Microdrives vs Flash cards

ReeferBen · April 30, 2004

Whats the difference here. You can get a 2.2 gb magicstor for only 150 but a 1 gb CF card is more like 150-200. Why wouldn't you go with the migicstor?

Thanks

gubbs · April 30, 2004

Microdrives have slower read/write times, drain power faster and are less tolerant to shocks...... I think?

Jon

cletus · April 30, 2004

gubbs wrote:

Microdrives have slower read/write times, drain power faster and are less tolerant to shocks...... I think?

Jon

I'm going to stick with CF. No moving parts for me!

DoctorIt · April 30, 2004

MUCH slower. If you pull a microdrive out of a reader prematurely, much more susceptible to being fried. If you drop a microdrive from any height higher than about 10 inches, it's toast.

Slow CF is about the same price as microdrives now.

www.ecost.com has 1gb Sandisk CF for $157 - and IBM 1gb microdrive for $159. Thats a no brainer. I picked up the Sandisk

Johnny Luck · April 30, 2004

cletus wrote:

I'm going to stick with CF. No moving parts for me!

That might be a wise advice. However, I would not discount the microdrive that quickly, especially if you want large capacity. I just bought the Hitachi 4GB even though I intend to use my camera in harsh conditions (off-road motorcycle riding). Those drives have been used in MP3 players for years by careless teenagers and they are very reliable now and much cheaper in that size although just as fast. you can read a good review about it in LL review.

DoctorIt · April 30, 2004

Johnny Luck wrote:

That might be a wise advice. However, I would not discount the microdrive that quickly, especially if you want large capacity. I just bought the Hitachi 4GB even though I intend to use my camera in harsh conditions (off-road motorcycle riding). Those drives have been used in MP3 players for years by careless teenagers and they are very reliable now and much cheaper in that size although just as fast. you can read a good review about it in LL review.

You have a good point, if you want the really big storage, I'd say over 2gb, then yes, microdrive is the way to go - although Lexar does have a 4gb CF card now, only $1200

Fact remains, at anything below 2gb, the prices are very competitive at this point with slower CF cards with the advent of the new high speed CF cards.

cmr164 · April 30, 2004

There is so much misinformation and 'stinky bait'

Click for the specs for Lexar CFs and Hitachi Microdrives

The 32x CFs are sometimes as fast as a microdrive and sometimes not as fast. The 40x CFs are typically faster. Either device in a camera would require the camera to be smashed to bits before the card is damaged by shock. (note the smashed and ash filled dslr from 9/11 whose microdrive was fine)

Personal opinion:
The greatest danger to media comes from changing in the field. Get the largest size you can afford and never open the camera media compartment while outside or while standing or.. (you get the idea)

The greatest danger to the digicam from the environment comes from opening the camera while outside. Minimize that by careful planning on lens selections and by never opening the media compartment while outside.

2 or 3 mechanical parts are not more likely to fail than 8,000,000,000 transistors.

Hard drives remap bad sectors, memory drives die.

Personal experience:
Microdrives: bought a pair 6 years ago and another pair 4.5 years ago, all still work.

Smart Media: bought 3, only one worked after 2 years.
SD cards: bought 3, only 2 still work after 2 years

gus · April 30, 2004

Reefer...for prob $250 yank you could try an X-Drive. 30 gig storage. Im not far of buying one & from the research ive done, when it comes to bang for buck, it cleans the others up.

Remembering that it is just another thing to power up & it it has a H/D. The batterys last about 2 hours & it is will transfer the card info very fast so batt life isnt really an issue. Its really just a card reader pluged into a laptop H/D.

ReeferBen · April 30, 2004

Here is a link to the magicstor I was talking about : http://www.memoryonly.com/Products-detail-4USBnHD2.asp?ID=10318

Memory only also sells these on ebay for about $140. Which is where I originally saw them. They claim to take a 10' drop to the ground and have fast transfer rates.

Media Transfer Rate 52.4-99.6 Mbits/sec, Transfer Rate 3.3-6.5 Mbytes/sec

How fast do the 40x CF cards write? I couldnt find this data.

They also claim that these drives don't spin continually, when the divice isnt in use they stop to save energy. Will this hurt or help? Saves on nergy but does it slow down when you need that fast shot. The reason I want large capacity is I dont have a laptop to take on my vacations with me but can easily fill a 128 mb card in a day when I am diving but dont want to risk loss of battery or slow speed as if I am diving I cant open the housing until after it soaks in fresh water so I like to be able to use it all day with out needing to switch the battery or media for that matter.

