to enter a new one when the first disk is full. It burns all info on the card including raw. It works rather well and the battery lasts several burns at least. It also doubles as a dvd player with a remote control. This might be something worth looking into. I'd be happy to answer any questions about its use. Good luck on your search,

Aaron W.
--

--

 
Just tested mine last weekend. Works really well. Also, if you don't have a good charger, the PDx70 doubles as a good battery charger (if you don't have the Maha yet).
Nols
--

 
I use the CompactDrive PD70X as well and it does really well. I had it with me in Peru and every evening transferred all pictures taken during the day. I reformatted my cards in-camera after the transfer. This worked very well and very fast.

I did recharge the batteries every few days (not using the drive for this, too slow for recharging), avoiding a low battery error during transfer, since I had noticed before that this happening during the writing of data to the drive may corrupt the file system of the disk. I could still get all pictures off the drive and reformatting solved the problem, but that's not something you want to have to do on a trip.

Downsize is that firmware upgrades are only possible using a CF card. So if you only have SD cards, you will either have to get a unit that was already upgraded by the store or sitck with the initial version of the firmware. I have looked at the added features and they strike me as being very interesting, but since I haven't found anyone with a spare CF card, and do not want to buy one just to upgrade, I'll go without for now...

hth, Wim

--
Belgium, GMT+1

 
That's an interesting fact, I did not know that. My Dad has a PD70x, i'll have to let him know he'll need a CF for upgrades. I wonder how big the file is??

Wish i had kept one of my CF's from my FinePix days...

Ben
--



'There's gotta be record of you someplace' - Mark Knopfler
 
Did not know the PD70X had a foirmware update, nor do I know if mine has it....
Anyway, I have it too, and recently bought an Apacer CP100....

CD burner, but one problem, can only transfer one CD full of data, so no possobility to work with an SD card with say 900 Mb data...

I knew that was a risk but at Eu 50,00 I could not pass, more ofte than not my cards do not yet have 700Mb of data on them when I download them, and besides, after putting the data on tha PD70X, I can delete in camera the wrst images and save the best on CD also, just added security
--
janneman
http://www.pbase.com/jl2
 
Don´t go and buy a CF card only for updating the firmware of the PD70X.
I updated my firmware without problems using a 512 MB SD card.

At least it worked perfect for me although I know that in the manual a CF card is recommended.

Alex
 
GuyM said:
Agree with Ben. For me it's a natural fit because it also recharges
the NimH batteries I use in the DS. Very easy to use and well built.
Click to expand...
Another thumbs up for the PD70X here. Late last year my 80GB unit worked flawlessly over seven weeks of road travel (inc 4WDing) and accumulated 4500+ of *ist D RAW files.

--
Rob
 
Thanks for this! Knowing at least two successful upgrades were done using SD cards is reassuring. I might hang in there a while to see no one comes in saying "don't try, it may fry the drive" or sth though... ;-)

Thing is the CompactDrive support actually strongly advised against using a SD card, hence my not trying it.

Thanks! Wim

--
Belgium, GMT+1

 
LuzArt said:
That's an interesting fact, I did not know that. My Dad has a
PD70x, i'll have to let him know he'll need a CF for upgrades. I
wonder how big the file is??

Wish i had kept one of my CF's from my FinePix days...

Ben
Click to expand...
Hi Ben! It's only 16kb in size, so that shouldn't be a problem (www.compactdrive.com -> downloads). Apparently SD cards work as well. I'll try this WE, and let you know how it goes...

Wim

--
Belgium, GMT+1

 
I have a friend with a CF card, so if I go with the PD70X, I'll just borrow it when I need to upgrade it. That's probably the safest route.
--
Joe G.
'The universe is wider than our views of it.'
-- Henry David Thoreau
 
amicah22 said:
from an earlier post, if your interested check out the adonics
website...

About a month ago I picked it up a addonics mfr 842 for about 150
american refurbished directly from the manafacturer. It burns dvds
and cdrs and if the card is to big for a cd it prompts you to enter
a new one when the first disk is full. It burns all info on the
card including raw. It works rather well and the battery lasts
several burns at least. It also doubles as a dvd player with a
remote control. This might be something worth looking into. I'd be
happy to answer any questions about its use. Good luck on your
search,
Click to expand...
Thanks Aaron. I'll check it out.

Since you've had it only a month, do you know anything about long-term reliability? Have you read any reports or user feedback or such? I'd hate to be on the road and have it die on me.
--
Joe G.
'The universe is wider than our views of it.'
-- Henry David Thoreau
 
HyperDrive is an excellent photo storage solution, but I went for the combination of music and photo storage - simply because I want fewer boxes. I use iPod Colour, 20Gb with the iPod camera connector and this works very well.

Take care*
 
Roland Mabo said:
HyperDrive is an excellent photo storage solution, but I went for
the combination of music and photo storage - simply because I want
fewer boxes. I use iPod Colour, 20Gb with the iPod camera connector
and this works very well.

Take care*
Click to expand...
Yeah, I considered iPod. But a friend took one on vacation to Italy and it died on her and she lost all of her pix. I own a Mac and like their products, but her experience made me think twice about going that route.

The HyoerDrive is less money for more storage, tho the downside is I can't view the pix. I'm not too concerned about that as I'm content to wait until I get home to view them. Reliability is my main concern.

The lack of music doesn't bother me either. If I'm traveling by car, I'll bring CDs or listen to the radio. I never listen to music when traveling by motorcycle, as I consider that to be an act of sacrilege. The whole point of riding a bike is to get away from everything and simply enjoy the ride.
We all have to figure out what works best for us. Thanks for your input.

P.S. I just checked and it looks like the "big" ipod is only available in 30GB and 60GB.
--
Joe G.
'The universe is wider than our views of it.'
-- Henry David Thoreau
 
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