Mel Snyder
Veteran Member
Back in February, a poster here recommended this device. I bought it, and fell in love with it, recommended it widely. It enables you to back up your SD cards to a portable hard drive while on the road, without a computer. Or play videos from the hard drive on your iPad or iPhone
Then, yesterday, while at anchor at Cuttyhunk, it struggled to load an SD card full of great sailboat images shot with my NEX-6 and my new 55-210 as sailors across Buzzards Bay enjoyed a perfect 20+ knot wind and gorgeous skies. I had the write protect tab engaged, so after 5 minutes, I stupidly removed it and tried again.
Nada. Oh well, I will load them directly onto my iPad.
But the Camera Connecter got me a "cannot read this device" message. I quickly tried it on my MacBook Pro - unreadable. Popped card back in camera - unreadable - "do you want to format?" NO!
Bad card? Camera falure? I immediately shot images on 2 new cards, a Transcend and a Sandisk (I use only Class 10 cards). Read perfectly on my MacBook Pro, and and my iPad through the Camera Connector. Neither could be read through the MobileLite.
And after attempting to read them through the MobileLite, neither could be read by the iPad, MacBook Pro or NEX-6.
When I got home from my weekend sailing, I loaded Cardrescue for Mac, and it recovered all the files on the card (actually, not just the files lost this weekend, but any that have not been over-written). However, all the rescued files have been downsized to 1600x1020, and the EXIF info is lost:
But at least they aren't a total loss.
What happened?
Apparently, when the MobileLite turns savage, it destroys the file access table on your SD card. Fortunately, CardRescue can recover the files without the FAT.
For those who don't understand FAT, let me explain. When You "erase" or "format" a card, you don't actually destroy the all files on it - you just destroy the information a computer or camera needs to show it where the files are. That's how many politicians and criminals are caught when they mistakenly believe they can destroy evidence on a hard drive, and the Feds come in with a program that restores them. The files are still there until a new file over-writes part or all of the sectors where data from a file is stored.
The MobileLite I own has suddenly begun destroying the file access table of each card inserted into it. If you didn't have the technical knowledge to understand what might have happened, you'd have believed the images lost.
This is s fatal, inexcusable flaw in the design of the product. It's past return to Amazon, and I sure would never trust a replacement from Kingston. Had this occurred on my upcoming month-long EU trip, I would be livid, because I won't have access to a computer for a month. This is why I take a belt-and-suspenders approach to preparing for photographing potentially once-in-a-lifetime events.
The MobileLite worked fabulously right up to the point where it destroyed cards. Perhaps it was one-off event.
But as a paratrooper friend told me, a chute failure is ALWAYS a one-off event, and the customer never reorders.
Then, yesterday, while at anchor at Cuttyhunk, it struggled to load an SD card full of great sailboat images shot with my NEX-6 and my new 55-210 as sailors across Buzzards Bay enjoyed a perfect 20+ knot wind and gorgeous skies. I had the write protect tab engaged, so after 5 minutes, I stupidly removed it and tried again.
Nada. Oh well, I will load them directly onto my iPad.
But the Camera Connecter got me a "cannot read this device" message. I quickly tried it on my MacBook Pro - unreadable. Popped card back in camera - unreadable - "do you want to format?" NO!
Bad card? Camera falure? I immediately shot images on 2 new cards, a Transcend and a Sandisk (I use only Class 10 cards). Read perfectly on my MacBook Pro, and and my iPad through the Camera Connector. Neither could be read through the MobileLite.
And after attempting to read them through the MobileLite, neither could be read by the iPad, MacBook Pro or NEX-6.
When I got home from my weekend sailing, I loaded Cardrescue for Mac, and it recovered all the files on the card (actually, not just the files lost this weekend, but any that have not been over-written). However, all the rescued files have been downsized to 1600x1020, and the EXIF info is lost:
But at least they aren't a total loss.
What happened?
Apparently, when the MobileLite turns savage, it destroys the file access table on your SD card. Fortunately, CardRescue can recover the files without the FAT.
For those who don't understand FAT, let me explain. When You "erase" or "format" a card, you don't actually destroy the all files on it - you just destroy the information a computer or camera needs to show it where the files are. That's how many politicians and criminals are caught when they mistakenly believe they can destroy evidence on a hard drive, and the Feds come in with a program that restores them. The files are still there until a new file over-writes part or all of the sectors where data from a file is stored.
The MobileLite I own has suddenly begun destroying the file access table of each card inserted into it. If you didn't have the technical knowledge to understand what might have happened, you'd have believed the images lost.
This is s fatal, inexcusable flaw in the design of the product. It's past return to Amazon, and I sure would never trust a replacement from Kingston. Had this occurred on my upcoming month-long EU trip, I would be livid, because I won't have access to a computer for a month. This is why I take a belt-and-suspenders approach to preparing for photographing potentially once-in-a-lifetime events.
The MobileLite worked fabulously right up to the point where it destroyed cards. Perhaps it was one-off event.
But as a paratrooper friend told me, a chute failure is ALWAYS a one-off event, and the customer never reorders.
