How many CF memory cards is enough?

Cem Usakligil said:

I was just about to order the Vosonic 2160 X's 80 GB drive which costs 179 Euros in the Netherlands.

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After Ray's mention of the Hyperdrive, I'd urge you to have a look at them. I don't have any experience with them but the specs look very impressive - using one set of rechargeable LR6 [AA] to transfer 80 GB is awesome as is the 2 min number for transferring 1 GB!

If you are in for a simple HD-card-reader without image view etc. this may be the better solution.

Ray, can you tell us a bit more, I was particularly taken by your claim you have it on you belt transferring while still shooting with another card, wouldn't that be a bit too bumpy even for a portable HD?

Hi Dierk,
the other thread is here, http://www.openphotographyforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25 I feel hyperdrive should be paying me for selling their device, but it is about the only highish tech thing I have bought recently, that performs, looks, etc _exactly_ as advertised ;-)

The full manual is here, http://www.hyperdrive.com/shop/downloads/HD80_Manual.pdf If you go to their home page they suggest the method of work I was mentioning. If the drive is well strapped to your body, your body damps out the shocks. (for example, if you're videoing from inside a moving car, you can have gyro stabalised camera platform, or strap the camera to your head/helmet.) I never actually claimed I was running about doing it, I never actually claimed I had done it, I merely said it was a method of working. However, I am confident it would work in many situations, but as always, you have to use common sense.

I think I mentioned in some other thread that I used it on holiday - first time without using a notebook, and it worked fine, even though I'd forgotten the manual - its so easy (in fact the manual tends to make it seem harder than it is).

I don't know what else I can say about it, its all on their web site. Basically you buy it, charge the battery, save money on buying numerous cf cards, save time in transferring to pc, and so on. I have also used it to transfer files between non - networked pc's, and as a normal external drive/card reader.

Now, it may be better if it was painted black, labelled canon or nikon, and cost, say, four times the price, but for me the purchase decision was what I think our american friends would refer to as a 'no brainer'... ;-)

Best wishes,

Ray

Ray West said:

...I feel hyperdrive should be paying me for selling their device, but it is about the only highish tech thing I have bought recently, that performs, looks, etc _exactly_ as advertised ;-)...

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Hi Ray,

You have convinced me and I'm going to order two of those. If I can help you get any credits from this deal, let me know ;-).

BTW, this device seems to be an OEM one (possibly produced in far East somewhere) since I have found at least one other brand selling exactly the same device under a different brand name: see this link for example:
http://www.compactdrive.com/
http://www.eastgear.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=446

An another link with a user review:
http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00CkG0


Cheers,

Cem

It's not clear what the differences are there in the different models?

Asher

Hi Cem,

The pd70X is the same device, different label, produced for the far east market, all units made in china, iirc. I bought mine after a lot of discussion on the fm site, from the usa. It is always out of stock, but the deal was you got extra batteries and a car charger. The pd70x advertised a spare cover for a few dollars, but not in the usa, may be different now. I wasn't bothered, if the cover broke, I could make another.

On the fm site, there was a fair bit about emails not being answered, but I understood the size of the distrubutorship, and had dealt with chinese companies before. I google earthed the locations - I knew where the guy lived!!! Google couldn't get enough resolution for identifying the Chinese outlet/factory.

For what it does, its a very reasonable price. At the time, getting them to fit the 100gB drive cost less than me buying a drive, and fitting it myself.

Beware of the velcro strap - I mentioned this before, in layback cafe. Overal, I think you will be well pleased.

iirc, there was a suspicion raised that the distributor, or an associate, read this forum, I don't know, but If you want to mention my name you can, but it is unlikely that any benefit will come my way. You could try yourself, for a quantity discount ;-)

Its just a good product, imho, far better than the iriver and other things I'd tried before

Best wishes,

Ray > edit Its Singapore, not China, oops - see here http://www.hyperdrive.com/shop/information.php?info_id=15

Hi Asher,

The difference other than the name, afaik is none, between the usa and far east pd70x. You can buy it empty, to fit your own drive, or with various sized drives pre fitted. It is explained on the hyperdrive website http://www.hyperdrive.com/shop/index.php?cPath=1

Best wishes,

Ray

Thanks for all the info (also from the other thread); highly interesting.

