Hitachi Microdrives

[Brianbar]

I've noticed there are several articals regarding the Creative MuVo 4GB MP3 player using an Hitachi 4GB Microdrive @ approx $200.00 U.S. this I believe compares to $500.00 U.S. for the Microdrive only at US photo stores.
Has anybody tried this yet and does it work?
Brian
Winnipeg
Canada

[RichardtheSane]

A few people are waiting for theirs to arrive.

However, I am always dubious about the idea of chucking all your eggs in one basket and using a mechanical storage device that is over 1Gb.

Potentially a faliure of that device could loose you 640 (ish) RAW files.

[Canuck]

That and they don't work in rare air! Say you are skiing in Vail, Colorado or the Alps on this side of the Atlantic you are SOL! Oh, CF where are you? Another point, forget about dropping them. I have fumbled both CF cards I have and they are no worries. You can't do that with a MD! Just some bits to consider.

[theoldmoose]

For the trigger-happy, though, you have to admit it's a nice size, if you shoot RAW and back up your images to 4.7GB capacity DVD.

A couple of those would do nicely, thanks. :wink:

[CyberDyneSystems]

I'm looking forward to it in my 10D... but I bet it will be too slow to keep up with the MkII.

[defordphoto]

I'm looking forward to it in my 10D... but I bet it will be too slow to keep up with the MkII.

It'll probably do fine if you slow down the MKII to 5FPS. Then you could just press the button down and hold it until the card filled up.

[Rob Larsen]

That and they don't work in rare air! Say you are skiing in Vail, Colorado or the Alps on this side of the Atlantic you are SOL! Oh, CF where are you? Another point, forget about dropping them. I have fumbled both CF cards I have and they are no worries. You can't do that with a MD! Just some bits to consider.

I've also heard the rumor that the microdrives don't work at high elevation due to an air bearing, but I have not experienced that myself. I live in Colorado and frequently take my 3 year old microdrive to high elevations (11,000+ feet) for extended periods. Several times I have shot with it at over 14,000' and it is still performing so well after 3 years that I just bought my second one.

Considering my experience and the cost per MB, I'm looking forward to a new Muvo.

FYI... folks on this forum have been able to extract the drive and use it in their cameras and you can find threads on this. That ability is also evident by the amount of driveless MuVos for sale on eBay.

[CanonUser]

I read an early report from a 10D owner on one of othe forums that I've been following. He complained that the write performance in the 10D seems to be sluggish. He often has to wait longer to have serie of shots getting from the buffer to the MD in comparison to the CF. He did not do any timing, but said it definitely feel slower than usual.
I'd love to shoot a whole wedding on a card. But with a disater I encountered with the MagicStor MD, I'm heeding the advise from all the seasoned user here: I stick to a bunch of 1GB Scandisk Ultra II CF cards.

Regards,
Alan

[CyberDyneSystems]

It is slower,. no doubt about it,. the 4 gig seems much slower in the 10D than the 1GB Microdrive.. however I read an article that explained if you format in a PC with a specific cluster size it speeds up noticably.. :wink:

If I eer get the drive aI ordered in early January.. I post the results.

[Rob Larsen]

I read an early report from a 10D owner on one of othe forums that I've been following. He complained that the write performance in the 10D seems to be sluggish. He often has to wait longer to have serie of shots getting from the buffer to the MD in comparison to the CF. He did not do any timing, but said it definitely feel slower than usual.

Rob Galbraith has a good CF speed comparision chart (http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007-6111) on his site. It definately shows the Sandisk Ultra II as a top performer. The microdrives occupy the lower 3rd of the chart.

I read his chart wrong last time I viewed it. It shows "kb transferred per second," not "seconds to transfer x kb." I'm quickly reconsidering my Muvo purchase. :oops: Thanks for prompting me to recheck Rob's chart. :D

FYI to MD users... there was a 10D microcode update (in v2.0?) that addressed a problem with slow shutter release times when using microdrives. It made a differance in my camera.

[Cadwell]

It is slower,. no doubt about it,. the 4 gig seems much slower in the 10D than the 1GB Microdrive.. however I read an article that explained if you format in a PC with a specific cluster size it speeds up noticably.. :wink:

If I eer get the drive aI ordered in early January.. I post the results.

Ummm you don't happen to have a link to that article or know the cluster size off-hand do you?

I have the drive (I got it cheap) and whilst it is slower than my 1GB microdrive, it is still acceptable - as long as you're not shooting sports and then waiting for the buffer to clear. The specs actually give it a data transfer time way over what it's managing (and in theory better than the 1GB) so I can only presume it's the way the 10D handles it. Perhaps the 10D's handling of FAT32 is not as good as it's handling of FAT16? That might explain the block size issue, too....

[CanonUser]

This is Canon's reply to my direct request for information about cluster size:

"Thank you for contacting Canon product support. I'm sorry to hear of
the difficulty you have encountered with your microdrive.

Cluster size is dependent on the file system used and the partition
size of the drive (the drive in this case being a CF card). Cluster size
is determined by dividing the partition size by the number of clusters.
FAT16 uses 65,525 clusters. FAT32, on the other hand, can support
approximately 268,435,456 clusters. So for any drive smaller than
8GB, the clusters will only be 4k in size.

I hope this information is helpful to you.

Thank you for choosing Canon.

Sincerely,

Jenny
Product Support Representative

Customer Satisfaction... The most important product we support!"

Regards,
Alan

[Cadwell]

OK... welll... my 1GB microdrive (FAT16) is in 32K blocks, my Sandisk Ultra-II 1GB (FAT16) is in 16K blocks and my 4GB microdrive (FAT32) is using 4K blocks... So... I think I will format up my 4GB microdrive in 32K blocks and see what happens, then I'll maybe try it at 16K.

