Microdrives are just no good for cameras

Well, at least one pro that I know personally swears by the microdrives. He's had three 1gb ones that he's used heavily for over a year with no problems. However, he did say that he is careful never to remove them from the camera when in the field and that he is very careful with them in the studio.

I wonder, how much "shock protection" does a big camera like the D30 provide a microdrive? Seems to me that any bumps that would kill the drive would likely damage or ding the camera, too.

To be honest though, if I wasn't getting the free one from Canon I would not likely buy one.

Steve

Peter Lindsey said:

For these people I would expect the microdrive to be just fine.
(including me, most of the time)

Pros use the gear for what it was made, to the limits, taking just
enough care not to break it when they most need it. The extra
money made in pushing it to its limits more than pays for a
replacement if it breaks once per year. Who cares about marks and
scuffs from everyday use. For these people a microdrive is
definitely a bad idea.

Good point about pros using multiple smaller cards, too. If I were
a pro having to shoot a whole 1G in one critical shoot, I'd do the
same.

VincentJ said:

My office room-mate got his D30 last month with the 1gig
microdrive. It went kaput last week after a slight bump.

Steve Strawn said:

My question is this, do microdrives even make sense for cameras any
more? They are fragile devices, and cameras tend to take a lot of
abuse that a microdrive just isn't designed to take.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

A camera with dual storage (mirror) machism. Canon will add the feature for the deluex version of pro digi cameras in the future for photographers of critical tasks, I am sure.

yali said:

Jay Bean said:

Steve Strawn said:

I know a lot of people here use microdrives and have never had a
problem with them. But a lot of people do. Mine failed and I had to
explain to the client why I had nothing from a shoot. I resolved to
only use compact flash from here on in.

My question is this, do microdrives even make sense for cameras any
more? They are fragile devices, and cameras tend to take a lot of
abuse that a microdrive just isn't designed to take.

Seeing as you can get a 512mb compact flash card for under $200
USD, why would anyone want a microdrive, seeing as they can and do
fail often in cameras? I don't.

Steve

http://www.splut.net

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

--
yali

Click to expand...

--yali

Good point. Murphy's Law also states the the one storage device that will fail is the one that contains the "keeper" image. It reminds me of Charles Lindbergh's historic flight. All his competitors were designing and flying multiple engine planes. When asked why he was the maveric and going with a single engine design he pointed out that if one engine fails, you wouldn't be able to make it anyway and that you were only increasing your chance of failure.

When I was a professional photographer, I constantly worried about equipment failure and lab failure, especially on "one chance" shoots. Weddings were the most nerve-racking. I was totally redundant - cameras, flash, lenses, PC cords, etc. That saved my bacon on several occasions. I was also more fortunate than my peers in that the lab never lost or destroyed a job I couldn't reshoot.

My biggest boo boo involved shooting the board of directors of Big Brother of Greater Los Angeles. I was comprised of several big cheeses, including Roy Disney. I was shooting location portraits with a three head electronic flash setup. I was using a Mamiya TLR. Back then (1971), the lenses had variable flash synch for electronic flash and flash bulbs. I accidently bumped the tiny lever on the lens off X synch and didn't get a single frame! If I'd only had a D30!

Doug

yali said:

If you spead out, you reduced the possibility of losing all, but
increased the possibility of losing a fraction of ALL. So, from the
long run, it is the same!

Click to expand...

yali said:

If you spead out, you reduced the possibility of losing all, but
increased the possibility of losing a fraction of ALL. So, from the
long run, it is the same!

Click to expand...

You may lose the same number of shots over the long haul, but you never some back from an assigment with no shots. You may well never lose enough of the keepers from any given assignment that you make the customer unhappy.

I have had a microdrive failure that was not recoverable. It fell from 2m (that's 6 feet) on concrete and I could still be read but not be reformated. I got the pictures out though.

I currently use one that has had a few "dead" sectors for a year and manage without problems. I have shot more than 50000 images with it. However, I cannot reformat it in the D30, only erase all images. I only format it in my laptop, using the PCMCIA adapter, and then use Norton Disk Doctor which always finds the troubled sector and marks it as bad. The D30 does not use those problem sectors.

btw, I have also used NDD to recover images that I had accidentally erased from the camera. Make that a HUGE advantage for a small laptop vs. a digital wallet or some other form of mass storage, you have a late "cancel" feature

Any other experience with recovery tools ?-- philippe http://www.phitar.com

Clients are rarely worried about whether you got the one "keeper". They are much more worried about getting something usable they can use for their purpose or business at hand.

