Micro Drive vs CF Card

[Tiny Malone]

I saw some Hitachi 6 gig Micro Drives at what appears to be a very good price. Since my camera is such a memory whore, I thought I might pick some up. Anyone know anything about these? Good? Bad? Says they fit Cf & II slots. Yeah or no?:confused:

[Daniel Buck]

Personally, I would stick with solid state memory. No moving parts, and probably faster. 4 gig cards are getting pretty cheap now days, I'd just pick up another one of them if I were you :-)

[Mark Delbrueck]

Stay away from MicroDrives. They are a cool idea, but like Daniel said, moving parts = bad. One drop off your desk or similar and its gone!

[Jacob Leveton]

very very slow as well. I picked up some 2gb Ultra II cards at costco a few weeks ago for under $50. Plus, i'd rather have 6 2gb cards cards than 2 6gb cards. You misplace one or have one go bad on you and that's a LOT of work to recover.

[John Thawley]

Micro Drives operate on smoke. It's true. If you let the smoke out, they stop working. Really. I've seen it happen.

The are very slow. And I also subscribe to Jacob's point about loss or misplacing large cards.

JT

[Tiny Malone]

Welp that settles that! I found 6gig MD's for around $100.00. I will pass!

I filled an 8 gig CF Etream VI the other day at Zion National Park...I think those run about a buck eighty. I have a shoot coming up that will last three days with images for the National Park Service. I know I will capture many many images during that time and I am still of the mind set that 8 gig cards are more convenient. However, I did have an off brand card (RightData or some such) go bad on me a few weeks ago and I lost about 150 images. Ya know, doing the math, I am beginning to wonder if my S5 Pro addresses the full 8 gig capacity of the CF II's.

I guess the real reason I hate changing cards is that I am usually on the edge of a cliff with a 2,000' drop when I need to make said change. One wrong slip and I turn into a "did you hear what happened to Tiny" thread on here.

[Matt Mullarkey]

very very slow as well. I picked up some 2gb Ultra II cards at costco a few weeks ago for under $50. Plus, i'd rather have 6 2gb cards cards than 2 6gb cards. You misplace one or have one go bad on you and that's a LOT of work to recover.


i agree.. i don't buy anything over 2gb.. i can fit about 200 RAW+jpg on a 2gb card.. thats to many to lose if something goes wrong.. losing 8gb of photos would give me a heart attack.. lol

[Daniel Buck]

I've never lost, misplaced, or broken any of my CF cards. But then again I really only use a few cards at a time (usually just a single 4 gig, a few years ago a single 1 gig, and before that a single 512), I don't deal with large amounts of images, so I guess I don't swap them in and out very much.

[Todd Corzett]

:eek: MICRODRIVE :eek:

Friends don't let friends use microdrives! Drop the thing once and say bye-bye to everything. While I never plan on doing it, it does make me sleep better to know that if I wash my CF cards, or drive a nail through them, or blow-up a bridge on them that they will work.

-Todd...

[Greg Mitchell]

microdives stay away moving parts and all very scary!! but then i used only lexar CF 2gb card and have had two of them go bad. yaa i get a nice free replacement, but that goes not get the images back. i have tried all the standard recovery software imagerescue and rescuepro no luck.. even tried some of the PC hard drive recovery software

is there something i am missing use imagerescue to test and format the cards then format in the camera and still pooof card toast.:mad:

[Aaron Kupferman]

I recently got one of these 120gb Digital Foci Photo Safes (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/500952-REG/Digital_Foci_P12_120_Photo_Safe_120GB_Stand_Alone. html). It lets me use a less expensive hard drive to store tons of photos but keeps the delicate moving parts inside my soft and cozy camera bag. I just rotate between two CF cards and while I am copying one onto the Photo Safe, I can be shooting with the other. Then the photos are on a hard drive that I just plug in as an external USB drive and can copy my photos off much faster than from CF cards. I shot 30gb of stuff at Laguna Seca on it and LOVE the thing now. I also have a 3 week trip to Europe planned and am happy that I won't have to buy a ton of CF cards or take a laptop along.

Nice thing is that I now have 120gb of portable storage without a laptop for $160. If you are really worried about having a hard drive go bad in the field, for the price you can just get two of them and copy the photos off the CF card twice before formatting it.