[phidong]

My friend has a Rebel with the 4GB Muvo.

He keeps his card in the camera during the whole shoot.

I have a 20GB Archos Gmini and two 256 mb cf cards. I fill one card, dump, switch and continue shooting. Its a bit of a hassle.

Whenever I glance over in his general direction, I see that damn red light flashing. I asked him how fast the performance is and its dismal. I shoot a lot. Sometimes I come back from shoots (car shoots) and I'm at 2-3 gb in JPEG (i'm switching to raw soon). I considered trading my mp3 player in for a 4gb md.. but.. too slow.

Forget about bursting.

Its too slow!

If you do like studio shots, set-up shots, scenery, wildlife, etc. The 4gb muvo might be a good solution if you find yourself running out of space. I can't imagine shooting cars and waiting for the buffer to clear though. Just like everything else, evaluate how you're going to use it before you purchase.

[abel]

hey there... just did a search on the gmini 220 and i was debating on whether or not i should get one...

i was just curious to see where u got yours and how much it ran.

i am going on a cruise in 2 weeks and would like the ability to dump pics to the Gmini while we are in port and not have to worry about running out of space. i have a 512 and a 256 card now...

[iamhives]

I have the 4gb Hitachi (taken from a Muvo2 - $189) and formatted with Fat32 32k blocks is faster than my 1gb IBM microdrive.

[evilenglishman]

I'd like more info on block sizes.
http://www.yale.edu/pclt/BOOT/fat.htm

I'm using a D-60.
what file formats does it support? Fat16? Fat32?
When i insert my microdrive all it says is FAT file system.

I would have thought that having larger blocks would increase speed or would it have the opposite effect?

[abel]

iamhives, what camera are u using it in...

in fact i just ordered a muvo from J and R since they just got some in last night. $199.99

so once it gets here early next week, ill go thru the steps and extract the MD....

pheew... and i canceled my amazon preorder yesterday... ive always heard j and r was faster at restocking etc...

[iamhives]

Abel - I'm using a 10D

[iamhives]

evilenglishman - D60 is Fat16, 10D is Fat32. One of the less obvious reasons to upgade to a 10D. I believe the D60 has the 2gb limitation due to Fat16

[evilenglishman]

yeah i just formatted as fat32 and got a CF_ERROR message.

I'm curious to see if different block sizes increase or decrease performance

[abel]

sorry but it seems the D60 is not compatible with fat32...

http://www.steves-digicams.com/microdrive.html

ugh.

[evilenglishman]

sorry but it seems the D60 is not compatible with fat32...

http://www.steves-digicams.com/microdrive.html

ugh.

yes i know, read above :wink:

according to that link the only canon DSLR camera that can use 4gb MD is the rebel hahahaha.


* indicates the camera is FAT-32 compatible and can also use the new, higher capacity 4GB Microdrive

*Canon PowerShot Pro1
Canon PowerShot Pro 70
Canon PowerShot Pro 90 IS
Canon PowerShot G1
Canon Powershot G2
*Canon Powershot G3
*Canon Powershot G5
*Canon PowerShot S1 IS
Canon PowerShot S10 after the firmware upgrade
Canon PowerShot S20
Canon PowerShot S30
Canon Powershot S40
Canon Powershot S45
Canon Powershot S50
*Canon EOS 300D SLR, Digital Rebel, Kiss Digital
Canon EOS-1D SLR
Canon EOS-1Ds SLR
Canon EOS 10D SLR
Canon EOS D60 SLR
Canon EOS D30 SLR

[abel]

jandr screwed up. i called to confirm that i got one coming and i was told they had a glitch. they had 50 come in last night and the computer updated the site but there were already 100+ people on a waiting list so they got those 50.

i was like, well was someone planning on telling me this or was i gonna have to wait a few days and have to call in and then be told this information. they said they werent gonna make it a point to contact me, they wer just gonna put me on the list...

pretty disappointing. i leave in 2 weeks for vacation so i need to get one in soon... ill ebay it i guess

[abel]

just got one from ebay for $250...

ugh. i have a headache now.

hehe

[CyberDyneSystems]

D60 only supports fat 16

To get faster write speeds from an MD drive you want to partition with 32K clusters.. on a 2Gig or larger drive this means FAT32.

[Cadwell]

D60 only supports fat 16

To get faster write speeds from an MD drive you want to partition with 32K clusters.. on a 2Gig or larger drive this means FAT32.

Sorry CDS, I formatted my 4GB microdrive with 32K clusters instead of the 4K it came pre-formatted with. It made not a blind bit of difference to the write speed in my 10D.

[Phil Hall]

I have been using IBM microdrives for over 3 years and have not had any problems (D30,1D 1Ds). However, I bought some Lexar 1 gig cfcards and they appear to be much faster. I also feel much safer, even though I have not had any problems with the microdrives. They have survived -30 in Canada +110 in Arizona plus being dropped several times. The Lexar cards format 7 to 8 times faster than the microdrives and I do notice a difference in the 1Ds but not the other cameras.

[MarkH]

Rob Galbraith has a good CF speed comparision chart (http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007-6111) on his site. It definately shows the Sandisk Ultra II as a top performer. The microdrives occupy the lower 3rd of the chart.


Good link, it's been updated since I last looked. It now includes my Ridata 52x card (same edge stamp even).

It seems that the first 15 or so are within 10% of the speed of the best, probably not going to make a lot of difference to most 10D users if it takes 30 or 33 seconds to flush all data to the card.

The bottom card, Sandisk (Standard) 512MB is veeery slow, anyone here bought one of those? It would be an easy trap for the unwary: Ooh look how cheap that card is, and it's a Sandisk - I've read that they are really good. At half the write speed it's going to be painfully slow compared to the good cards.