Review time: Just got my new X'S Drive...

[FlyingPete]

Had one of those highlights of the week, the UPS bag from the US, this time my new X'S Drive (VS3320).

Some quick background, my previous X'S Drive II of three years was subject to an unfortunate incident involving gravity. There were several things I did not like about this unit, although particularly in the earlier days of 128MB cards it served me well. My main issues were lack of info on the display, speed, battery life (non user replaceable as well) and lack of verify.

A review of several options in my price range narrowed it down to two units that apparently addressed all the above issues, firstly the PD70X, and secondly the new X’S Drive VP3320. I had some difficulty sourcing the PD70X, so I opted for the X’S Drive.

The X’S Drive cost me $149US from www.mydigitaldiscount.com, plus $22 to get it down to this part of the world. I also got a spare 1800Mah battery and a 512MB titanium USB memory key for good measure (OK an impulse buy, but I keep breaking my others!).

Here are my initial observations from opening it up this morning, remember my point of view is from owning an old X’S Drive II.
- Firstly, a better build and smaller, nice large screen
- Only two card slots, a MS/SD/MMC and a CF slot, no SmartMedia or XD
- No obvious battery door
- A Rubber door on the CF slot (like the ones protecting the plugs on my 20D)
- A lock button, nice stops me accidentally switching on and draining the batteries, an issue with my earlier drive
- A nice new far more practical bag that can be put on a belt

Right got home, time to put the 40GB drive I have in and change the battery from the included 1100Mah to my new 1800Mah.

Well turns out I need to remove four tiny screws to access the front of the unit to change the battery, not an in-field operation, the screw drive was thoughtfully included though. There goes the point of having a spare battery :(

Opened up the back, same tiny screws, very easy to mount the drive though, just slots into place.

Power up and test time!
Powers up quickly under 5 seconds with a nice dot matrix blue backlit display, the backlight stays on for 5 seconds, then goes out to save power, the whole unit shuts down after 30 seconds of inactivity.

Three basic menus a file system explorer, FM Radio (this thing is also a MP3 player, but that is not why I bought it) and sound recorder.

There is a copy button that you can hit to get right down to business.

I had a 1GB Kingston Elite Pro card with just under 1GB of data from the previous night, a mix of RAW and JPG. Loaded the card and hit copy.

The progress display is a bit of a disappointment; yes it does have a percentage display, but only for each file, making it practically useless. It does display how many files copied though, so if you know how many a card fits, this sort of helps, far better though than the old X’S Drive which had none at all!

Copy time for the 1GB card was a very brisk 4:50, no competition for my old drive which took up to 30 minutes! No audible beep though on completion, not that I could hear it often on my old one!

The claimed verify function was no where to be seen, time to hunt that down! RTFM, yep the tells me I am doing the right thing, looks like that feature is not really there :evil:

Plugged it into my XP workstation, powered on automatically and as expected found it straight away as a USB drive. Nice to now use a standard mini USB connector

The file system it has created is a directory under the root called BACKUP_, in that directory it has created another directory for each copy starting at CFC-0001, the contents of these it exactly the same as the copied CF card.

Summary:
Pros:
- Smaller, better build than predecessors
- Decent backlit display
- Easy to use
- Descent carry bag
- Fast! 1GB in under 5 minutes!
- Lock button
- Standard USB cable
- Easy Hard disk install with screw driver included

Cons:
- File copy progress needs work
- No easily removable battery
- Rubber card door tends to get in the way
- Where is the verify?

Jury is still out, needs some field time, some digging on the verify and more use to see what battery life is. I found some of the claimed features such as the progress display, replaceable battery a bit stretched, but all in all it seems like a good little unit, a huge improvement on my old X’D Drive.

[FlyingPete]

Update, got the file verify working, it was not supported by the supplied version of the firmware (1.05), an upgrade to 1.08 made it work exactly as specified in the manual.

It is a full verify option though, so it takes as long as the copy operation. Better than downloading twice as I used to do, as it takes less disk space!

[etaf]

nice review - thanks

[drisley]

Very nice review! I think the most promising new feature is the copy speed!
The main reason I never bought one of these before is because it took so long to copy to these drives, meaning you could only copy so much beforeyou had dead batteries.
How many minutes charge should you get with the default battery. In other words, how many gigs could you download before the battery died in the field?

[drisley]

Hey, I just noticed the price for that drive at that link is $224.
How did you get it so cheap?

