Customer Reviews

Hitachi 4gb Digital Microdrive High Speed Memory Card

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

If I had written this review two weeks ago I would be leaving five stars.

I've had this card for less than a year, and use it with my Nikon D70s. I always take great care when handling it, never pressing on the front and back, dropping, or severely jostling it.

I took a few photos and went directly inside to transfer them to my computer, but when the drive mounted everything was garbled and all of my data was gone. I popped it back in my camera to confirm the loss of my photos, and the error read "Card Not Formatted." I then attempted to format the card via my camera, but it would not format. When trying to format it from a computer it just crashed the entire system (multiple machines.) The card is now utterly useless!

I had read of this happening but assumed it was user negligence in some way and bought it anyway. Don't take a chance! Stick with a non-moving CF card instead.

Well, I had the Hitachi 4 GB Microdrive for about 2-years and it worked flawless with my former Sony DSC-F828. I recently purchased the much touted Canon EOS 30D and had success with the drive, however, after maybe 100 shots the card went kaput citing an error. This is my personal experience and the card was a bit aged.

most cameras need a Fat 16 formated drive.
All 4 GB drives come (IBM or Hitachi or labels) come formated FAT32
so given that fact , most cameras will fail. If yours works , skip this review, ok?
However you can reformat it.

What's worse,
there at 2 types of drives.
Hitachi says
white label is REAL-IDE interface only ( computer , Ipod, MP3 unit, etc)
and that blue label is: CF+ Camera Microdrive

so if you have a white lable , chances are, It will never work with a camera. To be sure, check the model number on your drive againt the Hitachi online specifications to be sure.

To fix FAT32 , get a USB to FC/MD Memory reader device.
find Windows XP pro, Home stinks , find the real thing.

Go to control panel + admin..tools +computer.managment + disk management.
recommend looking before and after pluging in your microdrive
so you will recognize it when plugged in.

find it and right click , delete partition. ( be dang careful here)
now, right click it again, and creat a new partition of 2gb.
when that is done format it to FAT16. ( some times called FAT)
you lost 2gb, but that ok, as many cams have a limit of 2gb, but not all.
set the partition to whatever you camera manaual allows.

the above assume you are not in some recovery mode.
For that you need special software and $40

Note that according to the manufacturer, these are only designed to work up to about 10,000 feet (3,000 meters). Above that they may fail- they need air to hold up the heads.

Used it with my Rebel XT for several days while moving into our new house. Verified that both my Macbook Pro and my PC would read the card (they both did). Took about 700+ pictures, transfered the card to a Lexar Firewire CF Card reader and...wait...where did all my data go? The drive blew its partition out. The Rebel wouldn't even write to it anymore.

Had to use a data extraction utility called Drive Scavenger to get my photos back, about half of photos were recoverable, the rest are suffering from green splotches or are gone forever. Maybe I got a bum card, but I do live at high altitude (6600ft).

I'm pretty wary now of the whole "tiny CF hard drive" thing. I'll leave that to my iPod. Instead, I returned the 4Gb Hitachi CF Card, I purchased two 2GB Lexar cards.