Sanho HyperDrives?

drdoak

Since one doesn't generally like to go by the manufacturer's webpage alone ... Has anyone here used the Sanho HyperDrive SPACE or COLORSpace?

I've got an eight day trip next May that'll leave me out of contact with electricity sources and very limited storage. I'm looking for a good way to backup images from CF and SD so I've got redundant copies of pictures and the Sanho's look pretty nice on spec. Hard to find reviews though!

The Epsons are a little expensive for me to justify alongside all the other things I've still got to buy before May rolls aroung.

Scott_Quier

I purchased an 80GB one about 6 months ago. The machine has options to control the speed of the downloads from the cards. I use the Sandisk Ultra II (2GB) and attempted to set the speed at that highest, and then progressively slower speeds. I've found that it's reliable, with the above card, only at the very slowest speed. This speed is still about twice the speed of my USB 2.0 card reader on my computer and much faster than the Epson P-2000 I had for some time. I find that it works well at weddings.

Downloads from the HyperDrive to my computer is a snap. It has the USB 2.0 connection. Plug that into the computer, the computer sees it as an external harddrive. Downloads are nice and quick. I can download the entire day in 7 to 10 minutes. Easy stuff.

Of course, if you want to review your photos before you download them, this is not the machine to get - the LCD screen is not there for displaying pictures. It's strictly a user interface; and a simple one at that.

claudermilk

I don't have the new Space or Colorspace units. There are several users at FM that do & are happy with them. I have the old PD70X/HD80 and it's been a reliable workhorse for three years now. I'd expect nothing less from the new versions.

drdoak

Thanks for the info. Sounds like this is a good bet for me to take rafting (assuming I get a watertight bag for it of course) for the price. I'm not worried about previews since I at least glance at all of them on the camera's LCD.

Was the battery life anywhere near what they claimed in your experiences?

Scott_Quier

drdoak wrote:

Was the battery life anywhere near what they claimed in your experiences?

Based on my experience I would have to say the advertising propaganda isn't far from wrong. Over the course of a month, I uploaded in excess of 30GB (maybe as much as 40GB) to it before the battery indicator showed less than a full charge. Because I NEED this to work at every event, I recharged it at that point so I don't know how much further it would have gone before it had problems.

claudermilk

Again, echoing Scott. My experience is that if anything they underpromise on battery life. I have yet to run them dead except though just sitting between shoots. That includes a 12-14 hour stint running a card download about every 4-8 minutes.

colourbox

I see that they have a new Colorspace model that actually has a preview LCD and a color GUI. I assume the battery life reports are for the older text-only LCD model. I'd be interested in if anyone has battery life reports for the Colorspace, since color LCDs usually reduce battery life.