Wolverine ESP RAW viewing

I am looking for portable storeage for travelling.

I would also like to see my pictures so that I know that the transfer has been successful. Occasionally, I might delete some to recover space.
The Wolverine seems to offer the features I would like.

However, I have read criticisms that the viewing of RAW files might be VERY slow and am also concerned about transfer speeds.
Can anyone report on these potential problems.

I am also considering the ARCHOS. Any comments?

Thanks

The ESP features a QVGA screen with 320 x 240 pixels

An Archos with similar sized screen is only 480 x 272 pixels
Archos's high contrast & fast screen is excellent for movies but not for photos

Both ESP and Archos display rather pixelated images and Archos do not handle RAW images.

If viewing photos is primary concern, get the Epson P-3000 or P-5000.
With it's 640 x 480 VGA screen, it's the best there is for photos.
It has 16 million colors vs 256K colors on the ESP.
RAW images load pretty fast, can't say for the ESP as I have not tried it yet.

johnschuman said:

I am looking for portable storeage for travelling.
I would also like to see my pictures so that I know that the
transfer has been successful. Occasionally, I might delete some to
recover space.
The Wolverine seems to offer the features I would like.
However, I have read criticisms that the viewing of RAW files might
be VERY slow and am also concerned about transfer speeds.
Can anyone report on these potential problems.

I am also considering the ARCHOS. Any comments?

Thanks

Click to expand...

Thanks jyw

My concern about the Epson is the cost. It is the same as many notebooks or close to it.

The other machines offer toylike features--music, video etc. which may be an advantage.

There seems to be no ideal solution. Perhaps just a hard drive with no playback screen would be best?

It all depends on what your needs and/or desires are... If you really want good viewing, your probably going to have to pay for it... There are quite a few users of the Vosonic/Wolverine viewing PSDs... So, I'm not sure I'd try to convince you that they are not of any value or that the Epson PSDs are the only ones worthy of viewing on. If all you want to do is to see the photos to get a warm fuzzy feeling that it's really on the PSD, then not having the worlds greatest screen should not really be a big concern...

If you can live without that warm fuzzy feeling of viewing the photos... there are many PSDs to choose from... Vosinic/Wolverine, NextoDI, Transcend, etc....

For $85 +$6 shipping on ebay you can get a NextoDI ND-2300 and add your own hard drive to it... (HDD cost roughly $1/GB or less)

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEXTO-CF-OTG-ND-2300-PORTABLE-STORAGE-UNIT_W0QQitemZ290125446659QQihZ019QQcategoryZ15215QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

That product is capable of copying high speed compact flash cards at around 14MB/second sustained transfers... and will copy other cards and data at up to 22MB/second sustained via it's USB OTG interface....

But anyway... what you need is largely dependent on what your needs are... If you need viewing... then buy something that does viewing... you need not buy a Epson to get viewing... Wolverine is basically about the lowest cost viewing PSD you're going to find... and many people find to be a good value for a viewing PSD product.

johnschuman said:

Thanks jyw

My concern about the Epson is the cost. It is the same as many
notebooks or close to it.

The other machines offer toylike features--music, video etc. which
may be an advantage.

There seems to be no ideal solution. Perhaps just a hard drive
with no playback screen would be best?

Click to expand...

You are welcomed.

If you are looking for a PSD without playback screen.

You can consider this: http://www.hyperdrive.com

I basically have 3 portable hard drives:

1) HyperDrive SPACE for memory card backup (it's more compact, very much faster and has a longer battery life than the P-3000 or any PSD in the market)
2) Epson P-3000 for viewing pictures & videos from cameras
3) Archos AV500 for viewing hi-def movies

I use my macbook pro for everything else

johnschuman said:

Thanks jyw

My concern about the Epson is the cost. It is the same as many
notebooks or close to it.

The other machines offer toylike features--music, video etc. which
may be an advantage.

There seems to be no ideal solution. Perhaps just a hard drive
with no playback screen would be best?

Click to expand...

Thanks to you both.

Your thoughts are very helpful.

Still, a couple of more questions:

Do the hard drives confirm that the files have been copied correctly?

Just how bad is the viewing screen on the Wolverine and Archos, e.g. how does it compare to photoshop slide show before the view is rendered (i.e. just identifiable but you know the file is readable). I could live with viewing only JPG's as seeing them would likely mean the RAW file was OK. Is there any limit on the size of the JPG's.

In Canada, the Epson is now about $850. The Wolvserine and Archos are between $400 and $650 so the cost difference is substantial if all are equally reliable. We are planning on travelling to Greece, will need about 4G a day of storeage and would hate to lose all our photos.

Thanks again.

Hard drives by themselves don't really confirm the files have been copied... but most PSDs have some mechanism to test file transfers... often the most simple approach is to verify that file name and file size after the transfer is done, etc... beyond that, it takes more effort and time... The NextoDI products have a interesting feature that doesn't seem to be on any other PSDs... if you insert a card that's already been copied to it, it will tell you that it has a copy of the card already. You can then do further verification or copy the card again if you choose to.

But anyway... you should at least be aware... that even a full bit by bit comparison of the data on the HDD to the data on the flash memory card is not necessasarly going to tell you that the data is not corrupt... If the device is reading the memory card incorrectly, it's possible to copy the bad data onto the HDD and then when you compare the two it passes the comparison... but still the data is not correct because it isn't being read correctly from the card... So, while some PSD's do full bit by bit comparisons... it's really not fool proof...

