OTG for $20 - small, fast, vertsatile- what else can you ask?

Just had to share the information. I was looking for a cheap way to backup my pictures while on vacation. This is what I got from a chineses Ebay supplier.

Digimate II OTG. It can acty as card backup device or an USB harddrive on the slide of a switch. For that price tou get no lcd but little leds to tell you whats going on.

Power: is supplied through USB port when connected to PC or from a battery pack when connected to card reader or camera. So there is no expensive internal battery that you will to change some day.

Fast: 500 MB/min measured speed. I suspect my memory to be the limiting factor.
Small and light: fits in the palm of your hand

Versatile: Acts as second harddrive or can backup card reader with the touch of a button. Can also backup directly from camera using camera USB cable.
Cheap: $20 - need I say more

Rugged: Not really - but as long as you keep it away from sledge hammers and rivers, I don't see any problems. Keeping it in a padded surrounding would be a nice precaution though.

I got an 80GB fujitsu harddrive to go with it.

I suggest getting a 5V DC adaptor to power the device while in OTG mode rather than the supplied battery pack. With the battery pack plugged in I had inconsistent data backup. None with the adaptor. The batteries might be at cause since they were rechargables instead of alkalines (lower voltage).

So there you go.

what about the site where you got it? lol

Sorry about that. There it is.

http://cgi.ebay.com/US-Usb-Silver-Otg-Digi-Mate-Memory-Storage-Backup_W0QQitemZ9717808620QQcategoryZ11209QQtcZphotoQQcmdZViewItem

I bought the one with the lcd for $15 (looks like idential to mine but without LCD) from http://www.dealextreme.com and with a 1.5 volt non-rechargeable batteries I get highly error prone backups with no warning. I suppose I should try more with my nokia car kit adapter, since my backups will be mostly with my vehicle...

coteesh said:

I bought the one with the lcd for $15 (looks like idential to mine
but without LCD) from http://www.dealextreme.com and with a 1.5 volt
non-rechargeable batteries I get highly error prone backups with no
warning. I suppose I should try more with my nokia car kit
adapter, since my backups will be mostly with my vehicle...

Click to expand...

How does it work as a PC backup harrdrive? If it works well, I suspect you are getting clean/precise power when going through the USB wire.

Here are my thoughts:

These OTG's are pretty simple. I figure there aren't that many parts that can fail. Either they work or they don't. Yours seem to work part-time so here's what I would check:

1. Clean power. Batteries can fluctuate over time and between models. The hard drive needs 5V +-5%. If the power fluctuates, your drive will experience problems. Mine did. Get yourself a good stable 5V DC input. One you can plug in your wall would be good. Your car charger may also be OK, but I'm not sure about voltage fluctuations on your car charger.

2. I know your Seagate harddrive needs a little more power than my Fujitsu so your setup might be more prone to the problem. Nevertheless, if it works off the PC USB cable than it should also work off a good power source.

I'm sorry to here that it doesn't work well off 1.5V batteries as this would make the setup less portable in the field. Were your batteries alkaline and new? I'll try alkalines on my OTG to see how it fares.

If after getting clean power, it still doesn't work you may have a defective unit. You may try to return it if it's worth your trouble.

I have done more tests again yesterday and this morning copying 3.5GB of pictures from my SD reader to the OTG (I must have done it 10 times now) and I can't report a single issue. I really like it and I hope you can fix yours.

It's pretty clear these manufacturers are scrimping and/or cutting corners where ever they can... in order to keep they costs down that low. This device probably has little or no power regulation or protection from over voltages, etc... If your willing to risk your data to a device like that, then that's cool... I personally would rather pay some extra cash and get something with better design.

maverick01 said:

coteesh said:

I bought the one with the lcd for $15 (looks like idential to mine
but without LCD) from http://www.dealextreme.com and with a 1.5 volt
non-rechargeable batteries I get highly error prone backups with no
warning. I suppose I should try more with my nokia car kit
adapter, since my backups will be mostly with my vehicle...

Click to expand...

How does it work as a PC backup harrdrive? If it works well, I
suspect you are getting clean/precise power when going through the
USB wire.

Here are my thoughts:
These OTG's are pretty simple. I figure there aren't that many
parts that can fail. Either they work or they don't. Yours seem to
work part-time so here's what I would check:

1. Clean power. Batteries can fluctuate over time and between
models. The hard drive needs 5V +-5%. If the power fluctuates, your
drive will experience problems. Mine did. Get yourself a good
stable 5V DC input. One you can plug in your wall would be good.
Your car charger may also be OK, but I'm not sure about voltage
fluctuations on your car charger.

2. I know your Seagate harddrive needs a little more power than my
Fujitsu so your setup might be more prone to the problem.
Nevertheless, if it works off the PC USB cable than it should also
work off a good power source.

I'm sorry to here that it doesn't work well off 1.5V batteries as
this would make the setup less portable in the field. Were your
batteries alkaline and new? I'll try alkalines on my OTG to see how
it fares.