[FlyingPete]

Hey, I just noticed the price for that drive at that link is $224.
How did you get it so cheap?

That one is the 40GB drive version, I still had a good 40GB drive in my little hardware draw at home, so I bought the version with no drive.

On the how long does the battery last thing, still don't know. The claim is 7 hours of non stop music playback with the standard battery, and 11 hours with the bigger battery I got, but I bet it caches the songs so the drive is not constantly running, the drive is the battery killer in these things. I will be very happy with two hours, as that is 12 downloads (5 minutes copy + 5 minute verify each) of 1GB, or 12GB. Better than the three downloads I was getting out of my old one, and I copied twice (no verify) so that was one and a half copies.

EDIT: Just read the specs on the standard battery, 90 minutes with constant drive use, so the extended battery should give my at least 12GB! Battery is suposed to be good for 500 charges. It uses FujiFilm NP-60 or NP-120 batteries.

I still found the old one usefull with the shocking battery and slow speed, take it on holiday with the charger, and clear my cards on it at the hotel at the end of the day, still better than lugging a laptop around!

[tim]

Tempting. Are you able to test the performance of reading from the drive to the computer via USB? I have a USB enclosure that's pretty slow (I forget the figure), if this thing can do both jobs I might get one... once you've had yours for a few weeks and have found any terrible gotachas!

[FlyingPete]

Tempting. Are you able to test the performance of reading from the drive to the computer via USB? I have a USB enclosure that's pretty slow (I forget the figure), if this thing can do both jobs I might get one... once you've had yours for a few weeks and have found any terrible gotachas!

Good idea, I will run that up tonight!

[Wazza]

Sweet.

I need something like this or a good USB laptop before my 2 week trip to South Island in September. I'm going to be shooting some RAW on my best shots, and the other few thousand will be JPG. :p

[tim]

I'm getting 25MB/sec on my Samsung 5400 RPM drive with the enclosure I have. My SATA desktop drive gets about 60MBps.

[tommykjensen]

From Epson P2000 the speed is 23.1 MB/s with a burst speed of 35.1 MB/s
From my bootdrive a WD Raptor 74 GB SATA 10000 RPM I get an average read speed of 65 MB/s with a burst read of 125 MB/s. I think I will add another Raptor soon :-)

[FlyingPete]

It took 1:53 to copy 1GB of images from the drive (the images uploaded of the flash card), or around 8.5MB/s

I ran an actual performance test acros it, but only discovered one thing: it is not powered by USB :(

Will let you know when I have some results on that!

[tim]

Sounds like my enclosure's not too bad, but the P2000 is better - if should be, my little one cost about US$15! I guess it's limited by hard drive speed, not the interface.

[tommykjensen]

Sounds like my enclosure's not too bad, but the P2000 is better - if should be, my little one cost about US$15! I guess it's limited by hard drive speed, not the interface.

The CF card to P2000 is slow though. Only about 2.5 MB/s.

[FlyingPete]

What did youy guys use to do the performance testing? All my tools are either high end (I?O rates and the such), or don't work with a USB drive.

[tim]

I used a free program called HDTach IIRC.

[FlyingPete]

OK Performance test results. As a USB drive it performs at an average of 9.4MB/s. Not particulary fast by USB drive standards. It is using a 2 year old Toshiba drive though, not excatly sure of speed, most probably 4200RPM.

That speed is OK considering the 3.5MB/s apx copy speed from CF. Usable for my needs, I also have another USB drive that is giving me closer to 20MB/s if I need a bit more speed.

The no power from USB officially sucks though! Looses a lot of the portable harddisk flexiblity without that.

[joeseph]

Looking at the specs it needs up to 2.5 Amps to operate, the most you should get from usb is 0.5 Amps so not suprising that function isn't offered. There isn't anything stopping you having an external battery though, and plugging into the DC power in. The BP-511 camera battery with a voltage converter of some sort at 1400 mA/H would probably last about 30 mins at that rate...
I wondered about making a connecter to do this at one point but haven't needed it yet.

[FlyingPete]

Looking at the specs it needs up to 2.5 Amps to operate, the most you should get from usb is 0.5 Amps so not suprising that function isn't offered. There isn't anything stopping you having an external battery though, and plugging into the DC power in. The BP-511 camera battery with a voltage converter of some sort at 1400 mA/H would probably last about 30 mins at that rate...
I wondered about making a connecter to do this at one point but haven't needed it yet.

