I just ordered it and will get it when I go back to France in 10 days :)
No more need to carry a laptop or to pay for expensive compact flash cards.
With a 512 mb compact flash I can only take 88 photos. Even with two cards, it is not enough when I am away. This drive has 40 Gb, which is largely enough for a two week vacations etc ;)
The price was about 160 euro, it is the equivalent of a 2 Gb compact flash card.

http://www.memup.com/prod/fiche/en_xdrive3.pdf

Does anyone here use one of those portable disks?
There are other portable drives at http://www.xs-drive.com/#_prods

Olly

It sounds like a great idea! You will have to let us know how you like it.

I hope it is reliable :p
Its real big test will be in about a month when I go to Paris for the national day. Two days of tons of photos, hopefully good pictures of fireworks :)
The last time I was there I did not have the D70, just the Coolpix 5000. I expect the photos to be much better.

Olly

Just a little update about this portable drive: when I was in Brussels it took time to download one photo... For about two minutes, the disk was blocked and then things went fine (all photos downloaded). I ran a scandisk that detected some errors and corrected them but yesterday I had again a problem with the portable drive not working for about 3 minutes and after it downloaded all the photos well. So so far it worked but I can't say I really trust it. As I take many photos, I do need a portable drive or a laptop and I finally decided to order a new laptop that will replace my old Dell laptop (Celeron 700, 10 Gb hard drive, no CD burner...). The new one is a IBM running on Pentium M745 with a DVD burner. At least while I am away, I can check if the photos are good or not and retake them if needed instead of having a bad surprise once home.

so far it worked but I can't say I really trust it
Imagine to lose all your photos if the disk doesn't work :eek: I would also prefer a laptop or many cards,i wouldn't trust a 2 or 3 Gb memory card for the same reason

Exactly my opinion! The best price/value is the 1 Gb compact flash, it is less expensive than getting two 512 Mb but I think I still prefer to get two 512 compact flash cards in case one crashes...
That said, maybe a 1 Gb card is better against dust: if you remove it less often, there is less risk for dust to get into the camera. On both SLR, I have dust in the viewfinder which is annoying. Fortunately, they don't show up in the photos.

Wow, for someone who doesnt get Christmas presents your doing pretty well guy!:D

Let me know how you like the new gadget. I'm thinking of getting one to take to weddings & other big events with me.

Thanks,
Robin :)

I wanted to ask you Olly this portable disk has no need of pc.You just putting the memory card from the camera and download the photos?

I maybe go for two month vacation and i wanted to know what is better.I will buy 1G card and i was thinking pass the photos on cd's.But with two months away i ll just spent many cd's. But on the other hand, i dont trust too much those drivers. :confused: :confused:

Wow, for someone who doesnt get Christmas presents your doing pretty well guy!

You are right , that you mean when you said it's Christmas everyday ! :D
I like it.:)

Robin: do you mean the test of the new laptop? If you are talking about the portable drive, actually I like it very much. For the cost of a 2GB compact flash, you get 40GB! It is just that I think on mine the hard disk is faulty but that can happen with any hard disk installed on a computer.

dafni: yes, you do not need a pc. You just insert the compact flash card into it and it downloads automatically. There is no risk to overwrite photos that are already downloaded because it always creates a new folder.
Once you are back home, you have to connect it to your computer using a USB 2 cable and it will be recognized as a new hard drive in your windows explorer.
You can also use it as a backup disk and transfer your email files etc from the computer to the portable disk :)
If you are going away for two weeks, I think it is worth getting one of those portable disks. Failures can happen with compact flash cards too. I had once a compact flash failure with photos that couldn't be retrieved. It was a no brand card. I had another card failure and it was the 256 compact flash Canon was giving as a gift when I purchased the 350D. It never worked even after a format and it was a Sandisk which is a well known brand.

PS: you have a scary avatar. LOL

Robin: do you mean the test of the new laptop? If you are talking about the portable drive, actually I like it very much. For the cost of a 2GB compact flash, you get 40GB! It is just that I think on mine the hard disk is faulty but that can happen with any hard disk installed on a computer.


Opps, Olly . . . I meant the portable drive. My husbands been trying to talk me into one, but I wasn't quite sure of it. You're actually the first person that I've spoken to that uses one for photography. Thanks so much for the info!!

Robin :)

Olly thank you, i m going to see prices and storage , i m going for two months , for that i m so worried about the bag and i m sure that my memory card is too small for this trip that i wish to do :rolleyes:

Do you like it?Thanks i wanted to be really really scary!

Just to tell my portable hard drive died today. It was the hard disk that was faulty (scandisk detected many errors earlier), not the rest of the machine.
It came at a bad time as I am going to Paris for a few days... At least I have a laptop but it will be a pain to carry it everywhere.

As for your avatar, yes it is scary. Is it you? :D

It came at a bad time as I am going to Paris for a few days
At least,it happened BEFORE the travel,thus you can take the laptop in your bag

Olly
Just to tell my portable hard drive died today.
As for your avatar, yes it is scary. Is it you?


You got a warranty for that? I think i will copy my photos to cd s.I ll take too mush so i want to be sure that they ll be safe.

Yes it s me on avatar:)

Yes, it was "good" it happened before the trip!
I have a one year warranty if I remember well. You can have portable DVD burners that work exactly like the portable drive I have but I think they are expensive.

Yes it s me on avatar:)
It is hard to imagine it is you :D