If after getting clean power, it still doesn't work you may have a
defective unit. You may try to return it if it's worth your trouble.

I have done more tests again yesterday and this morning copying
3.5GB of pictures from my SD reader to the OTG (I must have done it
10 times now) and I can't report a single issue. I really like it
and I hope you can fix yours.

Click to expand...

You seem to assume other devices offer better power regulation. Can you back up that assumption?

If paying more makes you feel safer, good for you. I am not more worried about the data from this harddisk being corrupt any more than the one from my PC harddisk.

Glenn W. said:

It's pretty clear these manufacturers are scrimping and/or cutting
corners where ever they can... in order to keep they costs down
that low. This device probably has little or no power regulation
or protection from over voltages, etc... If your willing to
risk your data to a device like that, then that's cool... I
personally would rather pay some extra cash and get something with
better design.

Click to expand...

I took a similar OTG housing and put in an 80gb Hitachi.

Used an IOGear (small) USB2.0 SD reader, it was as fast as mentione previously.

It worked well for over a month for a trip to Mexico backing up over 1200 images, and it is still going strong on the same Lithium AA batteries.

Ed

Ed Bigelow said:

I took a similar OTG housing and put in an 80gb Hitachi.

Used an IOGear (small) USB2.0 SD reader, it was as fast as
mentione previously.

It worked well for over a month for a trip to Mexico backing up
over 1200 images, and it is still going strong on the same Lithium
AA batteries.

Ed

Click to expand...

Interesting, is it a Digimate brand?

Looks identical but with an LCD display and LEDs.

It this world of PSDs, I don't know if "brand" means much - there are a LOT of seemingly identical devices sold under different names. The one I got is called a "Digital Camera Partner."

Ed

No, it's not a assumption... I have been a beta tester for NextoDI products and am privy to many of the details of the current NextoDI products... and they do have extensive power regulation and protection from over voltage. I've also tested it and can confirm it has these features.

maverick01 said:

If paying more makes you feel safer, good for you. I am not more
worried about the data from this harddisk being corrupt any more
than the one from my PC harddisk.

Glenn W. said:

It's pretty clear these manufacturers are scrimping and/or cutting
corners where ever they can... in order to keep they costs down
that low. This device probably has little or no power regulation
or protection from over voltages, etc... If your willing to
risk your data to a device like that, then that's cool... I
personally would rather pay some extra cash and get something with
better design.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

maverick01 said:

coteesh said:

I bought the one with the lcd for $15 (looks like idential to mine
but without LCD) from http://www.dealextreme.com and with a 1.5 volt
non-rechargeable batteries I get highly error prone backups with no
warning. I suppose I should try more with my nokia car kit
adapter, since my backups will be mostly with my vehicle...

Click to expand...

How does it work as a PC backup harrdrive? If it works well, I
suspect you are getting clean/precise power when going through the
USB wire.

Here are my thoughts:
These OTG's are pretty simple. I figure there aren't that many
parts that can fail. Either they work or they don't. Yours seem to
work part-time so here's what I would check:

1. Clean power. Batteries can fluctuate over time and between
models. The hard drive needs 5V +-5%. If the power fluctuates, your
drive will experience problems. Mine did. Get yourself a good
stable 5V DC input. One you can plug in your wall would be good.
Your car charger may also be OK, but I'm not sure about voltage
fluctuations on your car charger.

2. I know your Seagate harddrive needs a little more power than my
Fujitsu so your setup might be more prone to the problem.
Nevertheless, if it works off the PC USB cable than it should also
work off a good power source.

I'm sorry to here that it doesn't work well off 1.5V batteries as
this would make the setup less portable in the field. Were your
batteries alkaline and new? I'll try alkalines on my OTG to see how
it fares.

If after getting clean power, it still doesn't work you may have a
defective unit. You may try to return it if it's worth your trouble.

I have done more tests again yesterday and this morning copying
3.5GB of pictures from my SD reader to the OTG (I must have done it
10 times now) and I can't report a single issue. I really like it
and I hope you can fix yours.

Click to expand...

Indeed it does work well off USB power. For this it is worth keeping.
I was using Alkaline brand new 1.5 volt batteries.

If my car charger does not work then this device is absolutely useless for me (I motorcycle tour and often camp). So I might do some testing with the car kit, but still it makes me worry that batteries don't work, too much risk involved I'm thinking because the unit cannot detect if there are copy errors and it won't tell me. The unit probably is defective but too cheap to bother returning. So I immediately bought a Yes Nano 1050 and it should arrive next week.

coteesh said:

Indeed it does work well off USB power. For this it is worth keeping.
I was using Alkaline brand new 1.5 volt batteries.
If my car charger does not work then this device is absolutely
useless for me (I motorcycle tour and often camp). So I might do
some testing with the car kit, but still it makes me worry that
batteries don't work, too much risk involved I'm thinking because
the unit cannot detect if there are copy errors and it won't tell
me. The unit probably is defective but too cheap to bother
returning. So I immediately bought a Yes Nano 1050 and it should
arrive next week.

