Compact flash or Microdrive?

Which one would you get? I am going to try and start taking all of pictures in RAW on my 10D and on a 256mb card I can get 36 pictures. Should I get two 1 gigs or a 4mb microdrive? I dont want to have one of those horrible expierences where I loose everything from a bad card or microdrive. What is your expirence and/or reccomendation?

I can not give an opinion because I have not used microdrives. However, I will say this much: Microdrives contain moving parts and compact flash do not (solid state), which really only means that there is more that could possibly go wrong with the microdrives.

As an amendment to my original post, I would like to add that I have used Lexar CF cards and had no problems with them. The card came with a USB reader, which only works with lexar or other usb enabled cards, and Image Rescue software. I am currently in the market for a bigger card and I will probably end up buy sandisk because that is what future shop stocks and I have $100 gift certificate there.

Back about 2002 to early 2003, microdrives were still selling pretty good. But then their shortcomings started to give way to semiconductor CF cards.

If I had to purchase more memory now, I would only value microdrives to about 50% of ordinary CF cards.

---Bob Gross---

I've never had a problem with any of my microdrives over the 3 or so years I've been using the technology (well not strictly true but I'll get onto that in a bit). I regularly use a 340MB / 1GB / 4GB drive. Whilst the 4GB is about 25% slower than my Lexar 40x / Sandisk Ultra II 1GBs there really isn't a noticeable performance dip with the 340MB or 1GB IBMs. Oh... and they're not THAT fragile. I've dropped mine often enough.

The exception I mentioned? I was stupid enough to buy that abomination the Magicstor 2.2GB drive... avoid it like the plaque.

So microdrives... more capacity for less money but slightly slower than solid state. You pays your money and makes your choices....

cadwell thanks for teeling us about you magicstor card issue
i've been looking at those on ebay

I agree with Cadwell, microdrives aren't as fragile as one would think. I've used the 340MB and 1GB versions. After 3+ years, I still have and use (sometimes) my 340MB. However, I find microdrives painfully slow on my 10D. So now, I only use CF cards.

I'd recommend getting smaller CF cards and a FlashTrax (or some other popular portable storage device) rather than many huge GB ones. And I certainly wouldn't recommend getting just one very big one. I use 2 x 512MB cards with my FlashTrax. One card lasts the equivalent of 2 rolls of film. When one is full, I switch to the 2nd one while the first one uploads to the FlashTrax. So far, I haven't shot 72 frames faster than it takes to transfer all the files from the other CF card. Plus, my 40GB FlashTrax is good for an equivalent of 160 rolls of film. So everything works out fine for me.

That's just what you need for one busy day of shooting!

---Bob Gross---

No, that's what you need for one busy day of shooting. For me, that's a busy 3-week holiday of shooting. I'm a newbie amateur, remember?

Anyone ever see statistics that Micro are prone to failure any more or less then a CF card? I have not and frankly have not seen many posts here or other places reagrding failures. Again not more or less then CF failures. At some point I think this becomes part of the urban myth syndrome. Slower, that's a fact. One can verify for themselves. When the price of a 4gig Micro is more then 1/2 the cost of a 4gig CF card I think I'll opt for the Micro and save that loot for ... "L" glass!

I handle my microdrives the same as I do my regular CF cards - no problems with either. The time a microdrive is going to be most vulnerable to damage is when it's in the camera and running. If you drop it then, the drive will be the least of your worries. I totally agree that the fragility of microdrives is based on "friend-of-a-friend" or incompletely reported instances. That said, unless you want very large storage devices, the cost difference isn't all that great - I'll buy CF rather than microdrives now because I think they're more likely to survive other damage (getting wet, for instance) and I might someday find my self using a camera which can actually take advantage of a higher write-speed. And I don't especially want to use large storage devices because of the back-up issues and the risk of putting all my eggs in one basket.

The Magicstor 2.2GB drives have a reputation on here... and it's not a good one. I can testify from personal experience that they should be avoided at all costs if you value your photos (or your sanity).

Oh bugger, i was thinking i had scooped a bargin at £99 for a Magicstor 2.2GB, just checked web site to cancel and found order already dispatched, do i try unit (1D Mk 2) or send back ?

OK... to be fair I have no knowledge of their behaviour in a MkII. I know that people ( me included ) have had lots of trouble with these things in 300Ds and 10Ds and I know that my Transcend USB2 card reader wouldn't talk to the thing at all! (my older USB1 Belkin reader would talk to it but not reliably). You'll have to make your own call on this one but for what it's worth... if it were mine I'd send it back unopened.

Click on the forum "search" button, enter "Magicstor" and see what comes up for other people's opinions on this.

One more concern: warranty fine print

Not disclosed in advertising, but only found after purchase and product was opened, is this Hitachi 2 gig microdrive warranty provision:

"Each Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Machine is manufactured from new parts, or new and used parts. In some cases, the Machine may not be new and may have been previously installed." (emphasis added)

Caveat emptor.
B&H did not disclose prior to sale; I don't recall if there was any option to request a copy of the warranty before placing an order.

Sears admittedly sold used battery cells together with new cells in their DieHard auto batteries several years ago, and was able to have a class action consumer fraud action dismissed on the grounds that the purchasers were unable to establish which (if any) cells in any particular battery was a used product but sold as "new."

Jay Giusti