Doom1701e
8th of May 2004 (Sat), 04:17
About a week ago I searched the forum and the web for reviews of the Wolverince SixPac portable storage hard drive. With little information I went ahead with the purchase and am here now to tell you all how it has gone, maybe to help others with this type of question in the future. First off I am reviewing the Wolverine SixPac 6040 40 gigabyte portable storage device. It features 3 memory card slots that accomodate 6 different types of cards. The unit, about the size of a large PDA (alittle larger but to my suprise, quite smaller than I expected) has a good sized informational LCD screen featuring battery status, transfer status, and memory card type indicator. The unit can function as a portable hard drive, external hard drive for a computer, or a multi-card reader for a computer for reading memory cards straight to a computer hard drive. The unit is pretty straight forward as far as installation goes. Windows XP and 2000 users do not need to load any drivers to install the unit. Just plug the incuded USB cable into the computer and Windows automatically recognizes the device and installs it. Windows users older than XP (Me, 98, 98SE, 95) will need to take an extra step and install the drivers from the supplied CD-ROM. After the unit is installed, several new drives will appear under the "My Computer" section along with your primary hard drive (C:\) and other drives you may have installed. One new drive will be the hard drive portion of the unit, and there will be several more for each memory card slot on the unit. Transfer rates with USB 2.0 are quite fast, only taking about approx. 20 seconds to save 7 RAW images from the unit to my hard drive via the Canon Viewer Utility Software. I have not been able to test the transfer rates of USB 1.1. But now to the one big question I had before purchasing this unit...will it reliably transfer pictures from my memory card?? After several tests over the past 2 days with 2 different memory cards the answer is YES, it has captured every picture, every time so far without problem. Althought the transfer rate from memory card to the hard drive is somewhat slow, taking close to a minute to transfer 7 RAW images, reliability seems to be there with this unit. The unit features a built-in Li-Ion battery which claims 1.6 hours of run-time. I have yet to go out in a real-field test of this unit yet, so I cant comment on the real life of the battery, although at this point of testing at home it seems that it isn't far off from the quoted 1.6 hours. So overall I am pleased with this unit and look forward to getting it out in the field (probably tomorrow) and really getting some use out of it. MUCH easier than carrying around a laptop, although there IS NO image preview screen on the unit. But, for the low price of $299 for 40 GIGs, I think I can handle the lack of a preview. In conclusion, if you are considering this unit as an addition to your photography collection, I would recommend it. Cheaper than a 1 GIG memory card, and lighter than a laptop with just as much reliability. If anyone has any questions just let me know!! Good luck!!!