Thanks, now I dont know what to do!

patch29 · April 30, 2004

Take a look at this site and the speed tests they performed. They used different media, cameras and card readers to give an objective view on read/write speeds.

pathfinder · April 30, 2004

cmr164 wrote:

There is so much misinformation and 'stinky bait'

Click for the specs for Lexar CFs and Hitachi Microdrives

The 32x CFs are sometimes as fast as a microdrive and sometimes not as fast. The 40x CFs are typically faster. Either device in a camera would require the camera to be smashed to bits before the card is damaged by shock. (note the smashed and ash filled dslr from 9/11 whose microdrive was fine)

Personal opinion:
The greatest danger to media comes from changing in the field. Get the largest size you can afford and never open the camera media compartment while outside or while standing or.. (you get the idea)

The greatest danger to the digicam from the environment comes from opening the camera while outside. Minimize that by careful planning on lens selections and by never opening the media compartment while outside.

2 or 3 mechanical parts are not more likely to fail than 8,000,000,000 transistors.

Hard drives remap bad sectors, memory drives die.

Personal experience:
Microdrives: bought a pair 6 years ago and another pair 4.5 years ago, all still work.

Smart Media: bought 3, only one worked after 2 years.
SD cards: bought 3, only 2 still work after 2 years

Like DrIt and Cletus I have always favored the idea of solid state memory as being more reliable than a hard disc. But like CMR164 I have now had two CF chips fail - a 1Gb Sandisk Ultra and a 96Mb from Lexar. I did not remove them while they were being written to - I have no idea why they failed, but it was not operator error.

I still wonder if the microdrives will run down the battery in your camera more quickly, but I am sorely tempted to try the 4Gb Hitachi Dive. I have used a 5 GB Hitachi PCMCIA drive in my old laptop in lieu of a CDR burner and have been quite pleased with it.
http://www.flash-memory-store.com/4gbibmiitins.html offers the Hitachi 4Gb drive for $369.95. I may give this a try- thanks for the recommendation CMR and Johhny Luck.....

wxwax · April 30, 2004

# Compatible Digital Cameras with the FAT 32 system
# Canon Powershot G3
# Canon Powershot G5
# Canon Powershot S45
# Canon Powershot S50
# Canon EOS 300D
# Canon EOS 10D
# Canon EOS-1Ds
# Kodak DCS 720X
# Kodak DCS 760
# Kodak DCS Pro Back
# Kodak DCS Pro 14n
# Olympus E-1
# Sony DSC-F828

Think they ommitted the 1D because it's discontinued? If so, why's the G3 there?

gubbs · May 1, 2004

ReeferBen wrote:

Here is a link to the magicstor I was talking about : http://www.memoryonly.com/Products-detail-4USBnHD2.asp?ID=10318

Memory only also sells these on ebay for about $140. Which is where I originally saw them. They claim to take a 10' drop to the ground and have fast transfer rates.

Media Transfer Rate 52.4-99.6 Mbits/sec, Transfer Rate 3.3-6.5 Mbytes/sec

How fast do the 40x CF cards write? I couldnt find this data.

They also claim that these drives don't spin continually, when the divice isnt in use they stop to save energy. Will this hurt or help? Saves on nergy but does it slow down when you need that fast shot. The reason I want large capacity is I dont have a laptop to take on my vacations with me but can easily fill a 128 mb card in a day when I am diving but dont want to risk loss of battery or slow speed as if I am diving I cant open the housing until after it soaks in fresh water so I like to be able to use it all day with out needing to switch the battery or media for that matter.

Thanks, now I dont know what to do!

My camera crashed on Honeymoon, without any option of card recovery I was forced to "re-format" to enable me to continue, subsequently loosing about 30 shots (elephant orphanage in Sri Lanka). Anyway its left me feeling very wary about using the card to store all my pictures while I'm away. When I got home I ended up buying an "Apacer steno 100" disc writer. It suits me very well, at the end of each day you just plug your card in the side, press a button and it records the full contents of the card onto a cd, also found the 12V power supply very useful. Have a look at :- http://www.apacer.com/apacer_english/product_html/disc_stone_cp100.asp

wxwax · May 1, 2004

gubbs, funny you mention that. I've read that professional photographers do what you describe. They like the security of having their images burned to a CD.

gus · May 1, 2004

gubbs wrote:

My camera crashed on Honeymoon, without any option of card recovery I was forced to "re-format" to enable me to continue, subsequently loosing about 30 shots (elephant orphanage in Sri Lanka). Anyway its left me feeling very wary about using the card to store all my pictures while I'm away. When I got home I ended up buying an "Apacer steno 100" disc writer. It suits me very well, at the end of each day you just plug your card in the side, press a button and it records the full contents of the card onto a cd, also found the 12V power supply very useful. Have a look at :- http://www.apacer.com/apacer_english/product_html/disc_stone_cp100.asp

That is a sure thing, i had a good google/read about it. I had no idea it existed.