Click to expand...

I did more testing today and here are my finds:

1. With the 5V DC power adaptor and card reader, it's perfect. Not a single problem.
2. PC to USB -> perfect
3. With the battery pack and card reader, mixed results:
a. With new alKaline batteries -> intermittent at best. Not good.

b. With fully charged NiMH -> worked without fault copying 25GB (approximately 2500 10MB raw photos) of data in 45 minutes without a problem. After 45 minutes, the batteries weakened and the copying process became less reliable. The copying would stop on it's own. I recharged the batteries and it I could copy again, without trouble.

So here's what I make of all this. The unit is reliable as long as the power is stable and close to the recommended 5v. I never had a problem using a DC converter. Batteries on the other hand is a mixed bag. Four alkaline batteries give 6 volts which seems to be too much. The unit powers on but can't copy reliably. Rechargeables NiMH give 5.5Volts and that seems fine until they get too discharged, which is normal behaviour for any battery. Only inconvenience is you don't have a low battery indicator. In any case, during all these tests with higher and lower than suggested voltages, no data has been lost or corrupted* . The only inconvenience is partial copy of the data. When that happened there is a blinking yellow led that signals a bad copy. At that point, I would just pop recharged batteries (or the DC converter) and recopy the data (the OTG automatically re-copies the card data to a new directory).

Glenn W. said:

No, it's not a assumption... I have been a beta tester for NextoDI
products and am privy to many of the details of the current NextoDI
products... and they do have extensive power regulation and
protection from over voltage. I've also tested it and can confirm
it has these features.

Click to expand...

Well I'm glad you were upfront about your association with Nexto. I don't know about their products. DC converters like the one I bought do power regulation just fine. As for surge protection, I tend to trust dedicated solutions (you know, those pricey power bars with warranties).

How much are Nextos?

I'm not associated in any way with this product, and I'm merely pointing out to whoever it may interest that you don't have to spend a fortune to get decent portable backup.

The NextoDI products start around $120(USD) with no HD. They can transfer data at about 14MB/sec or faster with cards that are capable of those speeds. They will transfer from PSD to PC at around 25MB/second or faster... they have internal Lithium Polymer battery power, and also have external two DC power inputs, one for a external battery and another for external power. One of the NextoDI products has USB and Firewire plus a CF slot... the other has USB and USB OTG as well as a CF slot. They can transfer around 50GB on a single charge of the internal power, another 100GB using the external LiION cell(which is chargeable via external battery connection)... You can charge them from USB or Firewire, as well as the DC input... I've transfered over 40GB on 4 AA alkaline cells, using them to charge the internal battery and then use that to power the device....

(four AA alkaline cells will barely power a HD by themselves for even a few minutes, they just don't handle the current consumption that a HD requires at this voltage)

The trick to power regulation in a device like this is... you have to provide both DC step down and step up conversion... Four new Alkaline AA cells actualy put out 6 volts, as they get consumed and/or have current drawn from them, the voltage drops bellow 4.8... NiMH cells start out around 4.8 and go down from there... Lithium Iron Disulfide like the Energizers start out at darn close to 7 volts...

Lithium Polymer and LiION cells are like 3.7 volts... so they only require step up conversion.

Bottom line... to build a well built and designed PSD with wide variety of power inputs and other nice features and top level proformance... is not cheap...

Bottom line... at some point you get what you pay for... or you don't get what you don't pay for.

maverick01 said:

Glenn W. said:

No, it's not a assumption... I have been a beta tester for NextoDI
products and am privy to many of the details of the current NextoDI
products... and they do have extensive power regulation and
protection from over voltage. I've also tested it and can confirm
it has these features.

Click to expand...

Well I'm glad you were upfront about your association with Nexto. I
don't know about their products. DC converters like the one I
bought do power regulation just fine. As for surge protection, I
tend to trust dedicated solutions (you know, those pricey power
bars with warranties).

How much are Nextos?

I'm not associated in any way with this product, and I'm merely
pointing out to whoever it may interest that you don't have to
spend a fortune to get decent portable backup.

Click to expand...

Glenn W. said:

Bottom line... at some point you get what you pay for... or you
don't get what you don't pay for.

Click to expand...

I agree with you here. I paid $20 to copy so I can copy up to 25GB of data on a single charge of inexpensive rechargeable batteries. This is more photos than I can ever imagine shooting on my D80 in a single day. I can also use a small 5V DC converter to fill up the 80GB of the PSD. I can plug a card reader or hookup the camera with the USB cable and I can use this PSD as an external harddrive to the PC, all this without compromising my data and at the same speed as much more expensive models.

This is more than what I need, so I don't know why I would want to pay more.

I believe that the OTG market is a niche market and that profit margins on these relatively simple devices, are very high. Like the previous poster Ed Bigelow said "there are a LOT of seemingly identical devices sold under different names" and different prices. I have seen PSDs with similar specs as the Nexto you promote for roughly half the price.