[Daniel Buck]

I've never had problems with the Sandisk Ultra 2 and Extreme 3 cards. I even formatted one, to later discover that my coworker didn't get any of the images off the card before he gave it to me. I was able to recover all the images, even though I had started using the card again (but only a small portion of the card). The Sandisk upper end cards have never done me wrong, so I stick with them.

[John Thawley]

I recently got one of these 120gb Digital Foci Photo Safes (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/500952-REG/Digital_Foci_P12_120_Photo_Safe_120GB_Stand_Alone. html). It lets me use a less expensive hard drive to store tons of photos but keeps the delicate moving parts inside my soft and cozy camera bag. I just rotate between two CF cards and while I am copying one onto the Photo Safe, I can be shooting with the other. Then the photos are on a hard drive that I just plug in as an external USB drive and can copy my photos off much faster than from CF cards. I shot 30gb of stuff at Laguna Seca on it and LOVE the thing now. I also have a 3 week trip to Europe planned and am happy that I won't have to buy a ton of CF cards or take a laptop along.

Nice thing is that I now have 120gb of portable storage without a laptop for $160. If you are really worried about having a hard drive go bad in the field, for the price you can just get two of them and copy the photos off the CF card twice before formatting it.

Hmmmm... I'd MAKE SURE you've got those images safe and sound before writing over those cards. Be careful.


JT

[Aaron Kupferman]

Hmmmm... I'd MAKE SURE you've got those images safe and sound before writing over those cards. Be careful.


JT


Yeah, sometimes if I don't actually see it hit 100% finished and it has already gone into power save mode after the copy, I copy the whole thing again just to make sure. I might get two of them and copy the CF card on both if I start doing a lot of paid work and have money at risk.

[John Thawley]

Wouldn't it be cheaper to get a few more cards? Try to avoid overwriting until you know everything is tucked away safe and sound.

JT

[David Adolphus]

i agree.. i don't buy anything over 2gb.. i can fit about 200 RAW+jpg on a 2gb card.. thats to many to lose if something goes wrong.. losing 8gb of photos would give me a heart attack.. lol

Big cards get more appealing when a 2GB only holds 79 RAW shots. Heck, the 16GB Sandisk is under $300; the 12GB right around $200, and most 8GBs can be had in the $120 range--I got a Kingston 133X for $79, with rebate.. You could always just not fill up the card if you're paranoid.

In fact, if you're worried, why not keep swapping back and forth--like a leapfrog save? That way if you loose one it won't be, say, all the interior shots, only half of them...

[John Swenson]

In fact, if you're worried, why not keep swapping back and forth--like a leapfrog save? That way if you loose one it won't be, say, all the interior shots, only half of them...
Makes sense. That's what I used to do with roll film while shooting on location & I would hold the "leapfrog" rolls until the main rolls came back from the lab.

[John Thawley]

Big cards get more appealing when a 2GB only holds 79 RAW shots. Heck, the 16GB Sandisk is under $300; the 12GB right around $200, and most 8GBs can be had in the $120 range--I got a Kingston 133X for $79, with rebate.. You could always just not fill up the card if you're paranoid.

In fact, if you're worried, why not keep swapping back and forth--like a leapfrog save? That way if you loose one it won't be, say, all the interior shots, only half of them...

Why not just skip the gymnastics and buy enough cards to not have to reuse them during a shoot. And.. get a ThinkTank wallet. When a card is full, return it to the wallet face down.

JT

[Todd Corzett]

get a ThinkTank wallet. When a card is full, return it to the wallet face down.
And keep the wallet teathered to your belt so you can't drop it.

My mother had a SD card corrupt after a trip to China and I was able to rescue every image she took. I'm less worried about a corrupt card than I am about loosing a card... and the more cards you have the greateer the chance you will loose one. If you get a huge card and keep it in the camera all day you have very little chance of loosing the card. That being said, I tend to buy cards that are around the size of the media that I am burning to for back-up (so for DVDs 4GB) that way I don't have to split-up folders to do my backup (that's the main reason I'd not buy a 12 or 16GB card).

-Todd...

[Chris Woolman]

I use multiple Sandisk Extreme III 4GB cards, and I find that it works out very well. However, at Laguna I lost an entire set of podium shots that I took from the grandstands.

I was done shooting at turn 11, put the camera away and headed over to the grandstands. Decided to take some shots, so powered everything back up and took about 20-30 shots. Everything seemed to be working great, but when I went to download the images, all the podium shots were missing.

The shots were just for fun, so the loss isn't a huge deal. What do you guys think, memory card problem or camera (30D) writing problem?

Chris