Now, here's some info on the Jobo I mentioned, the correct name of which isGIGA Vu PRO evolution [instead of Vault, which I picked up either from an older series or another manufacturer of a very similar device]. There should be a tunnel page linking to Jobo International, Germany and USA; first and second should bring up English info.

Unfortunately the company is still unable to supply enough units to dealers.

Cem Usakligil said:

You have convinced me and I'm going to order two of those.

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Here are some Dutch addresses:
http://www.compact-drive.nl/buynow.htm

Bart

I just bought two of those....

....as I said I would. Here comes some immediate obvervations:

1) The set is complete with a set of 2500mAH NiMH batteries, car adapter and AC power adapter. A carrying case is also included.
2) Did some speed tests with a SanDisk Extreme III 4 GB CF Card. The device has copied 2.04 GB (233 files) in exactly 4 min 15 sec. This is according to the speed specs promised by the manufacturer.
3) The device is bulkier and heavier than I thought it would be. It is very robust, but the battery door is flimsy, looks as if it can break easily.
4) Connecting to a PC using USB 2.0 is working as promised. Transfer speeds are around 15-20 MB/s.
5) Here comes the big personal disappointment :-(. In my enthousiasm and in order to be prepared for the future, I went out to buy the biggest hard disks I could get (2x 160 GB Samsung M60 drives with 8 MB cache and 5400 rpm). I've paid a premium of course, only to realise when it was too late that the FAT32 formatting limits the partition size to 128GB. So 32 GB on each of the drives is not usable/accesible. I should have known this, being the PC expert I am and all that, but somewhat I did not think about it when I should have. Bummer! My only criticism towards the producer is that they do not mention this in any published information/specs for this product.

Except for the point 5, I am very satisfied so far! Will report back later...

Cheers,

Cem

Hi Cem,

Don't rely on the velcro belt strap of the case, unless they have changed the design. They have spare covers now, http://www.hyperdrive.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=14 but if you want a real good laugh, watch the video, you can hear precision assembly taking place in the background ....


Best wishes,

Ray

Hi Ray,

Thanks for the warning. It does not seem to be a very high quality velcro at first sight. I'll use the pouch only for carrying the unit in my photo bag. I do not attach things to my belt anyway ;-).

Cheers,

Cem

Ray West said:

http://www.hyperdrive.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=14

Ray

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Actually, that video was made in the 'durabilty test lab". <g>

Cem Usakligil said:

.
5) Here comes the big personal disappointment :-(. In my enthousiasm and in order to be prepared for the future, I went out to buy the biggest hard disks I could get (2x 160 GB Samsung M60 drives with 8 MB cache and 5400 rpm). I've paid a premium of course, only to realise when it was too late that the FAT32 formatting limits the partition size to 128GB. So 32 GB on each of the drives is not usable/accesible. I should have known this, being the PC expert I am and all that, but somewhat I did not think about it when I should have. Bummer! My only criticism towards the producer is that they do not mention this in any published information/specs for this product.

Except for the point 5, I am very satisfied so far! Will report back later...

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And how many months ago were drives with > 120 GB capacity introduced? And how many years ago was the product initially released? Send them an email.

enjoy,

Sean

I carry in my bag (8) 8GB Extreme IV Cards, (12) 4GB Extreme III & IV Cards, and (12) 2GB Extreme IV Cards and SD Cards. I also carry white labels and print on the labels on the outside of their plastic case holders, lens and camera. (I only shoot Raw)

Anthony Arkadia said:

I carry in my bag (8) 8GB Extreme IV Cards, (12) 4GB Extreme III & IV Cards, and (12) 2GB Extreme IV Cards and SD Cards. I also carry white labels and print on the labels on the outside of their plastic case holders, lens and camera. (I only shoot Raw)

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Wow! That's about 136 GB in total. Assuming that you shoot RAW with a 16 MP camera, you can shoot around 9000 photos in total. If you take 5 photos every minute, you can take photos continuosly for almost 30 hours. Further assuming that you mostly shoot using bracketing and/or continuous shooting, you end up having a net capacity for around 3000 photos / 10 hours. Assumptions, assumptions .