I will still buy an X-Drive though as i recon a portable 30 gig H/D is a handy thing to have around. I really have no immediate need for big storage once i get back from my trip.

That said you will hear me bellowing across the northern hemishere like a lost poddy if that bloody H/D fails...H/D's & me have a fatal attraction.

gubbs · May 1, 2004

Humungus wrote:

That is a sure thing, i had a good google/read about it. I had no idea it existed.

I will still buy an X-Drive though as i recon a portable 30 gig H/D is a handy thing to have around. I really have no immediate need for big storage once i get back from my trip.

That said you will hear me bellowing across the northern hemishere like a lost poddy if that bloody H/D fails...H/D's & me have a fatal attraction.

Me too!! the cd's are great though.

cmr164 · May 1, 2004

patch29 wrote:

Take a look at this site and the speed tests they performed. They used different media, cameras and card readers to give an objective view on read/write speeds.

What is interesting there is that the cameras are the speed limiters not the devices. In a camera that can really utilise the card speed like the d2h the microdrives are a fast solution. On my old DCS520 the microrive is faster than any of the memory cards. On the 14mp DCS SLR/n the 4G microdrive is again faster than any of the memory cards and is nearly 6 times faster than the cheap 1G memory card. The engineers with Kodak's Pro division understand drivers better and thus stick to the ATA model that all of the CF cards use. Some of the other companies try to take shortcuts and that means the microdrives don't work as fast. If your camera is on the list then check it out, but do remember that a firmware upgrade can potentially put the microdrives as the fastest solution. On the "card to computer" speed tests the camera firmware and driver issues are avoided.

patch29 · May 1, 2004

I was amazed to see how fast the Canon EOS 1DmkII can write to fast SD memory, especially in raw. It smokes everything. Once they make larger cards and can drop the price it looks to be the future. I would like a 2gb fast card to start.

pathfinder · May 2, 2004

cmr164 wrote:

What is interesting there is that the cameras are the speed limiters not the devices. In a camera that can really utilise the card speed like the d2h the microdrives are a fast solution. On my old DCS520 the microrive is faster than any of the memory cards. On the 14mp DCS SLR/n the 4G microdrive is again faster than any of the memory cards and is nearly 6 times faster than the cheap 1G memory card. The engineers with Kodak's Pro division understand drivers better and thus stick to the ATA model that all of the CF cards use. Some of the other companies try to take shortcuts and that means the microdrives don't work as fast. If your camera is on the list then check it out, but do remember that a firmware upgrade can potentially put the microdrives as the fastest solution. On the "card to computer" speed tests the camera firmware and driver issues are avoided.

Well - I bit the bullet and ordered a 4Gb Micro Drive this morning on the advise of youse guys from http://www.flash-memory-store.com/4gbibmiitins.html We'll see how long it takes to arrive and how it works _ It better work good or you guys are in for it

ian408 · May 4, 2004

cmr164 wrote:

2 or 3 mechanical parts are not more likely to fail than 8,000,000,000 transistors.

You'd be surprised at the ability to fix broken bits using laser fusing...

If you work at altitude, Micro's may not be for you. They use air-bearings.
No air density, no bearing above about 9,000' :yikes

gubbs · May 4, 2004

Humungus wrote:

That is a sure thing, i had a good google/read about it. I had no idea it existed.

I will still buy an X-Drive though as i recon a portable 30 gig H/D is a handy thing to have around. I really have no immediate need for big storage once i get back from my trip.

That said you will hear me bellowing across the northern hemishere like a lost poddy if that bloody H/D fails...H/D's & me have a fatal attraction.

This is the place I bought my Apacer from, they've a few alternatives, might be worth a look? http://www.digitalfirst.co.uk/ProductS.asp?cat=Media%20Products&Manuf=Storage

gus · May 4, 2004

ta mate...im leaning away from the burners ..as good as they are. I simply have no use for one when i get back but a 30/40 gig storage device looks handy.

here is the 2 im looking at now (prices are in 0z clams)

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=15215&item=3813103598

and the x-drive (which doubles as an MP3 player)

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=15215&item=3812566636&rd=1

pathfinder · May 4, 2004

ian408 wrote:

You'd be surprised at the ability to fix broken bits using laser fusing...

If you work at altitude, Micro's may not be for you. They use air-bearings.
No air density, no bearing above about 9,000' :yikes

I'll be finding out about that soon Humongous - I plan to be above 10,000 feet next week and in June I will be above 10,000 to 14,000 feet for two weeks. I'll soon see if they fail at altitude -

But I have heard about more failures with CF than MicroDrives - And like I said - I am predisposed to prefer solid state devices, but my experience with them has been less than stellar. Who knows - I guess I'll find out.

cletus · May 4, 2004

pathfinder wrote:

But I have heard about more failures with CF than MicroDrives

I wonder what the numbers of units in use are. Obviously there are more CF cards out there than microdrives, but by what percentage. We may hear more about CF failures simply because there are more of them out there.

