Need some help with this...

[Malaxos1]

I have a wedding next month that will be three hours away from where I live. I needed to get more storage as I wanted to shoot it all in RAW. I have shot in JPEG before for weddings and all was fine, but I like the control I am getting in RAW. Anyway I was in the market for a 4GB microdrive and realized that while my 20D will support the card, my D60 backup camera will not. So I decided to get a mediagear 40GB portable drive. The thing works like a charm, but man is it slow. I did a shoot today and it too 20 minutes to copy one full 512mb CF card. That is only 50 or so Raw images. So now I am face with a new problem. I will quickly fill the 512mb cards that I have but 20 minutes is too long. Should I get rid of the drive and get two 2GB microdrives or get another 512 and have three to work with. This should give me enough time to shoot and copy and clear cards? Please help...Dean

[CyberDyneSystems]

Keep the portable drive.. and add 1 or 2 GB CF cards to your arsenal :)

2 GB UltraII are only $175.00 or less
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=20-171-051&depa=0

[Malaxos1]

That would be nice, but I am broke LOL. I spent a huge chunck of the money that I will be making from the wedding just to get this drive. Maybe I can get a 1GB cheap, but that will mean a half hour to copy over. I wonder if this thing will download faster plugged in as oposed to running on battery power?...Dean

[tim]

I would return the drive you bought as it's not suitable for the purpose it was sold before. Here in NZ we have very strong consumer protection laws, I don't know if that'll work where you are. Sometimes it works to just talk to the store nicely about taking it back or exchanging it for something that will do the job properly, and see what they say.

[pcasciola]

I have a couple of options for you.

If you are strapped for cash return the drive, get yourself a 1Gb card for like $85, and you could get yourself a cheaper Vosonic X's Drive ($69 without drive) and put the drive in yourself ($70 for 40Gb). That's about $225 total. It will probably be equally as slow as your Medigear, but the $100 saved would pay for the additional card that you could be shooting with while offloading the other card.

Or, you could get yourself a 4Gb Microdrive for about $150 after the rebate.

[Malaxos1]

Thanks, I do have thirty days to return it, which means I have about 3 weeks left. The thing was only $250 so it is close to the X drive and 1 GB card anyway. The thing works well but too slow. Do you think my 1x CF cards have anything to do with it?...Dean

[pcasciola]

Do you think my 1x CF cards have anything to do with it?...Dean

Hmmm... If they are really 1x cards, that might be your limiting factor, but from what I've seen these inexpensive portable storage devices are very slow internally. I think Vosonic advertises there X's drive as 2 minutes 15 seconds to offload a 128Mb card, which is pretty slow too. The more expensive units like the new Epson P-2000 ($500) are supposed to be a lot faster, but I haven't seen any speeds posted yet.

I'd hate to steer you toward cheaper cards because the 20D can really take advantage of the faster Sandisk Ultra II and Extreme cards, but there are 4x 1Gb cards out there for around $40 or less now.

[tim]

Do you think my 1x CF cards have anything to do with it?...Dean

Mine are marked something like 66X. What brand/model cards are you using?

[robertwgross]

I think Vosonic advertises there X's drive as 2 minutes 15 seconds to offload a 128Mb card, which is pretty slow too.

My old original Vosonics drive copies one 256MB card in seven minutes. You can't get much slower than that.

However, the speed of copying the CF to the drive isn't of much concern, since that will not interfere with shooting.

---Bob Gross---

[WestFalcon]

I would get a few more 500's amd shoot as jpegs. Three cards should cover most weddings...thats about 400 shots on the 20D. I don't like to clear any cards at a wedding. Then you have one device holding all of your wedding shots(ones that you have erased anyway to use the cards again). I don't think you can afford to shoot Raw until you can afford enough cards to shoot the wedding without copying them. Many wedding photographers use large jpegs and although the Raw may be more flexible, I don't think it would be wise for you to start transferring and erasing at the wedding. That is my opinion and I'm sure others will disagree with me but I've done over 500 weddings and I am trying to give you advice on what I think is the safest route for you until you can afford more cards. Best Buy sold 500 MB cards for $29.95 this weekend on a special sale so they are getting very inexpensive.

[pcasciola]

I think Vosonic advertises there X's drive as 2 minutes 15 seconds to offload a 128Mb card, which is pretty slow too.

My old original Vosonics drive copies one 256MB card in seven minutes. You can't get much slower than that.

However, the speed of copying the CF to the drive isn't of much concern, since that will not interfere with shooting.

---Bob Gross---

Wow, that is slow, but I think I can come close, and with something I expected to be lightning fast with the Sandisk Ultra II card. About a month ago I was "trying" to offload about 500Mb of pictures on my laptop using a PCMCIA adapter during halftime. About 10 minutes later I gave up because the 2nd half had started. I later found out that I need a Cardbus adapter to get any speed at all out of PCMCIA.

And, like you said, the offloading happens while you are shooting with the 2nd card, so speed is not really a concern.

[tim]

I later found out that I need a Cardbus adapter to get any speed at all out of PCMCIA.

That might explain why the the Kingston PCCard CompactFlash adaptor I throw into my laptop isn't very fast. It also takes up about 100% of my CPU to copy from the card to the PC. Do you have any more info? Like does it still plug into the same slot, or is it plugged into USB? Maybe I should just get a USB2 card reader.