On the other hand... it's really quite rare for a good PSD to incorrectly copy the data... I've never had data corruption caused by any production PSD that I've used. I do beta testing, and I've seen it happen in beta versions of a product, but never in a production product. Not to say it can't happen... just that it really is kinda rare....

I did have data corruption caused by a bad flash card... but it was the case that verification really would not have caught the problem...

Some devices can write back to memory card... a poor man's viewing PSD is to copy the data to the PSD, then write it back to a memory card, put the memory card back in the camera and use the camera to view the photos... this can give you some since that things are working correctly... even this is not fool proof howerver, since some cameras do not really decode RAW data, but rather display a smaller JPEG version of the file... (some viewing PSDs do the same thing)

johnschuman said:

Thanks to you both.

Your thoughts are very helpful.

Still, a couple of more questions:

Do the hard drives confirm that the files have been copied correctly?

Just how bad is the viewing screen on the Wolverine and Archos,
e.g. how does it compare to photoshop slide show before the view is
rendered (i.e. just identifiable but you know the file is
readable). I could live with viewing only JPG's as seeing them
would likely mean the RAW file was OK. Is there any limit on the
size of the JPG's.

In Canada, the Epson is now about $850. The Wolvserine and Archos
are between $400 and $650 so the cost difference is substantial if
all are equally reliable. We are planning on travelling to Greece,
will need about 4G a day of storeage and would hate to lose all our
photos.

Thanks again.

Click to expand...

Wolverine, Archos and Epson do not do file verification. HyperDrive SPACE has 32-bit file verification.

Photos on Wolverine & Archos are pixelated and lack detail.

You are talking about 76,800 pixels (on the Wolverine) vs 130,560 pixels on the Archos and 307,200 pixels (on the Epson)
64 or 256K colors (Wolverine) vs 16 million colors (on the Archos & Epson)

From what I remember, Archos does not have memory card slots, so your only option is to transfer via USB OTG, which I remember is very slow on Archos (about 1~2MB/s), which may only limit you to doing backups at night in your hotel room. You need 30mins to 1 hour to backup 4GB.

Wolverine is slightly faster at 5MB/s, which is slow when you compare to 20MB/s on the HyperDrive.

johnschuman said:

Thanks to you both.

Your thoughts are very helpful.

Still, a couple of more questions:

Do the hard drives confirm that the files have been copied correctly?

Just how bad is the viewing screen on the Wolverine and Archos,
e.g. how does it compare to photoshop slide show before the view is
rendered (i.e. just identifiable but you know the file is
readable). I could live with viewing only JPG's as seeing them
would likely mean the RAW file was OK. Is there any limit on the
size of the JPG's.

In Canada, the Epson is now about $850. The Wolvserine and Archos
are between $400 and $650 so the cost difference is substantial if
all are equally reliable. We are planning on travelling to Greece,
will need about 4G a day of storeage and would hate to lose all our
photos.

Thanks again.

Click to expand...

Just received my Wolverine ESP from B&H today.

The photo display (even though larger) isn't as sharp as the LCD display on the back of my D80. It's plenty good enough to judge exposure and composition though, and even includes a histogram display that you can turn on or off. Yes, it's pixellated. I'm betting that this is in the display firmware, not the display itself. The display itself appears to be tack-sharp, it's just not the best at rendering photos to the display. One might hope for a firmware update?

A lot of your decision may depend on your reasons for buying. I've been looking at the "Image Tank" type devices for some time, but couldn't rationalize it based on flash card backup alone. What sold me on ESP is all the other stuff it does. Built-in FM tuner, MP3 player, etc. It's quite the gadget.

Haven't tried RAW yet, but it's USB computer connection is very fast.

I've only played with it for about a half hour so far, but I think it'll fit the bill well for my purposes.

Thank you for your responses. They certainly made me more aware of the pitfalls and prevented what would probably have been a mistake.

Have you had time to assess the battery life of the ESP? I just ordered mine and will be leaving for Europe in 2 weeks so I need to decide on buying a 2nd battery quickly. Any other tips or tricks would also be welcome.
--
Ray R

You should be OK with the charger and adapter for down loading cards at night in your hotel. I took 10-GB of SD cards w/me on my 9-day trip to China and had no issues w/battery life down loading on my Wolverine MVP 60-GB PSD.

Its better to have spare batteries for your camera and flash since their use is when you're out & about.
--
Telecorder (Dave)
FZee5/FZee30+RD-S+OlyTC1.7X
Dee50+Nikon 35mm F2.0D-AF+Nikkor18-70DX+Tam70-300L+BIGMA 50-500 EX HSM
My Image Galleries --

http://www.nikonians-images.com/galleries/showgallery.php?cat=500&ppuser=121399&password=

http://Telecorder.smugmug.com/

I haven't gone through the first charge on my ESP yet. There is a AA battery holder you can get for the ESP if it helps. It holds 4 AA cells and plugs into the unit. It's also cheaper than a spare lithium-ion battery. Check on Wolverine's web site:

http://www.wolverinedata.com

I bought a "package" with that, a 12V car adapter and a camera bag for $30 (have no real use for the bag, but it was essentially free). I want the car charger / adapter so I can use the ESP as a jukebox on long trips.