However, if you are shooting a situation where there is one and only one opportunity and that one opportunity makes or breaks the job, then you better be there with two cameras and you better shoot it with both. Perhaps this is a carry over from the old film days where you didn't know you had a problem until well after the fact, but I guarantee that you will never have an unhappy customer due to missing "the shot" if you shoot those critical shots twice with different units.

Member said:

You may lose the same number of shots over the long haul, but you
never some back from an assigment with no shots. You may well
never lose enough of the keepers from any given assignment that
you make the customer unhappy.

Click to expand...

Compact Flash cards are much cheaper nowadays and have the storage capacity that people need. Just a year or two ago you would have to

pay the same amount for a 64MB CF vs a 340MB Microdrive. Not to mention the microdrive was faster. Things have changed since then and now the CF media is faster (read/writes) and much more affordable. You still can't get a gig of CF memory for the same price as a gig microdrive but at least you can get the same size capacity (1gig).

Jeff D.

Steve Strawn said:

I know a lot of people here use microdrives and have never had a
problem with them. But a lot of people do. Mine failed and I had to
explain to the client why I had nothing from a shoot. I resolved to
only use compact flash from here on in.

My question is this, do microdrives even make sense for cameras any
more? They are fragile devices, and cameras tend to take a lot of
abuse that a microdrive just isn't designed to take.

Seeing as you can get a 512mb compact flash card for under $200
USD, why would anyone want a microdrive, seeing as they can and do
fail often in cameras? I don't.

Steve

http://www.splut.net

Click to expand...

I had a Yugo go 125,000 miles, so I guess they're as reliable as a Honda.

Greg Gilman said:

HI,

I bought two micro drives (1 GB) when I bought my D30. I have taken
16,000 images with no problems. I have read about others having
problems, but they have been problem free for me. I use a Micro
Tech USB connector, ACDSee and occasional PS all with no known
problems related to the micro drives.

Greg

Click to expand...

Steve Strawn said:

I had a Yugo go 125,000 miles

Click to expand...

C'mon, Steve. And I usually believe anything.
--Joe Hawblitzel http://home.kc.rr.com/educ/weather/index.htm

JohnM said:

It's just like computer hard drives. There are two types, those
that have failed & those that are going to fail.

Click to expand...

Except nowadays you also have those that are thrown away because they don't have "enough" capacity any more...

Hi Steve

Yes, I have had problems with Microdrives which locked up on me, but this has not occured since Canon upgraded my firmware. However last tuesday I was in London for the day and took a lot of shots on one of my 340mb Microdrives, about midday I was passing a camera shop and asked to see and test a Canon 50mm F1.8- The shop assistant said that I could try the lens on my D30 and he would put the images on his computer to test for sharpness etc. I took the shots I wanted, passed the microdrive to him and hedown loaded the images, however he said that his computer could not read the RAW files and would I shoot in JPG- I reloaded the microdrive into the camera but I immediately got a CF CARD ERROR in the screen- thinking that this was a fault with the camera I laded my 16mb compact flash card and took some new shots in large JPG format, hande the card to the assistant who downloaded the images only to find that his computer would not read the card, he handed the 16mm card back to me and I placed it in the camera only to have the message CF CARD ERRPOR come up on the screen. I left the shop in disgust- loading my 1GB Microdrive into the camera before departing- I took several hundred shots in London that afternoon and when I got home I downloaded my images from the 340mb Microdrive, but when I came to load them into PS6 I was told that the image were corrupted- I did the same with the 16mb flash card and again the images downloaded to thumbnails but would not load to PS6. However the 1GB Microdrive images were all OK, so at least I had saved something of my day in London.

I have since managed to rescue the images that were lost on my 340mb Microdrive using Photorescue software that I down loaded from this forum.

I think the moral of this long winded story is--- Never put you Microdrive into any unknown computer equipment- Wait until you get home.

Robus

PS- I still trust my 340mb and 1GM Microdrives and would be reluctant to change to CF Cards at least for the forseable future.