ReeferBen · May 4, 2004

I went ahead and got a 40x 512 mb dane-elec CF card for $92 shipped (Ebay). I will also get a microdrive off ebay and will be able to compair them. Sounds like microdrives and compact flash have their problems.

patch29 · May 4, 2004

cletus wrote:

I wonder what the numbers of units in use are. Obviously there are more CF cards out there than microdrives, but by what percentage. We may hear more about CF failures simply because there are more of them out there.

Maybe from people not reformatting?

patch29 · May 4, 2004

pathfinder wrote:

I'll be finding out about that soon Humongous - I plan to be above 10,000 feet next week and in June I will be above 10,000 to 14,000 feet for two weeks. I'll soon see if they fail at altitude - But I have heard about more failures with CF than MicroDrives - And like I said - I am predisposed to prefer solid state devices, but my experience with them has been less than stellar. Who knows - I guess I'll find out.

I shot this photo with a microdrive and did not have any problems. I worried more about the cold. One day I was out of the car for over an hour in below 0F temps and it was fine. I would be curious how they do above 10K, I was almost there.

pathfinder · May 4, 2004

patch29 wrote:

Maybe from people not reformatting?

I always reformat my CF in the camera I am using it in... I NEVER reformat a CF card in my computer and I am hypervigilant about not removing a card from a camera unless the drive light has been out for at least 10 seconds and the camera is turned off, and not from a card reader unless the last access has been greater than 10 minutes.

The 1 GB Sandisk Ultra card worked when I got it, but after being read in a card reader once was completely DOA - not visible to camera or WinXP. I tried reformatting in the camera and could not do it. I recovered the pictures with PhotoRescue. My experience with Lexar 96Mgb card was exactly the same. Worked fine a couple of times - then failed for no apparent reason with the same precautions I have learned are necessary to take.

That said I still own and use Sandisk, Lexar, and other brands of CF. But the ability to have 4 GB of storage in a 10D was just to seductive. Hopefully, the MicroDrive will be as durable as described by guys on the thread. I am sure they are probably as durable as the cameras are.

I guess I am about to find out.

If I have any difficulties I will certainly report it here first.

pathfinder · May 4, 2004

patch29 wrote:

I shot this photo with a microdrive and did not have any problems. I worried more about the cold. One day I was out of the car for over an hour in below 0F temps and it was fine. I would be curious how they do above 10K, I was almost there.

Like you I am concerned about humidity changes and dew condensation efects with hard drives - more than altitude alone - but I need to do some reading about MicroDrives. I was impressed the MicroDrives are Micahel Reichman's preferred method of storage and have been for more than three years. And he certainly has used them in inclement climates also. Time will tell I guess. 4 Gb will be nice for 8+ Gb cameras too.....

pathfinder · May 6, 2004

pathfinder wrote:

I was impressed the MicroDrives are Micahel Reichman's preferred method of storage and have been for more than three years. And he certainly has used them in inclement climates also. Time will tell I guess. 4 Gb will be nice for 8+ Gb cameras too.....

I received my 4 Gb MicroDrive today - Thursday after ordering it Sunday morning on line. It seems to be as advertised. Works fine in my 10D. It is bizarre to read that I have storage for 628 RAW files or 999 large Jpgs. The jpf limit is probably due to the numbering scheme from the camera not the limit of space on the MD card. Wow!

It does NOT ship with ANY literature or users manual - seems strange - but I got this info from IBM's website about environmental requirements. No mention is made re: altitude hmmmm.....

Hard drive</SPAN>Hard disk size (GB)url="javascript:HandleFootnote(4)"][color=#006699]4[/color][/url

4 GBInterface type

PCMCIAAverage Latency

8.33 msAverage Seek Time

12 msHard drive speed (RPM)

3600Swappable

No

Weight & dimensions</SPAN>Depth

1.43 inHeight

.19 inWidth

1.68 in

Environmental Information</SPAN>Maximum Operating Humidity

90 %Maximum Operating Temperature

55 CMinimum Operating Humidity

8 %Minimum Operating Temperature

5 C

Might have to be careful with this gadget in cold weather 5 Degrees Centigrade is 42 Degrees Fahrenheit - not too cold tolerant - Oh well - summer is coming.

ian408 · May 7, 2004

Can you test the speed? Compare between CF and MD?

ian

Microdrives vs Flash cards

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