Hitachi 4gb Digital Microdrive High Speed Memory Card

After 40,000 shots, 2 cameras, 1.5 years and many drops, this chip still performs perfectly. I've used it heavily and aggressively and have had a great experience at a great price. Its almost as fast in write speeds but slower in read speeds during computer upload. There are some myths about the chip that its slow and fragile, which I'll explain below is just totally wrong.

Speed:

On my old Canon 20D, I got its full claimed buffer in RAW and JPEG. On my newer Canon 5D (12.8 megapixel), I get 17 instead of the 19 claimed RAW pictures during continuous shooting, and I pretty much can't run out the JPEG (well over 50). I've used the Sandisk II, and after some testing, I found that the write speed was almost the same, but the read speed is about 1/3 slower when loading onto the computer. Not a big deal, since the write speed is a bigger priority while shooting. Yesterday, I loaded the whole 4gb chip into Apple Aperture in 14 minutes.

Space:

On the 20D or 30D, you'll get almost 500 in RAW, but on my 5D, I get under 280, so I'm now shopping around for a 8gb chip. You might try the 6gb rather than the 4gb since its getting cheaper.

The "Fragile" Myth:

People always say that the microdrive is more "fragile" than the compact flash, which I can say with absolute certainty is B.S. Most people who criticize the microdrive have never used it or known anyone who used it last time I checked, judging without knowing is called ignorance, no offense.

Anyway, I shoot my college football team, for the college newspaper, and frequently I do landscape and wildlife photography, so I'm frequently taking the chip in and out of my camera and dropping it on occasion. I've have used the camera at 20 degrees, in the hot and humid Florida sun, and have had a light sunshower, but yet the chip keeps going after 1.5 years.

Also:

All microdrives are made by Hitachi, even from Sony. Hitachi bought the division from IBM a few years back, and Hitachi will sell under other names for more market share. Don't waste your money on stupid brand image, just buy the one you find cheaper, which is probably the Hitachi.

Many people say, this chip doesn't work with this camera, especially on older reviews. If the firmware on your camera is old, it may not support any large chip, so update your camera first.

I bought this microdrive a year ago for my new Nikon. I guide on adventure travel trips and wanted a way to store a bunch of high resolution photos. I have not regretted the purchase one bit. I have used it often at high altitude and in sub zero weather. How high? Base camp at Kanchenjunga, Nepal, the third highest peak in the world, 18,500 ft. And, on the top of Kilimanjaro, 20,000. The drive is slower at those altitudes, but then again, it was below zero. The first time you start up the camera in very cold weather, it SEEMS to get a little longer to fire up the microdrive.

My drive needed formatting. I read somewhere that its better to do it attached directly to the computer. So, I plugged the drive in a memory adapter plugged into a USB port of my computer. Worked like a charm.

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Works flawlessly in my Nikon D-70. I still use my 60x write speed CFII card for action photo's but this is a great backup card for non-action photography.

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I bought two of these 4 GB drives from different vendors and about a year apart, yet I have had the same problem with both of them. At just over 1 gig of photos it starts giving me 'corrupt image' notices, and I have gotten to where I can tell when it's going to happen, because when it does, the camera's display stays on too long after I have taken a shot and then all of my manual settings are reset. I am trying to find research on why it does this, because the reason I bought 4 gigs was so that I did not have to worry about backups while traveling. Now I have to take my laptop or a secondary backup device with me on long trips, which can be cumbersome when travelling internationally, because when these errors begin to happen I have to backup the drive immediately and re-format the card or I can't even continue taking photographs. I have a Canon Eos that's only 3 years old, so the camera should not be the problem.

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4gb microdrive, batteries all charged up on my Canon EOS 20D. Excited to use the camera at my nephew's graduation. Brother, wanted copies of the pics that I had taken. Much to MY DISAPOINTMENT, went to download the images to my computer, and there's NADA, nothing. I've use a dozen different programs to 'recover' loss data/images, but nothing. I didn't delete any of the pics. I didn't know there's a problem of loss data with the microdrives. Here I am, thinking I'm all set, ready to take pics, and didn't even get one photo. So, with my experience I will not buy another one, and that's why 1 star.

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