I would have thought it would have been possible to bypass most of the electronics whilst on USB, jue enough to drive the interface and drive, as I think most of the 2.5A is the battery charger.

I will still carry the charger most places, better than carrying a laptop!

[joeseph]

Yeah, but you still have to drive the processor in between. Funny though, Vosonic say the external adapter is 2.5A, but other folks don't seem to agree with them. (thems where I got the figures from)

see Vosonic:
http://www.vosonic.co.uk/vp3320.html

then see:-
http://www.jaldigital.com.au/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=27_81&products_id=218

someone has got the sums wrong, and I wouldn't blame Vosonic... what does your PSU say?

As regards USB power, most 2.5" USB enclosures get away with using USB power, whereas a lot of 3.5" ones don't as they draw too much.

[FlyingPete]

Wierd, my PSU has the following on the little silver plate on the back:
Model: VP3320
Power: DC-5V 2.5A

Interesting though, as my old one was 1A, I remember that as I tired to get a new power pack from Dick Smith or Jaycar, and all their ones only went up to 500mA.

[FlyingPete]

OK Update time, had a busy weekend shooting RAW, so this little unit got its first real work out, I had a full battery charge to start with and downloaded a total of 10 1GB cards full of data, each with a full verify. At the end of this, it was showing a half charge, that is pleanty good enough for me!

One downside though, if the card finishes downloading and you don't OK to do the verify quickly enough (at least one minute) it will power down, and you loose the chance to verify the copy. In this case I would copy again. A bit of an issue when I was busy shooting, and not watching the drive, a beep when finished would have helped here.

On a side point though, I think I need another card, when soing studio work I can full one card, start the download, and then fill my second one before the first one completes the verify! This is shooting RAW though.

[Wazza]

So you're still recommending this product?

I'm travelling around the South Island for a couple of weeks between 10th and 25th September, driving by myself. I need something with decent storage.

How long do you think it would take to get from USA? And I would also need one of the HDDs built in.. And whatever batteries it uses.

I've only just read about the PD70X also. Have you done any comparison views yourself from websites?

I'll be using whatever I buy overseas when I tour Asia for a few weeks, before arriving in England, for my O.E. (looking at leaving end of January)

Cheers Pete

[FlyingPete]

GRGGGHHH PC keeps locking up trying to reply, I'm not typing this a forth time, copying and pasting didn't help, so here is a screen shot after the lockup:
http://www.lowden.net.nz/Stuff/reply.gif

[Wazza]

What do you mean if you can make it. ;)

No backing out now.

I know where you live.


Thanks for the info anyway.

http://www.flashcards.co.nz/catalog/index.php?cPath=26
I was looking at those.

Do you know how the 6230 series compares?

[lancea]

I'm pretty pleased with my PD70X (60GB). Took 3 days for it to be delivered from EastGear.com. I looked at the alternatives pretty carefully, and in the end decided that while I'd really like to be able to view the files, nothing did everything I wanted. Since I'm going to rely on the 70X for an overseas trip, I've been using it instead of simply putting CF cards into my reader. As every one says, very fast and the main niggle is that inserting the card is awkward because the guide-channel is too shallow. With the 20D I don't need to think when replacing the card, but with the 70X you have to keep your mind on the task. The user interface could be a bit nicer too, but it works.

[Wazza]

Thanks for that info. I'll be looking next week, when I've worked out how much exactly my car will cost to fix. :(

[aMacFan]

I purchased a PD70X from mydigitaldiscount.com for $89.99 without a HDD. I bought a Samsung 80GB 5400 rpm 8MB buffer for $99 off ebay. So I will soon have an 80 GB PD70X for less than $200. I am thrilled!

[cfcRebel]

Thanks for the great review Pete! I'm shopping for a portable storage recently and this helps alot.

[gkas]

I purchased a PD70X from mydigitaldiscount.com for $89.99 without a HDD. I bought a Samsung 80GB 5400 rpm 8MB buffer for $99 off ebay. So I will soon have an 80 GB PD70X for less than $200. I am thrilled!

I just checked mydigitaldiscount, and I don't see it. All I see is a Mac upgrade and a car charger for the PD7X. How long ago did youd get it from them ?

[FlyingPete]

I just checked mydigitaldiscount, and I don't see it. All I see is a Mac upgrade and a car charger for the PD7X. How long ago did youd get it from them ?

No I can't see them either, the PD7X was $89 when it was being sold though. In late June I emailed them about the PD70X:

When will you guys have the PD70X in stock? At the moment I can only find
the PD7X.

