I would not call dropping cards, cameras, etc.normal usage (dropped two of them, obviously not learning anything from the first incident). CF cards are electronic devices, they can and do fail. As I've stated numerous times on this forum, Hitachi re-designed the microdrives to make them more robust after buying the rights from IBM, so the 2gb and larger drives are the new design for sure, most problems have occurred with the older, smaller IBM drives. My professional photographer friend has used microdrives in all of his DSLRs that take them (as well as his S7k backup) for a few years with no microdrive failures, his gear is on a plane headed to a cat show somewhere in the world most every weekend. My experience has not been that "Microdrives are far too fragile for priceless photos.". In my 18 months of using a 2gb Hitachi microdrive, I've certainly had some priceless photos on the drive that were not lost.
It may not be "normal usage" as defined by the manufacturer, but it is going to happen sooner or later. These card must be removed from the camera to put in a card reader and no matter how careful you are, sooner or later you're going to drop one. The law of averages is going to catch up to you eventually.
I don't care how robust they make a microdrive, it still has moving parts. With enough of a jolt ( and it doesn't have to be much) a small part can break or the head can come in contact with the disk and corrupt your data enough to make the disk unreadable. While CF cards are not infalible ( and sooner or later they will fail as well) they are a solid state device and far less susceptible to mechanical trauma. With CF cards now as large as 8GB the only advantage I see is that the microdrives are a bit cheaper. I guess you just have to decide how much your pictures are worth to you. I'm glad you have never dropped a drive or had a problem with one, but that's not the case for everyone. If you have a thousand people using microdrives and a thousand using CF cards over a 1-2 year period the microdrive owners are going to have more failures. Is it going to happen a lot? I don't know what the failure rate is. You can probaly stand under a tree in a lightning storm and most of the time you're not going to have a problem, but I wouldn't recommend doing that either. I would prefer whenever possible to have the statistical advantage on my side unless there is some compelling reason not to. Drives are replaceable but the family vacation photos on them can never be replaced.
I wouldn't say I didn't learn anything. The first drive was replaced under warranty. When the second one failed I learned not to use microdrives
Granted. I intentionally ignored that issue because transfer times are generally slower using that method and this can be a significant issue when downloading 500-1000MB of files. It also requires you to use the manufacturers own quirky software with many cameras, The card reader allows you to bypass that issue since you can just copy and paste from the card to your hard drive. I don't have to learn a new interface for each camera we have in the house ( my three kids each have a digital camera)Your comment regarding the pins is correct although I have never found this to be a problem given that the guides on the card pretty much prevent the card from gonig in at an angle. Just the same, if you have the time and patience ( and a power adapter or fully charged batteries to keep the camera powered up through out the transfer) its certainly safer to transfer the files through the camera.
Hi Mike,
Point taken. I think we're beating a dead horse here ( mostly my fault I suppose - sorry about that). To answer you, no I wouldn't learn to stop using cameras, I would hope that I would learn to buy cameras that were more likely to survive the inevitable abuse they would suffer in my hands. I guess if you take good care of your stuff then buy what ever fits your needs and if your a little tougher on your equipment than a CF card might be a better choice. Like I said in my first post. There will be people who will disagree with me. Thats what these boards are for, the free exchange of oppinions and ideas. Thanks for an intelligent opposing point of view.