Steve Strawn said:

I know a lot of people here use microdrives and have never had a
problem with them. But a lot of people do. Mine failed and I had to
explain to the client why I had nothing from a shoot. I resolved to
only use compact flash from here on in.

My question is this, do microdrives even make sense for cameras any
more? They are fragile devices, and cameras tend to take a lot of
abuse that a microdrive just isn't designed to take.

Seeing as you can get a 512mb compact flash card for under $200
USD, why would anyone want a microdrive, seeing as they can and do
fail often in cameras? I don't.

Steve

http://www.splut.net

Click to expand...

--Robus

Hi,

I had a 1 GB microdrive for almost one year and it failed, it sounded like chr - chr - chr and I lost a lot of images. I have a (small) CF 32MB some years old and often used and never failed - and several 128 MB CF and one 256 MB CF never had problems. A friend with a 340MB Microdrive had a failure as well - so I won't buy a microdrive any more! I prefer several CFs!

Jürgen

dobiesj said:

Jeff D.

Steve Strawn said:

I know a lot of people here use microdrives and have never had a
problem with them. But a lot of people do. Mine failed and I had to
explain to the client why I had nothing from a shoot. I resolved to
only use compact flash from here on in.

My question is this, do microdrives even make sense for cameras any
more? They are fragile devices, and cameras tend to take a lot of
abuse that a microdrive just isn't designed to take.

Seeing as you can get a 512mb compact flash card for under $200
USD, why would anyone want a microdrive, seeing as they can and do
fail often in cameras? I don't.

Steve

http://www.splut.net

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Steve Strawn said:

I know a lot of people here use microdrives and have never had a
problem with them. But a lot of people do. Mine failed and I had to
explain to the client why I had nothing from a shoot. I resolved to
only use compact flash from here on in.
My question is this, do microdrives even make sense for cameras any
more? They are fragile devices, and cameras tend to take a lot of
abuse that a microdrive just isn't designed to take.
Seeing as you can get a 512mb compact flash card for under $200
USD, why would anyone want a microdrive, seeing as they can and do
fail often in cameras? I don't.

Click to expand...

That's a scary thought . . . as my microdrive from the Canon rebate deal just shown up a few days ago. It is true that the microdrive can fail more frequently then solid-state CF memory. But CF memory can fail also over time. The lesson here is not to leave all your eggs in one basket.

Especially as memory size increases over time, we can fit more and more images onto each card. If even one fails, we can lose hundreds of pictures. Sometimes, I am thankful for the 255 images I can take on my microdrive. Other times I'm thankful that my 128 MB CF card requires me to change cards after every 32 images.

My advice, download the images onto your computer as soon as possible after the shoot. And back-up your images . . . as the hard disk in your computer is just like a microdrive.

Chieh
--Camera Hacker - http://www.CameraHacker.com/

I sell flash ram (the same (brands) we use for cameras) for industiel applications and in large qty, and trust me, flash ram fails as well.

brgds
kristian

Steve Strawn said:

I know a lot of people here use microdrives and have never had a
problem with them. But a lot of people do. Mine failed and I had to
explain to the client why I had nothing from a shoot. I resolved to
only use compact flash from here on in.

My question is this, do microdrives even make sense for cameras any
more? They are fragile devices, and cameras tend to take a lot of
abuse that a microdrive just isn't designed to take.

Seeing as you can get a 512mb compact flash card for under $200
USD, why would anyone want a microdrive, seeing as they can and do
fail often in cameras? I don't.

Steve

http://www.splut.net

Click to expand...

I have decided to give CF a try as I have been using MDs for all of my cameras to this point. I think that some have overstated the fragility of MDs, but also I believe that solid state beats mechanical storage for reliability.

I went with 2 512Mb CF cards. Here is what I have found so far:

Storage: I lose about 15 images worth of storage by using the CF cards (not a big deal)
Speed: The CF seem to work just a quickly as my old MD

Ease of use: A wash since it is not really a problem to change cards, and there is often plenty of time to make the change

Price: Around $500 for the CF vs. $350 for the MD. The MD seems like a better deal to me, but maybe not to some.

Overall I would say that I feel a little safer have my images on the CF cards, but I would not worry if I only had the MD.

YMMV--Valliesto