They responded:

We will be soon I hope, I do not have pricing yet though.
Take a look at this unit in the meantime, it is as good if not better:
http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/s.nl/sc.2/category.662/.f

Take Care
Douglas A Hare
www.mydigitaldiscount.com

My response to this after my issues with my old X'S DriveII:
Hi Douglas,
I did have a X'S Drive II for sometime, several factors the biggest
being speed have put me off buying another. Have they addressed the
card download performance much since the X'S Drive II, and what is the
current story with batteries (My X'S Drive will only allow two 1GB card
downloads now on its battery), as they are not user serviceable. Thos
two things attracted me to the PD70X.

Thanks,
Peter.

His reponse:
http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/s.nl/sc.2/category.662/.f

Get that! no question, awesome unit, plenty of options, one being the speed, the only unit that might be faster could be the PD70X but it still has not been released in the US and everytime I ask someone about it they never have a straight answer. I'm going to tell you right now that Vosonic is a much more reliable name than Compact Drive.

Take Care
Douglas A Hare
www.mydigitaldiscount.com

In the end as you can tell from the above I bought the X'S Drive :D

[D Boone]

I bought the X drive and like it a lot. For the money I think it is a nice mixture of funtionality. I bought the 60 gig version and I think paid 220?

[FlyingPete]

UPDATE TIME:
This time not so good, had some issues with my drive on the weekend, at first I thought the drive was full, but it will not download my cards at the moment, getting a rather meaningless error. I have emailed Vosonic to see what they say, as there is nothing in the manual or on their website about the issue, I am yet to hear back.

THe drive still works fin on USB, and I have done a full low level error scan of the drive, and found no errors.

Watch this space...

[aMacFan]

Update:

I THOUGHT I was getting the PD70X, but realized I made a mistake and ordered the PD7X. I caught the error in time and switched to the X-Drive without HDD. I bought a Samsung 5400 80 GB off e-bay for $99.

I had a bit of trouble formatting the hard drive, but once that was done, the unit has been operating fabulously.

I like the fact that the 3320 has radio tuner and is an MP3 player (great for use on airlines).

I am wondering if anyone has found a way to modify the face plate so one could replace the battery without having to have a screw driver? Being able to quickly change the battery would be handy for those of us who use the unit as an MP3 player as well as a photo tank.

[Salleke]

Update:

I THOUGHT I was getting the PD70X, but realized I made a mistake and ordered the PD7X. I caught the error in time and switched to the X-Drive without HDD. I bought a Samsung 5400 80 GB off e-bay for $99.

I had a bit of trouble formatting the hard drive, but once that was done, the unit has been operating fabulously.

I like the fact that the 3320 has radio tuner and is an MP3 player (great for use on airlines).

I am wondering if anyone has found a way to modify the face plate so one could replace the battery without having to have a screw driver? Being able to quickly change the battery would be handy for those of us who use the unit as an MP3 player as well as a photo tank.

MacFan - There is another possibility to power your X-drive. On your X-drive you have a powerinput connector where you put the charger connector in.
In your user manual is specified what Voltage and current that you need to power your drive with and load your batterie. For example:
I have a Vosonic X-drive VP 2160 and the charger has a 5 V / 2.5 A output power. This power can charge your batterie and let you use your X-drive powered by your 220 or 110 V line.
If you buy 4 rechargebles NmHi from 2500 mA 1.2 Volt and put these in serie in a little holder and solder a cable to it with the same connector as the one on the charger (watch the polarity) you have 4.8 Volt at 2.5 A to use with your X-drive. So you can load the internal batterie and in the same time working with your X-drive. When your external pack is emty you pull out the connector and you can continue with your internal batteriepack who in the meanwhile is charged by the external batteriepack. You can make more then one external battery pack with even higher currents. There are even rechargebles batterie's wich can deliver 1.2 Volt at 3 or 4000 mA. As you see there are several options to resolve this problem. It depends on your own ability to put it togheter. It's very simple actualy. Hope this helps. Good luck.

[FlyingPete]

ANOTHER UPDATE TIME:
Vosonic Support responded with an answer, which was basically to use the X'S Drives internal format tool to format the drive, as that error was related to a drive bad block.

Since the drive was out of my old X'S Drive, and it at least two years old I am not blaming them.

I have now reformated, and haven't had the problem since, but then I have not filled it up as much since.