microdrive

[johneb2]

I am a new user to the G2, and am considering purchasing the IBM microdrive for the CF. Are all the 340, 512, and 1GB versions compatible with the G2?
John

[Harv]

You won't have any trouble with them.

The only thing to consider is managing the larger drives, lots of images means tons of scrolling around and long download times.

I'm really happy with a basic 340mb MD.

[gerry]

I've been using a 340 with the d30 for a year now, and only twice have I had problems.

I work on macs, and I had put a folder on the drive while reviewing the images and forgot to delete. The camera somehow put the images in the folder and when I went to retrieve, they took up space by could not be viewed on the Mac through my scsi photo album.

Luckily, the camera could still see them, so I uploaded to a Mac with USB using the camera software and then downloaded back.

This has happened twice. I would recommned dumping all folders and emptying trash after each download.

Also, one time an image was not written completely and I got noise only on the bottom of the image.

Not bad for over 5,000 images.

There is the drawback of having all your photos on one disk should there be a disk failure.

But knock on wood that has not occurred.

I'm also quite pleased with compact flash. It works great and is very relialbe.

[justincase]

i had the 1gb microdrive and it worked great. i did lose two pictures one time but i think it was due to my not formatting the drive before using it. i would, however, recommend against the smaller drives as compact flash cards in those sizes are really cheap nowadays and use less battery. besides, i've read variously that the 1gb drive is much faster than the 340 and 512.

[pics]

I got my 1GB drive and I have no complaints whatsoever. The download times on say a couple hundred images at max resolution and finest compression is very reasonable. I just start the download can come back to the computer after a short time. Easy !

Probably the only downside of having large storage like a microdrive or large flashcard is that you have so many images that if you don't name them then you begin to lose track of what is what. Clicking on the image to generate the preview takes a bit of time being that the images are 2200 X 1700 pixels.

The upside: You never concern yourself with running out of memory when shooting. If you screw up a shot you just shoot again and again and again until you get it just right ! I love it !

[blisspix]

Is there any advantage to Microdrives over CF cards? I see that a 512mb card is available... with no moving parts, it has to be more reliable. 128mb CF cards are selling for about $50 in the Chicago area right now. Having come from the film world, one of the 128's holds more pix at highest res than a roll of 35mm film.

[nirv]

I have been using the 1GB microdrive with G2 for a few months now. The amount of storage is sufficient on average for 580 pictures at the highest resolution and minimum compression level. The transfer speed is great, just make sure you get the "Travel Kit" that includes a PC Card Adapter for notebook computers. It's much faster then the USB connection and allows you to efficiently preview images without saving them to your hard drive. It works great with Windows XP's new folder views that include a VERY NICE preview feature.

[Arbie]

I just made the decision to go with a Ridata compact flash card instead of a Microdrive.

My considerations:

#) I really don't need 1GB (or even 512MB).

#) Yes, no moving parts is always better than moving parts

#) The Ridata "20x" card is just as fast, as far as I can tell, based on real-world reports. About twice as fast as the 32MB card that comes with the G2.

#) The Ridata takes 30 mA when writing; the Microdrive takes 250 mA (!!).


Thanks to all posters on this great forum - have really helped me.

[scattronic]

Probably a daft question but if I had a partly filled Microdrive and then decided to delete a few of the images from the middle, would I be able to reuse the space left by the deleted images or can images only be tacked onto the end of the sequence?

The reason I ask is that I am going on holiday for 2 weeks and would like to take loads of pictures all day and when I get back to my room in the evening I would like to delete the bad ones to free up a lot more space for the next day.

Many thanks

David

[ega1]

scattronic wrote:
Probably a daft question but if I had a partly filled Microdrive and then decided to delete a few of the images from the middle, would I be able to reuse the space left by the deleted images ... ?

David

Yes the file system will reuse the freed space.

[vadn1]

Are you guys aware that Sandisk is going to release a 1.0G compactflash card.