The question for me is, why do you need that kind of capacity? Don't you backup your cards to image tanks in between shoots?

Happy new year!

Cem

Asher Kelman said:

What about using the SD card as backup? At least that might work for those cameras that can take two cards. Nikon takes 1CF card AFAIK and Leica just one SD card.

Anyone test the speed for dual saving on a 1D series? For a lot of work, that could be sufficient.
asher

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Cards can fail too, I had it once, with a Sandisk CF, and couldn't recover half of the shots.

I just went today for 2 x 2 GB of SDcards, for the auto-backup and spare card reason.
They' re not the fastest, about half of the speed of a Sandisk 3-Ultra-extrem.

Speed is not a issue here; as all the shots are done on tripod, from selected views, the 1 Ds-2 buffers a few RAWs, too.

BTW: Rescue Pro - from Sandisk - can recover deleted RAWs from SD's, too.
Funny, they appear as "xy.TIF", canon's old RAW-format from the 1 Ds...

I'm a little late to the party, but here's my take on some of the issues in this thread.

I believe in at least 2 cards per camera in use at a shoot, more if I'm going to be at it all day. My favorite subjects are landscapes (OK, tourist landscapes, but still...) and motorsports, and it's not at all unusual for me to shoot enough photos to fill a card in an hour or two. It's much more convenient IMHO to carry a couple extra cards than to have to download to some other device in the middle of a shoot.

I'm using a battery powered flash for night auto racing. Conveniently, it works out that I have to change flash batteries, camera batteries, and memory cards at about the same time, usually during the intermission between the heats and the main events. I typically fill 1-1/2 to 2 cards in an evening of racing, sometimes more.

During a shoot, I would much rather trust solid-state memory cards than a hard drive device. Both do fail, but dropping a memory card is a lot less likely to cause a failure than dropping a hard drive.

Re FAT32 vs. 160 GB drives: Disk capacities are measured in decimal gigabytes (GB), memory and file systems are measured in binary gigabytes (GiB), which are larger. FAT32 is limited to 128 GiB, not 128 GB. 128 GiB is roughly 137 GB. So a maximum size FAT32 file system on a 160 GB drive leaves "only" 23 GB inaccessible, not 32 GB.

Chuck Fry said:

During a shoot, I would much rather trust solid-state memory cards than a hard drive device. Both do fail, but dropping a memory card is a lot less likely to cause a failure than dropping a hard drive.

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Sometimes you still lose the files, though. I had a 1 month old Sandisk Extreme III die on me as I went to download images a couple months ago. I hadn't taken very many pictures on that shoot (random hike, didn't see much) so I lost ALL of them. I don't think there is anything I could have done to save them - my camera won't write backups to a second card.

I'd love it if Canon would give me a camera with two CF slots and a custom function to select between filling them sequentially (so that the first filled before the second was used), writing files to both of them (instant backup) and writing alternating files to them both simultaneously (double the throughput, for high speed shooting).

As it is, I prefer to have several cards, so if I lose one I don't lose all the files. I also like to keep separate shoots on separate cards if I happen to shoot multiple locations in a day. I start a fresh card when I start a fresh location. Since I download files to directories based on location, that makes subsequent file management easier.

On those occasions when I've got download capability with me in the field (usually longer trips when I take a laptop and flash reader) I try to download to hard drive as soon as possible, but don't erase the flash card until I need it. Just in case I lose the hard drive. The downside is that putting a new card in the camera will then require a format, so I lose more shooting time. Not a big deal for landscapes. Big deal if I was going after birds.