Storage Device

[Brettpp]

I'm looking to purchase a "Storage Device" to compliment my 1gig micro Drive and Canon 1D. Has anyone used one or have any recommendations? are they reliable. I think it would be much easier to travel with as aposed to luggung around a Lap Top.

thanks
Brett

[Osmium]

I have an X-drive II. I bought it without a hard drive and then added a 10Gb laptop drive that I already had. It works very well. Only two buttons to worry about - On/Off and Copy. No ability to view files - but I don't miss this. I just wanted something to save my pix.

The biggest limiting factor in use, in my opinion, is not the capacity of the hard drive (you can get them with 60Gb drives if you want) but the capacity of the battery. With a full charge, I can save approx 3.5Gb of photos before it runs out of puff. I have 2 x 2Gb Lexar compact flash cards and it doesn't make it through a second card... (note 2Gb takes about 45 mins to upload)

My drive came with a car charger as well as a normal mains charger. I've used the car charger to extend the save time and that's great so long as you can get to the car!!

I'm contemplating making a simple extra battery supply using a high capacity rechargeable of some sort (lead acid maybe or Lithium). This will add to the luggability factor but should still be better (and cheaper) than a laptop.

Despite the battery limitation, I'm still very happy with the drive. Very simple to use and rugged - load a card, press copy and throw it into the bag. Connection to PC is via USB-II so reasonably fast. It looks and behaves just like an extra drive on your PC. The cards are also directly accessible (again as extra drives) from the PC.

[Brettpp]

How times change!

[D Thompson]

I use a 40GB Jobo GigaOne to dump my cards to. It doesn't have any type of preview, merely put the card in, hit copy, and my card is backed up.