[twalker294]

I bought a 1 gig MD a couple of weeks ago. In shooting fewer than 30 pictures with it, I got write errors twice when the camera tried to write the picture to the card. I sent it back and got two 256 meg CF cards instead. I have no doubt that I simply got a bad drive or it was damaged in shipping because the vast majority of MD experiences that I hear about are positive. But I decided to abandon the MD for a few reasons:

1. I don't need 1 gig of storage for a day's worth of shooting. I always travel with my laptop, so I can empty my cards at the end of the day.

2. I didn't want to take the MD out of the camera to download the pictures for fear of dropping it, so I was downloading the pictures through the camera which is half as fast as my card reader and uses the camera's battery. It is also a pain the butt to get my Pro90 with 420EX perched on top and tripod mounting plate on the bottom balanced on my desk with the USB cable hanging out of it and the fear that my 3 year old will come in and accidentally knock the whole thing to the floor. I would much rather use a card reader

3. The write times for the MD seemed slightly slower than with CF cards.

4. I found myself being constantly aware and overly cautious about having a hard drive spinning inside my camera.

5. I don't like the idea of having all my eggs in one basket with the MD. That's why I got two 256 meg CF cards rather than one 512 meg.

It's CF for me from now on. Just my personal choice...

Todd

[RichYoung]

johneb2 wrote:
I am a new user to the G2, and am considering purchasing the IBM microdrive for the CF. Are all the 340, 512, and 1GB versions compatible with the G2?
John
Own the 1gig IBM. Great drive. No issues. ...Rich

[Mr. Fixit]

There are many ups and downs with the IBM MDs. Here is my story...

I bought the 340MB MD with the Canon packaging, model number DMDM-10340, about two weeks ago. After three days of usage I returned it because of these specific quirks:

- camera powers up slower than when using regular CF cards. Sometimes the camera wouldn't even startup and the 'CF' indicator flashes on the camera LCD screen. Had to turn camera off and on many times on different occasions.

- kinda noisy because the disk is spinning when it's reading/writing data.

- pretty slow read/write time compared to good CF card.

- had issues on many occasions during file transfer using a Sandisk CF memory reader. Images wouldn't transfer on to the computer without having to pull the MD out and re-inserting it into the reader many times.

- much more fragile compared to regular CF card.

- had two occasions when the 'CF' indicator flashed after taking a couple of shots in a row with the camera. Those two images did not get stored on the MD.

- MD heats up after long periods of shooting. CF does not heat up at all.


This is just my experience. I am sure there are many people who've used the MD without any problems. As long as you know you can return it and get a full refund from the place of purchase, go for it.

I got a full refund and bought a 256MB Sandisk Ultra. The camera was back to normal in terms of operation. The only noticable difference I found between the regular Sandisk and the Ultra is the read speed. Images load up quicker on the camera and also slightly faster during file transfers. Other than that I didn't notice huge differences between my 128MB Sandisk and the 256MB Sandisk Ultra.

[George]

Just so there is no confusion... my comments and experience was with the 1Gb microdrive. The 340 Mb is a different beast! (Be careful when buying a 340Mb... it could very well be an older version, which has problems with spinning up, power consumption.) BTW... Mr. Fixit... are you talking about using a MD in a G2? If so, did you upgrade to the latest firmware?

[RichardSimon]

I've used a 1GB microdrive with my old G1, and am now using the same MD with my new G2. After over a year of use (and maybe 15,000 images), I haven't had any significant problems with the MD. I always pull it out of the camera to download images through either a card reader or a PCcard adapter. I have occasionally fumbled with the drive, but I think the worst thing I've ever done with it is to drop it a few inches onto a desk. I haven't ever been able to hear the drive in operation. Power consumption when using the MD doesn't seem to be a problem: recently, I took over 200 photos with my G2 without swapping the battery, and with heavy use of the LCD. I really like the capacity of the MD (~380 RAW images on the G2).

On the other hand, the prices of compactflash cards have been steadily dropping, and the small risk of a disk crash is always there with the MD. I don't worry about that too much, though - there is an on line report of someone puting his MD through a washing machine without ill effect!